Last month we reported that Freeview was coming out with an app that lets you stream free-to-air TV on your smartphone. The Freeview FV app for Apple iOS and Google Android is now available for you to download. Here are all the channels you can watch through the app and where you can get it.
Here are all the features that come with the Freeview FV app:
- Live-streaming from all the free-to-air networks
- Access to all catch-up TV
- Browse and search free-to-air TV content
- A free-to-air TV guide
- A recommendations system
The channels that are currently available are:
- ABC
- SBS
- Seven
- Channel 9
- TEN
- ONE
- ABC2/Kids
- ABC Me
- ABC News 24
- 7Two
- 7Mate
- 7flix
- Racing.com
- 9Gem
- 9Go!
- 9Life
You can download the app at the Apple App Store for iOS and the Google Play Store for Android. Click the links to download the app for your respective mobile operating system.
Comments
13 responses to “You Can Now Livestream Aussie TV On Your Smartphone For Free”
It’s a shame they don’t have a Mac app. I would use that a lot more than the iPhone app. Works well though
Looks like Airplay Mirroring is hobbled. Shame!
Not really, you still need all the separate apps
And no Chromecast support. So you actually have to watch it on your phone.
What are the ads like? The only free to air I watch is ABC so there is usually only a little promo between shows.
When I checked the app out, every time I opened a channel 7 show it began with the same advert. So I guess it’s making you watch an ad before you even start getting the content. (It was an advert for the TAB) One time it was followed by another advert for a show. I opened and closed the show a couple of times within a few minutes and each time the same TAB ad played. I can’t try out 9 or 10 to see what they do because they have been “Not available at this time” all day. I didn’t leave it running enough to see any further ads.
Any idea on how much bandwidth this uses (and how fast this will use up your monthly limit)?
Settings show two options
Low (700kbps or lower)
Med (1200kbps or lower)
Medium is set to default
So its roughly 540mb per hour
And as usual on Windows phone support either
Its going to need some updates,
Also i tried to play a catchup show on SBS on demand, it redirected me to google chrome which redirected me to the catchup app in the play store.
No chromecast support means its a fail for me from the start. But I did try it anyway.
Live: Several of the channels on the front page were “Not available at this time” and a couple of hours later are still “Not available at this time.” Pretty much all the Channel 9 channels redirected me to the app store to get their apps instead. This happened from the TV Guide too for a lot of shows on various channels. None of the shows that need the separate apps seem to be marked, it just seems completely random which ones will need the separate app.
Catchup: You have to go to “Featured” and then choose “Catch Up”. There is no browsing by channel so far as I can see, just an appstore-like row of shows for each channel “brand” – for example ABC, ABC2 etc were in one row. Every catch-up show redirected me to the app store for their individual app or to their website to watch. Even for the one’s where I did actually have the apps. I have the iView app, but clicking “watch now” took me to the iView website in safari (not my browser of choice) where a banner popped up telling me the app was installed and did I want to open that?
I was excited when this app was announced, as we haven’t had free to air tv for a while because we rent and the aerial isn’t good enough to pick up most digital channels. But the app is difficult to navigate and even if it wasn’t then the lack of chromecast support means we probably won’t use this. : /
Being that it is Evil Week here at Lifehacker, I figure it’s fair to share this:
If you have a jailbroken iPhone and change your GPS location, you can watch channels outside of your area, which would be nice for AFL/NRL games, probably other things too.
And for those of you outside of Australia, half the channels seem to work without a VPN, but with a VPN + faking your location, they all work.
This sounds great, in theory. I have a couple of the per-channel apps and they’re universally a pain in the ass. ABC iView is easily the best of the bunch, and it’s still not that good. Having an app to consolidate the libraries would be way less annoying. But no chromecast support? What the? Why don’t you just ask me to watch shadow puppets on the cave wall or something, damn. Get with it, Freeview.