Free Online Television and Radio

[bcasanov]

Hi, I am a relatively new user to ubuntu, and I have become happily infected with the free software and linux bug. :) I found this community to be one of the friendliest I have come across. I just wanted to share with you some websites that I know that list a good number of free streaming television channels and radio broadcasts that do not require installation of anything but just a media player. All of these websites do not require you to login or subscribe in order to view the content. I would like this thread to be a place for sharing similar websites that provide completely free television and radio broadcasts, so that we can all expand our choices of online television and radio.

Here is the small list of sites I know thus far:

http://wwitv.com This is my personal choice—it has 2430 online TV stations listed and it lists them by country (it lists so many countries that it even includes such small countries as Cuba, which is where I am from) and also by category (movie/documentary, MTV, news, etc.). I think that this is one of the most comprehensive sites of free streaming television.

http://www.channelchooser.com

http://www.freetvonline.com

Here is a site that lists literally thousands of online radio stations: http://www.live365.com/listen/browse.live


I include http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ in this list because, although it does not include live streamed content, it has entire archived TV shows and, yes, whole movies online for free.

Brenda

[izanbardprince]

Who wants to sit and watch government and religious channels?

[bcasanov]

:) You are right about that. In Cuba, there are actually only 2 television channels available, and one cannot get a respite from the government propaganda with either. But at least, on the internet one has the choice to pick whatever she/he wants without being unduly constrained by the government.

Brenda

[karellen]

:) thanks for the links, even if I don't watch tv very much, I hope I'll find some nice educational/scientifical documentaries/shows

[bcasanov]

:) You're welcome.

[%hMa@?b<C]

tv-links.co.uk is another one to add to the list.

[bcasanov]

I found another site for the list: www.americafree.tv/

[me1on]

By "free," you mean illegal, right?

[Sef]

By "free," you mean illegal, right?

Not necessarily. That would depend on the the country's laws, the tv station, and the program owner.

[bcasanov]

Not necessarily. That would depend on the the country's laws, the tv station, and the program owner.

Exactly. For example, AmericaFree.tv, in the link I gave above, streams independent films, movies and music videos that are from the public domain and are under the Creative Commons licenses. As it states on its website: "Online TV as it should be - Free of Charge, Free of DRM, Free of Commercial Interruptions." Thus, "free" as it relates to online television and radio does not necessarily equate with illegal; it just depends on some of the factors Sef stated. I hope that sheds more light on the issue.

[bcasanov]

By "free," you mean illegal, right?

Again, the definitions of free vary with what the author intends. The author may intend the content to be free as in beer or free as in freedom; these are common distinctions that are made. When the author or sponsor of the television channel or radio content have a license that allows the public to freely view it, then it is not illegal to see the content. In regards to downloading or redistributing the content, it depends on the type of license that it comes with.

[Mateo]

I have, at times, watch the spanish channels from those sites. Some are actually pretty good, but at the same time a lot of them are low quality and are up irregularly. I would hope that more local channels would put streams online. It wouldn't seem like it would be all that expensive to do. Maybe that will be the case down the line.

Radio, on the other hand, is already as good as the FM/AM counterparts.

[bcasanov]

I have, at times, watch the spanish channels from those sites. Some are actually pretty good, but at the same time a lot of them are low quality and are up irregularly. I would hope that more local channels would put streams online. It wouldn't seem like it would be all that expensive to do. Maybe that will be the case down the line.

Radio, on the other hand, is already as good as the FM/AM counterparts.

I quite agree with your assessment. The links to the some of the online streams can sometimes be randomly taken off and it is not cool to not reliably access your favorite online tv channel. However, most of those streams are hosted on reliable sites, and you can just go to the website via the link that is provided next to the stream on www.wwitv.com to go directly to the hosting website.

[jadonchristensen]

I cannot play movies from their site anymore. I using to be able to and I have w32codecs installed. I can play Quicktime movies at apple.com.

Any ideas? Maybe they changed something.

americafree.tv

[alex46]

I found this site a while ago. It has a huge list of TV stations from around the world. The site listed are all free and legal.

http://www.watchonbroadband.com

[k2t0f12d]

Can anyone point me to free TV site that airs episodes of Shortland Street?

[AsoSako]

The following is definatelly the Master source for TV... Basically the new TV-Links if you know what TV-Links was... :D
http://www.surfthechannel.com/
All the TV you should EVER need...

[bcasanov]

Thanks for that link!

[Khakilang]

Try to watch it but this message comes out.

169522

):P

[Johnsie]

I wrote program called SteekyTV for linux or STVLinux that allowed people to watch web TV and listen to radio on their Ubuntu desktop. That was back when everybody used Windows Media for their TV streaming.

http://steeky.com/stvlinux

Nowadays most TV companies use flash so my program depreciated. At the moment I'm trying to port it to a web based client so that it's cross platform and can handle the flash implementations that most companies are using to stream TV today.

The project is called FreeBC and it's in it's early days so the layout isn't finalised (it looks like crap at the moment) and some of the stations from the original client are no longer functional.

http://www.freebc.co.uk (Apologies for the rubbish layout. At the moment I'm trying to rebuild the database of TV and radio stations)

I might re-realease the STVLinux application when it can support flash based streams, because it offers a simple way of changing channels.