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BORED WITH THE 80 or so channels you get on cable, or do extreme pet makeovers still fascinate you? For the curious--and patient--viewer, preferably with a super-fast Internet connection, there's iTube 1.4, the self-proclaimed Internet television software. It collects feeds for more than 1,700 channels (the number varies at different times of day) from around the world in a clean, iApp-style window.
The Category menu lets you pick from Government, Music/Entertainment, Religious, Science/Education, Talk/News and other categories. You'll find stations from dozens of countries on every populated continent, as well as a large amount of English-language content, such as BBC and C-SPAN channels, news shows from Australia and Canada and dozens of Music Video channels, which are usually just one video you can watch as much as you want. Perhaps best of all, you can search more than two million videos by entering search terms in the Internet Video search field. In a settings drawer, you select to only see results for video that requires QuickTime, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, but we recommend having all three to get the most out of iTube.
Double-click a channel in the station menu, and iTube enters its view mode while loading the video or video stream. Here you have normal playback controls, and you can add a channel to your Favorites list or enter fullscreen mode (not advisable if your streaming playback is slow). We found that choosing a channel requiring a higher bandwidth did not necessarily result in better video quality. Streaming playback became very choppy if we tried to work in another program while iTube was open, and iTube occasionally froze, making us use Force Quit to exit out of it. We also want to note that channels are not regulated for content or subject to any kind of rating system.
Despite some operational woes, we found iTube to be an entertaining Internet application that will only improve over time, especially as broadband speeds increase.
-MARKKUS ROVITO
iTube 1.4: 
East Bay Technologies | www.eastbaytech.com | 763-231-8100 | $24
Pros: Hundreds of channels from around the world, Internet video search.
Cons: Frequent poor connections, occasional crashes.
Requires: OS 10.2 or higher, Safari, Internet connection
macHOME recommends: QuickTime, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, high-speed Internet connection
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