Watching TV on Your iPod

Apps For TV

I recently wrote an article about getting TV on your Mac (How To Watch TV On Your Mac). This is the follow-up article that talks about how to watch TV on your iPod.

You can’t talk about TV on your iPod Touch (or Nano for that matter) without talking about iTunes. If you have an iPod Touch and an iTunes account you can purchase TV (and movies) from the iTunes store and watch it on your iPod. It doesn’t have to be purchased content either. Many podcasts now contain free video content from TV shows or can be considered a TV show themselves.

With that said, iTunes is not the only way to watch TV on your iPod and there are several apps for this.

Joost - (FREE) Joost is a great resource for TV on your Mac and this is the Joost iPod app for viewing Joost content on your iPod Touch. An internet connection is required.

EyeTV - ($4.99) The EyeTV app works with EyeTV on your computer. If you have EyeTV on your computer and are connected to your network you can stream EyeTV recordings to your iPod Touch and stream live TV! I own this app and it is a coin toss if it works right. I haven’t gotten streaming recordings to work, but liveTV works great.

There is also a feature that allows you to stream recordings to your iPod when away from home (internet required). I have not tried this feature and many people in the elgato forums and the iTunes reviews have problems with this.

TubeToGo ($.99) and LiveTV ($4.99) These are EyeTV competitors and works with Equinux’s The Tube software. TubeToGo lets you schedule recordings on your Mac through the iPod and watch recordings through the internet. LiveTV lets you watch LiveTV through the iPod using the Equinux desktop software and hardware and record what you are watching (the recording happens on the Mac). I have not tried this, so I cannot comment on how well it works.

Air Video - ($2.99) Air Video is great! It allows you to stream non-drm protected video from your Mac (with free software installed) to your iPod Touch. It works great with EyeTV recordings (better than the EyeTV app) and with many other formats. I use this app on a regular basis.

Food Network Nighttime (Free) Watch you favorite Food Network shows on your iPod with this app. An internet connection is required.

TV.com (Free) Watch CBS content on your iPod Touch including full episodes. An internet connection is required.

Catch the news: Many of the major networks have apps for their news shows that play news stories and even entire programs in the app. There are too many to list in this article, but if you do a search for news you will probably find one. There are even local channels getting into the act. One of my local networks has an app to watch prerecorded news stories.

These are just some of the ways you can watch TV content on your iPod Touch. Search for TV in the app sotre and find even more apps.

Information for Windows 7 users

If you are using Windows 7 to try to download these programs, you may have trouble linking directly to the applications. You may want to download them on a computer with another operating system.