Livestation Desktop TV - Watch TV Channels on Your Computer

Oct. 4th, 2008 | by Mark O'Neill

Back in March, I posted about Livestation, which is a desktop television app that lets you watch TV channels on your computer. Back then, it was in its infancy with rather limited features and limited television channels but seven months on, it has improved by leaps and bounds.

So I figured it deserved a follow-up article to show you what the Livestation team has been doing. I have Livestation running on my desktop virtually all day every day while I am working and I am amazed at how much this app is improving.

Here are just some of the improvements they have done since I last reviewed it :

They have now introduced versions for the Mac OSX and Linux.

You can watch the TV channels online from the website, inside your Livestation account. So you don’t have to install their desktop client if you don’t want to.

The desktop app stays on top of all other windows so it can stay in the corner of your screen while you are surfing the internet. This is a huge plus to me.

You can configure the desktop app to send messages to your Twitter account. So if you’re watching something really interesting, you can Tweet about it!

Livestation - Watch TV Channels on computer

But it is the huge number of TV channels that really makes it stand out. They are available on the Livestation website and all you have to do is simply go down the list and click on the ones you want. They are then added to your desktop app by refreshing the app and they will then appear in the drop-down menu. So you can custom-make your own television channels!

To begin choosing your channels, you start by logging into your account on the website. You then navigate to My Livestation->My Channels and from there you can start to browse through the 1,275 channels available :

watch tv on pc

Before you get all excited and say “wow! 1,275 channels!”, let me bring you back down to earth and assure you that most of them are total crap! But there are a few good ones worth watching and Livestation is adding new ones all the time - plus it’s free and you can never argue with free, can you?

tv channels on computer

The channels are heavily tilted towards news and politics but there ARE others. But let’s start with the news and politics first. As well as the default channels - BBC, Euro News, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg TV and France 24, they are also now showing other channels such as CNN, CSPAN, Deutsche Welle, Russia Today, NBC News, and many more.

Other channels that you can now pick up include the Discovery Channel, British people can pick up the four ITV channels, there’s also the four BBC radio channels, NASA television, quite a few music channels (including two MTV channels), cartoons, the sci-fi channel and many more. Oh and don’t forget the many foreign language channels from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, France, you name it, it seems to be there - with more being added all the time.

I highly recommend you download and install Livestation if you like watching television on your desktop. The screen is resizable so you can easily move it and shrink it if it gets in your way.

(By) Mark O'Neill is a freelance blogger and professional writer. He is also the managing and publishing editor of MakeUseOf. Check out his personal blog at Better Than Therapy

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