TV.com app brings CBS to iPhones, Touches
updated 09:35 am EST, Fri February 27, 2009
CBS iPhone TV app
CBS has released a new iPhone application, representing the first app of its sort to provide streaming TV directly from an American network. The free TV.com app provides access to regular CBS shows including CSI, Star Trek and The Late Show with David Letterman, as well as CBS Sports content, and podcasts from CNET and GameSpot. Also available are a smaller range of CW shows such as Smallville, and a mere six shows from Showtime, such as The Tudors and The L Word.
The app's closest competition may be Joost, which provides more broadly-focused video content. Both titles are generally intended to fend off competition from sites like YouTube, which frequently sees clips from network TV shows uploaded without generating advertising profits for the creators. The addition of CBS to the iPhone marks a late entry into mobile TV, however, as the UK's BBC has had the iPlayer streaming app available for some time.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2009
Suffers total geofilter
As an American living abroad, I savor any channel through which I can get familiar content. It's ironic that, just as TV.com lifted the geofilters on the TV.com website for their classic TV shows, they released this iPhone/iPod touch application that's more restrictive than the main site ever was. When a user starts the iPhone app from overseas, it doesn't even take him to a start page, but instead tells him all content is restricted to users within the US -- which we know, from a legal standpoint, is not the case. Such Draconian measures are, in part, why the various torrent schemes will continue to flourish -- even amongst Mac users who are known to be willing to pay for their content!