SPB Releases SPB TV 1.0 and WE Review it!

From the company that brought us great software like SPB Mobile Shell (3.0 soon we hope!), SPB Keyboard and SPB Weather come SPB TV 1.0!  This is the stand alone version of their TV Viewer which is currently packaged into their SPB Online package.

Spb TV is a mobile client, which allows viewing TV channels on Windows phones.
The uniqueness of this application is in its unparalleled usability, and the overall seamless experience of watching TV on a mobile device. Spb TV allows quickly checking the TV guide and previewing shows for each TV channel, without having to quit the current channel. Moreover, the convenient on-screen controls allow adjusting volume, backlight, and more.

Main Features:

• Unique TV browser with quick channels preview and list of current & upcoming TV shows for fast channel selection
• Integrated full week’s TV guide
• Ability to set Outlook reminders for TV shows of interested
• Fast channels launch and switching technology
• Picture-in-picture mode (channel preview while in another channel)
• Finger-friendly onscreen “transparent” controls with instant access to regular TV features
• Full support of hardware buttons controls
• Network bandwidth fluctuations support
• Clever integration of mobile TV functionality with other mobile phone features

So what are my thoughts? Its good! Really good… The channel quality is nice, the audio comes through clearly and the interface is nice and finger friendly.  What’s the bad? Nothing really.  Its pretty good for a “new” piece of software.  I say “New” because as mentioned before it has really just been extracted out of their SPB Online package.  It is being released for $14.95.

Read on for the full press release and MobilityDigest’s full review and screenshots!

So for starters we’ll get the review out of the way.  As I said above, its a nice piece of software and just like almost all of SPB’s packages, it runs very smooth.  The graphics are nice and the interface is friendly.  The on-screen controls are finger friendly and easy to use and at the same time functional.

But before we get too far into that, lets talk about the software from the beginning.  From the start it checks out your registration and determines whether or not you have the “full” version and from there decides on what channels you are allowed to watch.  The Free version allows you to watch a limited number of channels where the full version gives you all of the currently available channels.  I’ll list them all below.  It then downloads the current channel listing and also the TV Guide.  So once its loaded, you’re all set to go.  Another nice touch is that the theme of SPB TV relates to the theme that you are currently using for your phone.

Pretty Cool, huh?  To me it makes it look that much nicer that it ties your theme into its own app. So next we’ll get into the main view of it all.  From the pictures above you get the general idea that you hit the “play” button on the left and it plays the channels and it has SPB’s normal “CUBE” effect.  So when i choose to play my favorite channel so far “NASA”  and it tells me that its opening the channel at 348kbit/s.  Now I’m hearing some “wow’s” out there and thats what I said too when I first loaded it up.  You NEED 3G  or the equivalent to run this.  Even at low quality it needs 207kbit/s data rate.  From the on-screen menu you can also bring up the PIP menu which isnt really PIP, it just lets you browse when you’re viewing a channel, the High/Low quality option,

Volume, bri  ghtness and Exit (which brings you to the main screen.

The Options we have are pretty simple.  Right/Left handed and a channel listing where you can remove channels(no adding yet) and re-arrange the list to put your favorites first.  And then there is the TV Guide which will let you get a full listing of the planned programming (if available) and then set a reminder that your show is going to be on.  So I can set CNN IBN to remind me when “Ibn Sunrise” is on at 8:30pm.

Here is the current channel listing: Click here.

and click here for the official press release!

Some updates that we would like to see are:

• Custom TV Channels (if possible)
• Portrait TV viewing (now you HAVE to watch it in landscape)
• MORE US channels.