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Only FreeTW is "all in one" To be "all in one" is very important to be able to use a single remote control, "zapping" comfortably from your lounge. Hereafter the characteristics to be checked before buying a MediaCenter program or a WebTV, not because they are expensive – the cost is minimal in any case – but to avoid despair and time wasting !
(in green) : operations easily accomplished using the remote control and with captions easily readable from your lounge (*) : operations partially accomplished only using additional software ( see related notes )
(in green) : operations easily accomplished using the remote control and with captions easily readable from your lounge (*) : operations partially accomplished only using additional software ( see related notes )
Notes: 1) The Media Centers, even the best of them, can’t browse the Internet or could do it only using additional plugins. In this way it is not possible to watch at a generic URL but only for what has been developed a specific plugin ( for instance you can watch only at the YouTube website contents ) . Searching new channels and adding WebTVs, WebRadios and WebSites is a difficult task, that is very hard to be done by a typical TV user. 2) The Media Centers can reproduce DVDs but not as comfortable as with the DVD players, Windows and FreeTW. 3) Windows is able to render the WebRadios and the WebTVs (using Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer) but it is very far to be comfortable as a television set should be. Moreover it is hard to use Windows with a remote control because the captions and the buttons are too tiny. 4) Windows manages the radio and the television and is able to record audio and video but an auxiliary application has to be used, usually delivered in bundle with the "Tuner", and then you will have another separated environment, other commands to be learned and remembered and another different remote control. 5) The Media Centers, even the best of them, do not show pictures with all the options a user could require for the slideshow. ( border, customizable time, background music, pause, manual mode, transitions between the pictures, etc.. ) 6) Only FreeTW manages all the functions with a single remote control. FreeTW put at you disposal a lot of predefined remote controls and enpowers the users to configure all their buttons using an integrated remote control editor. 7) The voice control is an amazing but hard to use feature, if the commands aren’t tightly integrated with the vocabulary of the application. In that case the vocal commands become totally unreliable. 8) The actual version of FreeTW does not record what you’re watching. This is a design choice to avoid difficult operations to the typical user, operations that are best accomplished with other applications, using peer-to-peer programs, keyboard and mouse. Future versions of FreeTW perhaps will include the possibility to register. It is however possible to enregister with the programs in bundle with the "tuner" even while you are using FreeTW. In this way it is also possible to register a channel while you are watching another one. 9) Not every media center is able to register; Windows Media Center does it but the most of the other applications doesn’t allow it. Even the Media Centers have to interact with the programs delivered by the "Tuner" constructor for recording and a lot of times the recording functions are slow and uncomfortable. 10) WebTVs ( also named Internet TV, PC-TV, or TV-OnLine ) can reproduce the WebTVs and the WebRadios, but cannot browse the Internet to look for new channels to be added. Pay attention to the WebTVs that you can recognize because usually they tell something like: !!! 50.000 world channels free of charge !!! WebTVs usually do very little tasks, maybe a pair of operations on the Web, their captions are really minuscule - you can’t read them from your lounge - and are very boring to be managed via a remote control. The WebTVs are very different from Media Centers. These last are at least attempting to help the user watching TV.
FreeTW – Technical characteristics
Performance Sure and reliable behaviour with WindowsXP and with WindowsVista Low consumption of resources and CPU time. It can be used with 1GHz processors and with 500MB of RAM memory fitted in. The processor does not heat and then the fans are for the most time still. Reliable restart after the suspension from the real place where you was before, in every situation, even in the middle of a movie. All the system composed by the PC + FreeTW + Monitor can be shut off in 20 seconds and you can restart it in about 15 seconds, just the time of sitting dows and switch lights off. You could forget the presence of a PC.
File types supported VIDEO: 3GP, ASF, ASX, AVI, FLA, FLV, MOV, MPG, MPEG, MP4, SWF, VOB, WMV AUDIO: AAC, AIFF, AMR, APE, AU, CDA, FLAC, GSM, M3U, M4A, MID, MP3, MPC, OGG, PLS, RAW, RSS, SPX, VOX, WAV, WMA, WPL PICTURES: BMP, JPG, JPEG, JPE, JFIF, GIF, TIF, TIFF, PNG, ICO, TGA STREAMING: http, mms, rtsp, udp, unicast, multicast, broadcast
How to buy the FreeTW program To find the program FreeTW you should go on eBay and search for "FreeTW". Unless you find it, write at: info@freetw.net and we will reach an agreement to send you a copy in a different fashion. The program FreeTW has no kind of protection; you can copy it at will to all your friends and relatives. But it should be better if you buy it on eBay, sending me a few Euro with PayPal and then inviting your friends to my eBay shop. Please note that one of the purposes of this project is to "limit market and resources to the monopoly TV as much as possible" . Please help me to do so. Giving your contribution to this research, I could continue to work on FreeTW that will become a better product in the future versions. After buying on eBay you’ll receive free of charge all the future versions and you could contact me to have some missing functions developed and problems fixed. If you like it, you could register to a FreeTW newsletter too. The application "FreeTW" relies completely on freeware technologies: Direct Show, MCI (Media Control Interface), VFW (Video for Windows), Windows Media Player 11, Internet Explorer 7, SpeechApi 5.1 and Visual Studio 2008 express, all kindly made available for free by Microsoft .
Copyright (C) Livio Cicala 2008 All rights reserved, trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. All material is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either implied than expressed, including but not limited to : Warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose to the guarantee of non-infringement in relation to a service, materials or products. Decline any and all liability against anyone for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or punitive damages of any kind in relation to information and software of this site.
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