If you’re in the UK and are looking for an all-in-one freeview experience for your Android, FilmOnX provides all the popular channels straight to your device with no sign-up fees and no other equipment. There are premium options to unlock more channels, but the bulk of the TV features are offered for free.

Layout and Functionality

It’s really not hard to navigate through FilmOnX; you’ll get an interactive list of scrollable channels on the left, and a viewable stream of the selected channel taking two thirds of the screen on the right.

If you tap the viewing screen, touch controls will pop up in charge of switching to full screen, or pausing the streaming content, and turning the volume up and down. The full screen mode gives you a larger viewing space by removing the clutter on the left, which will take you into a widescreen view.

The screen plays decent video and audio quality, and the only aspects that make it inferior to watching from a regular television is the small screen and FilmOn’s logo which has been watermarked onto the screen in the top right corner.

The volume control isn’t exactly necessary along with the physical controls on your device, but it does give you a little bit more precision over the volume playing from the app itself. The pause function allows you to stop the current program playing, but when played again, it will catch up with live TV instead of playing from where it was paused from, making the control a useless gimmick.

It’s also very easy to navigate through channels and they have been separated off into different categories to help viewing ability. Although you cannot quick jump to different categories, they have been clearly marked and are easy to define.

Streaming and Recording

You have the ability to stream either high or low quality, helpful for those with varying web connections. The lowest quality on FilmOnX is pixelated and grainy, whereas the higher quality is of a much greater definition. It’s a shame there isn’t any way to choose anything between high or low quality.

Premium

With FilmOn you can purchase premium packs which include a few different channels. The average price is around £5 a month, but unless there’s something that really catches your eye, it’s not really necessary. There are also streaming packs offering different lengths of recording time, allowing you to record programs to watch at a later date. The premium features do add a few functionalities, but you’re not going to miss out on any casual viewing without paying. It’s also important to note that if you use this app it will count as watching live TV, which means you will need an up-to-date TV license.

Summary

Pros:

• Easy to use interface
• Many freeview channels available
• Up to date TV guides
• No extra costs or equipment needed

Cons:

• Recording features and premium channels cost
• Streaming is usually fine, but does have occasional hiccups
• No ‘Jump to’ categories or favorites section

Download FlimOnX here.

The post Live TV for UK: FilmOnX for Android appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Google already dominates a significant part of my life, but it hasn’t really infiltrated my living room just yet. The search engine giant wants to do that and that’s why it has just launched the all-new Google TV 2.0. This follows in the footsteps of the original Google TV launched last year, but it comes with some new hotness in the form of apps, Honeycomb, Discovery, and more.

Google TV is still meant to function as a supplement to your usual cable subscription, but they’ve expanded the scope to include more goods. For instance, you will notice that Google TV runs on the tablet-friendly Honeycomb Android operating system. This cleans up the UI and makes it a little more familiar. This also lets it run a whole whack of applications.

To be fair, most of the apps aren’t going to play friendly on your TV, but they have about 20 or so right now that have the proper resolution and formatting. This makes it easier for content providers like Pandora and Netflix to get to you through the Google TV framework. Google plans on creating a sub-section in Android Market for Google TV apps.

One thing that I think is pretty cool is that when you look up a TV show, it won’t just show you when it’ll be airing next on regular TV; it also gives you the other options to watch that show, including YouTube rentals and Amazon purchases. That’s flexibility. It’s also cool how YouTube automatically plays a related video when your chosen video ends, instead of just sitting there blankly waiting for you to choose the next clip.

The Google TV 2.0 update is set to hit compatible Sony devices on Sunday with the Logitech Revue update following “shortly after.”

The post Google TV 2.0 Brings Android Honeycomb With Apps To The Sofa appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The first model of Hisense Smart TV with this unique feature is Series XT710, which has been introduced to consumer markets in China to mark the October 1st National holidays. Users will enjoy a natural, new intuitive way of interacting with their TV sets. They will be able to control basic TV functions, without having to move out of their comfortable viewing position to reach the remote control. Users will also be able to play games using intuitive gestures and touchless use other applications on the device.

But how does all this work, your all too human neurons might be asking you. Well, these smart TVs will use motion monitoring cameras to read a persons hand and body gestures and in turn control various functions. Hisense will be making use of eyeSights SDK on their new XT710 smart TV, which makes use of 2D cameras to monitor hand gestures and movements. It’s back to the future, folks!

[UberGizmo via PR]

The post Android Coming To TV With Gesture Recognitions appeared first on Mobile Magazine.