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Internet TV is what makes this software so grand.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T h e   R o a d   L e s s   T r a v e l e d
CocoaJT plays TV and radio shows from around the world on your OS X screen


May 11, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   Fox News was never like this. As the news show started, the camera pulled back on a view of a half-dozen news achors, all of them taking a stately bow before giving viewers a rundown on the day's events.
   This lesson in civility came from the Tokyo Broadcasting System. The TV news show came straight from the network's Tokyo studios, but I didn't have to get near my TV set to get my antidote to the bad manners of American TV. I was watching Tokyo TV news on my Mac.
   The software that makes this possible is called CocoaJT. It was created by Jean-Matthieu Schaffhauser of France. The software is free to use, but the author asks for a small payment if you like the program. The download site in North America is http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26057.
   CocoaJT plays TV and radio shows from around the world. Tuning is easy, and the quality of both audio and video ranges from utterly awful to awfully good. I expected a few scratchy looking broadcasts -- the Tokyo Broadcasting System picture was extremely blocky, for example -- but I was surprised by the amazingly high quality of many others.
   A broadcast (or "Internetcast") from France's N-TV channel looked as good on my G4's screen as my local stations look on my portable TV, for example. And Channel 13 from Chilean TV looked even better. A slower-than-usual frame rate (the number of separate TV pictures sent every second) was the only telltale sign of an Internet feed from the Chilean broadcast. Many others had the same high quality.
   The Internet radio stations I was able to tune into came in quite well, but the selection was limited to stations in Europe. I normally listen to Internet radio through iTunes, and nothing in CocoaJT led me to change my habits.
   But Internet TV is what makes this software so grand. After pretending I was back in Tokyo -- I spent a few wonderful weeks there in the mid-'60s -- I got into the habit of watching the CBC TV news out of Toronto at least once a day. I also enjoyed three different C-SPAN channels and a Bloomberg channel. NASA's TV channel is also available, as are many other news, civic and music channels in the U.S. section of the tuning guide.
   Recording TV channels was easy, but it worked only some of the time. The biggest problem I encountered was figuring out how to stop a recording; it's not obvious, and nothing seemed to work at first. The secret seems to be a tiny "X" icon at the right of the filename of the recording in a small window the program opens up. Clicking the "X" icon produces a scary message that says "Canceled." But it actually stops the recording and saves the file.