KatchTV is an "Internet TV" application for KDE, otherwise known as a broadcatcher.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

KatchTV is an "Internet TV" application for KDE, otherwise known as a broadcatcher. It makes it easy to subscribe to "TV" channels from all over the internet in the form of podcasts, so that you can browse channels, download shows, and watch them, all from one convenient interface.

KatchTV is very similar to Democracy TV, but focuses on KDE integration, using KHTMLPart and embedded players such as kaffeine. It's much faster, and lighter on resources if you run a KDE desktop without GTK apps.

Installation is easy, as long as your distro has PyKDE, PyQt, and Kaffeine. Just untar to some directory like /usr/local, and run the KatchTV program. You can also make a symlink to that executable from a directory like /usr/local/bin, and KatchTV will work out where to find its files.

Supported features include:

* Video podcasts ("vodcasts").
* Bittorrent-based broadcatching.
* Audio podcasts.
* Multiple background downloads of media and updates of feeds, all while you watch/listen to your favourite shows.
* Manages any media you download, so that you don't lose track of your disk space.
* Built-in KHTML-based web browser, with specific customisations for this application.
* Automatically subscribes to any feeds you click on while browsing.
* Uses KDE's default embedded media players, for flexible configuration and KDE integration.
* Supports Macromedia Flash movies, if you have a suitable plugin.
* Built-in bookmarks of major vodcast/podcast sites, so you don't have to look to hard for great content.
* Stores episode details along with downloaded media to make tracking easier.
* Allows manually adding any feeds (in case some site makes it awkward to add them
* Can also read standard RSS news feeds, if you prefer not to run separate media and news aggregators.
* Feed for KatchTV updates, so you never have to miss the latest features

Requirements:

· python (2.4+ advised)
· PyKDE and PyQt
· Kaffeine
· KMPlayer
· Mozplugger

Installation:

To actually install this, the easiest way is just to move the untarred directory to some location like /usr/local/KatchTV, and then make a symlink from that directory's KatchTV executable into /usr/local/bin or your personal ~/bin directory.

So basically, from scratch, you can do:

cd /usr/local
tar xvjf /path/to/the_downloaded/KatchTVtarball.tar.bz2
ln -s /usr/local/KatchTV/KatchTV /usr/local/bin/KatchTV

Then, just run KatchTV from the command line, or make a KDE icon for it.

Screenshots.