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— 1 -12/2012
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well as the ability to place fa-
vorite channels in their own
list.
While looking through the
lists we could hardly contain
ourselves; the regional over-
view included entries from
Africa, Asia, America, Eu-
rope, Oceania and the Near
East. Each of these regions
is then sub-divided into indi-
vidual countries.
All of the TV and radio
broadcasters in the lists
could easily be accessed.
This speaks for the care that
LookeeTV put into these
lists; obviously, the company
doesn’t provide all of these
services directly, rather,
they simply collect all of the
content distributed by the
broadcasters and place them
all in one large database.
Once a channel has been
chosen, the box creates a
connection via the Internet
with the appropriate server
from the provider and begins
to show the content.
This process, depending
on the Internet connection
speed and on the selected
channel, can take as long
as ten seconds although on
average the user will see the
first picture much sooner
than that.
During playback there are
numerous options available
for the user, for example,
how the received picture
should be displayed. Many
broadcasters still transmit in
4:3
format and some of the
content is even transmit-
ted in poor quality. The user
has the choice of watching
it all in its original size, in a
zoomed-in version with the
16.
Videos, music and
pictures stored internally or
on an SD card can be made
available
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Videos, music and pictures
from an SD card
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Playback of WMV videos
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An overview of our test
videos in their various
formats
20.
MP4 HD playback
correct aspect ratio or in full-
screen mode with stretched
4:3
broadcasts.
During playback, the cur-
rently running channel can
be paused at any time al-
though a time shift function
is not available.
We were also surprised at
the number of available ra-
dio stations. Regardless if it
is Radio Maria Tanzania, The
Voice of Russia or Maitri 99.4
FM from Nepal, the selection
was essentially unlimited.
The video and audio qual-
ity of each channel depends,
as suggested earlier, entirely
on the individual provider.
All-in-all though, we only
found a few TV channels and
almost no radio channels
where the picture and audio
quality would be something
to complain about.
Thanks to the really enor-
mous selection of channels,
the LookeeTV box would be
ideal for anyone living away
from their home country
who is searching for TV and
radio channels from home.
The free Internet stream-
ing service Shoutcast from
Nullsoft is a familiar name
to most radio fans and so
it only made sense that the
LookeeTV box was also fit-
ted with the Shoutcast App.
It provides hundreds of ra-
dio streams from all over
the world sorted into a to-
tal of 36 main categories. It
doesn’t matter if you’re look-
ing for modern country mu-
sic, oldies, classical music,
techno, pop or other music
styles, you’ll be able to find
what you’re looking for.
On top of that there are
also the hundreds of radio
stations that don’t have a
specific music format but of-
fer rather a mixed format.
Our tests of the Shoutcast
App showed that it func-
tioned without any prob-
lems. We especially liked
that if a particular channel
only played back audio, you