Wimbledon is upon us again. It’s the time of year when everyone pretends to like Pimm’s, suddenly takes an interest in tennis and cheers for a sulky Brit who’d steal your gran’s overpriced strawberries and cream for a chance to win a major.
We kid. We do love tennis and we do love Wimbledon, and to prove it, we’ve served up an indispensable guide for watching the action live, wherever you are, regardless of phone, tablet, computer or resolution. Read on to get your fix on the go.
On your computer
Want to watch Andy Murray crash out at work? BBC iPlayer on the desktop only plays host to catch-up, but you can stream live TV channels from Auntie, assuming you’re a licence payer – for some reason, the Beeb keeps them tucked away quietly elsewhere on its website. Head to Watch Live and you can stream every BBC channel if you have Flash installed.
If you’re on a Mac and you have admin rights, you could also install TellyBox, which lets you stream BBC channels in a OS X window, and choose your station from a drop down men in the taskbar.
On an iPhone
Despite the BBC’s recent native app craze, the iPhone still lacks a BBC iPlayer app, and you can’t stream live channels through the iPhone web app. Your best bet is TVCatchup, which has been designed specifically to work on iOS. Just register (it’s free) and stream any Freeview channel for free. It works over Wi-Fi and 3G.
On your tablet
Watching on an iPad is easy: just download the free BBC iPlayer iPad app to watch live TV over Wi-Fi. It’s a no go on 3G however, so you’ll again have to resort to TVCatchup.com’s iOS friendly web interface.
Android tablets meanwhile have a few options. Those that support Adobe Flash can watch live channels through the official BBC iPlayer Android app, but if you have any problems downloading it as we have on Honeycomb slates, you can simply visit the BBC website if your user agent is set to desktop (Dolphin Browser HD provides this option and is free).
Those without Flash on their Android tablets may still have some luck using the mobile-optimized version of TVCatchup, m.tvcatchup.com, but we’ve not been able to test this.
On an Android phone
The BBC iPlayer Android app will play nice on any Android 2.2 or 2.3 phone that supports Flash, but as we noted in our original review, that’s not every phone, not by a long shot. m.tvcatchup.com should fulfil your needs – it works relatively smoothly, even on handsets with low power 600MHz processors.
On a BlackBerry
Oddly, the mobile-optimized BBC iPlayer site for BlackBerries does allow you to watch live TV channels, so to get your fix just head to bbc.co.uk/iplayer through the stock BlackBerry browser. It works just fine on our BlackBerry Bold 9700 over Wi-Fi, which is just as well as m.tvcatchup.com proved to be a bit more patchy here, often not loading.
On a Windows Phone
Things aren’t so easy here. You’ll basically need to use the SlingPlayer Mobile app, but that’s not cheap: it’s £22.99 on the Marketplace, and requires you have a Slingbox installed already. On the plus side at least, you’ll be able to do everything you can on an actual TV, and even press the red button to other matches being broadcast by the Beeb. Which is nice.
On a Nokia
Your mileage will vary since Symbian/Symbian S60 phones have been around since the dawn of time, but m.tvcatchup.com is your best bet here, since the Symbian BBC iPlayer app doesn’t allow for live TV streaming. It runs fine on recent Symbian 3 phones such as the Nokia E7 and Nokia N8, and support should go back a couple of years at least. S60 phones without Wi-Fi, such as the otherwise superb Nokia C5, could run up bills quickly doing this.
In HD
If you can get BBC One HD on your TV, it’s possible to stream the tennis to wherever you are in HD – though of course you’d only see the benefits on a laptop or desktop monitor. You’ll need something like the Slingbox Pro-HD to do this remotely, while Elgato’s elegant Netstream DTT does the same for both PC and Mac on your home network.
