Danny Gorog04 December 2007, 6:16 AM
The ABC has released a new desktop app that makes watching TV and radio on your PC a piece of cake.
The ABC today released a widget that lets users access ABC content directly from their desktop PC.
"ABC Now " pulls together most of ABC's popular multimedia content into one desktop app, where users can get latest news headlines, ABC radio streams, podcasts and watch highlights of TV programs over the internet.
 ABC Now is split into two windows, the left window lets you browse and select content, while the right window displays content |
ABC Now also lets users bookmark their favourite content within the ABC Now widget by simply clicking the 'heart' icon next to the program. This is billed as the best feature of ABC Now, as it gives users instant access to their favourite streams.
 'Favourites' is a 'top feature' of ABC Now |
The ABC Now widget gets content directly from ABC's main website at
abc.net.au but according to the FAQ doesn't actually include all available multimedia, or live cricket streams (due to a technical issue).
Users have the choice of listening to audio streams as either Real or Windows Media.
 Choose your poison; Windows Media or Real Player for audio settings |
As ABC Now provides a simplified interface to abc.net.au, content gets updated at different time intervals. For example News is updated every few minutes, podcasts are updated after the program goes to air and vodcasts go live after the episode has been on TV.
In its current incarnation, ABC Now only works XP or Vista, however a Mac version is 'coming soon', hopefully in the form of a Dashboard widget, because a stand-alone program would be complete overkill.
Of course, most people sophisticated enough to download and install a widget would probably already be able to view the same content in a web browser, but at least ABC Now pulls everything together into one convenient interface that sits outside your browser and can stream away in the background while you get on with other work.