KeyHoleTV: Free program that (kinda) lets you watch Japanese Television

I recently have discovered a program that gives the capabilities to watch Japanese television. While it's kinda crappy (small picture, no ability to fullscreen, picture gets choppy and/or out of sync occasionally), it could be something fun to play with.

http://www.v2p.jp/video/english/

They offer a windows version as well as a linux version (apparently no mac version as of this posting). I have tried the linux on my underpowered ubuntu box and it seems to work so-so, crashes regularly giving a "segmentation error" I believe. The windows version did not work under Wine under my configuration.

The Windows version under XP suffers from the same small picture problem (in both versions you can resize the picture, but it doesn't really work that well I don't believe). The windows version does not crash, but the picture blanks out for half a second occasionally, and it gets a bit out of sync from time to time.

The conclusion (from an hour or two of using both versions): For now this seems to be more of a novelty than a way to seriously keep up with Japanese television (whether it will become more of a program of interest to follow future updates or not will be up to you). I do approve of the fact that they do offer a linux download as well as a PC download, but the mac crowd seems to be getting screwed here. Best of luck with this guys, and if you decide to give this a try, have fun and good luck!

If anyone else decides to give this a try, I would be interested to hear your thoughts and opinions on this software and see if anyone has very good luck, or very bad luck with it, or even just so-so results. There is a possibility that this could be something interesting to follow the updates and such of.

**edit** There are also some windows mobile versions, anyone able to give those a try?

I'll give this a shot. I've seen things like this before, but they wanted you to pay for it, so I just figured it'd be simpler for me to skip. I'm definitely curious to see how it works, but I fear for my screen resolution may force a teeny, tiny box...

Yeah, at least this is a free program... but sometimes you get what you pay (or don't pay) for.

Another decent free program for television would be the chinese program TVAnts, although it is seriously lacking in Japanese programming, but with it you can catch television from quite a few countries. Sometimes watching foreign television and commercials can be entertaining.

I've used this program for a long time now. Could've sworn I told you all about it before. ^^;; The Windows version doesn't work well under wine, but I've had no problems running it on Windows XP whatsoever, no crashes, etc. Only issues really weren't at my end, but at the end of whoever was broadcasting the keyhole at the time.

Interesting but, is this legal?

Probably not, but who cares?

Also, just installed it, and it's working great for me. Can you get more than just Japanese channels?

This program is awesome. I recommend everyone to get it. I am watching Animax. Sugoi

Just downloaded it, and it's working awesomely on my computer. xD The audio is a little low quality, but that's about it.

I'm loving this so far. I will give you this warning: it's terribly addictive. Especially if yes, you like watching Animax. Or anything really. It's running fine on my 1 year old laptop with Vista, so computer age may have a lot to do with it.

Highly addictive? Well, add this to the mix and you can even schedule your day around it: http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/tokyo/realtime.html

The program is old and is sponsored by the Japanese government, so it is 100% legal. Unfortunately, TV Tokyo always appears and disappears on its channel list, so it's unreliable for watching Pokemon. I have been using it almost every week for the longest time, but it seems like TV Tokyo is only there 50% of the time, sometimes even disappearing for weeks and weeks at a time. But yeah, it's a decent way to watch live Japanese TV.

So true, so true... kinda hope to see more of TV Tokyo and Asahi eventually.

I've had no problems getting TV Tokyo so far, but I believe you as other channels I couldn't always get.

yay! Now i can see japanese tv on my laptop!
*downloads and gets japanese language tape*
Dang, network timeout.