TV-Maxe is similar to Sopcast in the way that it allows you to view TV programmes and listen to radio via different streams. TV-Maxe is not distro specific, so it should work (theoretically) in all Linux distribution. In Ubuntu (12.10 and below), you can install with the following command: For other Linux distro, you can follow the installation instruction here or download the package and build it yourself. Once installed, you can run it from the Application menu.
To get started, you just have to click on any channel in the “TV Channel” list and it should play the show in the inbuilt video player.
In the Preferences, you can configure it to use VLC or MPlayer, or any other external application as the video player and you can also adjust the recording settings.
The Subscriptions is where you can manage your TV channels list. The default installation comes with a Romanian and a International library, but you can find more and add your own to the list.
One interesting feature that comes along with the TV-Maxe installation is the Schedule Manager. Assuming your computer is on at all times, you can schedule TV-Maxe to start playing a specified channel at a specified time.
In addition, you can also get it to sleep after some time, and even shut down the computer after it sleeps. I don’t see myself using this feature that often, but it is good to see it around.
Conclusion
After playing and using TV-Maxe for some time, I have found it to be very stable and the connection has been very smooth. In the past, using Sopcast in Linux is always a hit or miss, but TV-Maxe seems to have got rid of the issue. One thing though, the subscription list is rather limited at the moment and sopcast link is not compatible with TV-Maxe, so you can’t watch Sopcast channel directly in TV-Maxe. Hopefully, this feature will be added in the future.
