ITV Player

Evan Gower January 7, 2011

ITV may have pioneered commercial broadcasting in this country, but it’s a laggard when it comes to internet TV.

ITV Player is as basic as they come. Not only is the selection of programmes available to watch on demand thin (only five shows from a full Saturday schedule were available at the time of writing), but the site is also entirely bereft of features.

The search engine returned the same five shows for pretty much any search term we used

Video is available in only one low-quality resolution, which looks fuzzy at full-screen on a 13in laptop and like watching an old VHS tape on a 38in TV.

There isn’t even the option to play video in a pop-up window, let alone download shows for offline viewing. At least it keeps tabs on your video playback, so you can browse away from the site, come back, and pick up from where you left off in Harry Hill’s TV Burp.

Finding programmes to watch is more difficult harder than it should be, not least because of the abysmal search engine.

We typed in “football”, and the search engine returned results for Coronation Street and Gossip Girl, but neglected to mention the UEFA Champions League highlights show. In fact, the search engine returned the same five shows for pretty much any search term we used, including “Hitler” and “creationism”.

If you do manage to find a show on the date or channel pages, at least ITV Player stacks up all the past episodes from the previous 30 days. There’s also the option to watch the ITV channels live, although the quality remains lacklustre.

Unless you’re absolutely gagging to catch up on a missed show, ITV Player should be given a wide berth.