LiveTV Toolbar

This free, feature-rich toolbar gives instant access to live television around the globe, although connections aren’t always reliable. Live TV toolbar offers a customizable interface with standard buttons for quick weather forecasts, a pop-up blocker, tracks clearing, e-mail (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and POP3 accounts), videos and, oh yeah, TV stations. TV stations can be selected by category (sports, news, kids, shopping) or by country, though the number of stations available varies by country. When it came to actually viewing television stations, more often than not, the toolbar ran into unavailable streams or simply failed to connect. In contrast, buttons for top videos on Google Video, Metacafe, and YouTube are a boon and open without any problems. We were able to listen to several radio stations and add others to the toolbar list. Buttons that you don’t need can easily be removed and you can even add others to quickly launch other programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and MSN Messenger. Alas, this toolbar add-on for Internet Explorer is only dependable when using typical features found in similar applications, so users may want to look further for a more operative toolbar.