TVCatchup is No More, as Android and iOS Service Goes Offline

• TVCatchup had its ups and downs, but it looks it has reached the end of the road this time.
• People are reporting that their smartphone TVCatchup apps have not been getting a stream for days now.
• No official response from the team, and the website is non-functional although still online.

The TVCatchup TV channel streaming service that has been around since 2007 is now offline, and all signs point to the scenario of staying down forever. Android and iOS users who were streaming the channel feeds from the respective TVCatchup apps report that they are getting an error right now, and the website is currently not working either. As we’re talking about a service that has had numerous legal problems during the past decade, and since the company that supported the project lately were dissolved about two months back, it is most probable that TVCatchup has had it.

TVCatchup was a service that was re-transmitting UK channels that people overseas were unable to enjoy, like the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and many more. Based on section 73 of the CDPA 1988 legislation, the company maintained that its operation was lawful, and covered its costs through advertising revenues. However, the various digital channels that were exploited in this process weren’t happy with the existence of TVCatchup and the fact that it was making money on their back, especially since the broadcasting was being done almost with no delay at all, so the competition with the source was practically direct.

In 2015, the service was ordered by the London’s High Court of Justice to proceed to liquidation, with subsequent appeals being dismissed. Failing to comply with the order, and hiding the fact from investors and loaners, the then director Bruce Pilley was disqualified from being a director in the company in the nine years that followed August 2017. In the same time, the European Court of Justice decided that the CDPA 1988 concerned purely cable infrastructure, and thus was not relevant to the TVCatchup operation. All these blows still didn’t affect the operation of the service, which oddly kept going.

That is until recently when the service went offline, and the millions of the Android and iOS users were left in disappointment. There is no official entity to provide any support for the apps’ service, and the website is barely online, with no links working. TVCatchup seems to have no team for their socials either, so there’s no response to the multiple user reports on Twitter either. Our take from the situation is that TVCatchup is over, and taking it thus far was a stretch anyway.

https://twitter.com/JLau8280/status/1122979390990757888

Were you using TVCatchup? Can you suggest any alternatives now that the service is down? Share them with us in the comments section down below, or on our socials, on Facebook and Twitter.