TVAnts on Ubuntu

TVAnts is a peer to peer program that allows you to share live streams instead of files.
Although these streams can contain any sort of media they are mostly used for watching live football matches and other events on PCs.


TVAnts pages:

www.tvants-ppstream.com
Official TVAnts page is written in chinese: tvants.com


Installing TVAnts:

Download TVAnts setup program: ( I have obtained this address from official TVAnts page.)
$wget http://88.191.73.231/~cali/tvants/TvantsSetup.exe

We need wine to run TVAnts setup program because it is a microsoft windows executable:
$sudo aptitude install wine       # if you have not already installed wine program.
$wine "TvantsSetup.exe"

It will install itself, and then we will be able to exec the program:
$wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/TVAnts/Tvants.exe
or
$wine 'C:\Program Files\TVAnts\Tvants.exe'


Watching TV:

You will need at least one server at server tab.
e.g: list.tvants.com

At search tab you will be able to search for hundreds of channels.
Select some and add them to channel tab.

NOTE: Do not worry about error messages related to windows media player, we will use mplayer.

You can watch the channel you have selected runing in the console:
$mplayer -framedrop mms://localhost:16900/1
Last "1" means first channel from your selected channels list.
NOTE: Whenever you add a new channel this number increases in one, even if you delete previous unused channels.


NOTE: TVAnts is a peer to peer system so you should open 16800 port on your box to share streams you are watching with other users.

NOTE: You can also watch the tv streams using vlc instead of mplayer.