Watch a selection of live TV channels on your Android

Wouldn’t it be great if we could view all our favourite TV channels in one app and quickly switch between them? Well, TVCatchup already offers this for several free-to-air UK channels – although it has recently lost some.

So what advantages can the rival TVPlayer provide? Well, the range of channels isn’t that different, although it does add a few extra music and Asian ones while dropping the likes of QVC; ten others (mainly music) were marked as ‘coming soon’.

The slick portrait-mode UI features a ‘packs’ screen that quickly enables you to list channels for different genres, such as music, kids and news. In the main channels view, you can only see what’s currently showing on each one – a shame you can’t swipe right to see what’s up next, rather than having to tap.

Tapping a show’s preview picture starts it playing in landscape mode. Picture quality is good, there’s a handy mute button and you can even bring up an on-screen view of what’s on other channels – very convenient.