More and more people are starting to move away from cable and use their computers and portable devices as means of watching television. I for one, have chosen to “cut the cord”, so to speak, and have never looked back. There are so many other cheaper alternatives out there for getting the information that I want and not having to pay as much as I would with cable.
Frequency is one of those web apps that can help fill the void of depending on cable all the time. Will it completely help me get away from cable? The short answer is no; but if you are looking for other ways to watch your media, it definitely does a good job in that area. Let me show you around to help you to see what I mean.
Find Channels to Watch
The first thing you are going to want to do is to find videos that you want to watch. There are a few ways that you can do this. You can browse the site for a variety of different channels, topics, and people. There is a vast library of different channels in which most of the major topics are covered, news, sports, health, business, etc. I didn’t have any trouble finding material that I wanted to watch and was pretty impressed with the library of videos they had. Once you find a channel that you like you can add it to your collection.
Adding channels to your library
The second way you can find videos is to search for a specific website, topic, or person. Once you enter your search query, you will see all of the channels, topics, and people that fit it. Instead of navigating my way through the channels, I found that this was a faster way to find what I was looking for.
Results for a search
Smart Channels, RSS, and Social Channels
One thing I noticed as I started to follow different channels was that I had subscribed to a lot of channels and many of them were of similar topic. Frequency thought about this and came up with what they call Smart Channels. A Smart Channel is a group of channels that you can put together into one. So, for example, I found that I was subscribing to a lot of tech sites, so I made a Smart Channel for all of them, so now all the videos from those sites are in one channel. I also did the same with a news channel so I could go to one place to watch all the news that I wanted to keep up with. According to Frequency, you can only have up to 12 channels in one Smart Channel, and I found this to be more than enough.
Smart Channel
Another way to add channels, which I actually found quite useful, was to add my RSS feeds as a channel. All I have to do is add the feed name and url and Frequency will pull in all the videos from that particular RSS. I liked this feature because there were some web sites that I follow that are not on Frequency and so this was an easy way to get those videos. To go along with that, if there are videos that you want to watch that are not on Frequency, you can also just copy and paste the url to the video and it will be imported over. For example, I wanted to watch an episode of The Office later, so I went over to NBC, copied the link for the show and put it in Frequency; within seconds, I was now able to watch it there.
Adding an RSS Feed
Lastly, you can also connect your social networks to Frequency so that it pulls in your videos from those sites. As of right now you can get video from Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Vimeo and you can probably get video from other social sites using one of the methods I talked about above.
Other Features
There are a few other features that are worth mentioning here. First, it seems like no application now days isn’t complete without some kind of social sharing and Frequency has made sure to give you the chance to let the world know about your videos. They have provided you with a variety of ways to share the video you are watching by being able to tweet it, Like it, +1 it, as well as email it out to people. You are also given a link for the video that can be shared out to people.
Social Sharing Features
Frequency also has a “Watch Later” feature, where if you don’t have time to watch a video now, you can click on the “Watch Later” button and it will put that video in a separate folder for you. This “Watch Later” folder basically acts as its own channel. One last feature that is worth mentioning, that has a very similar concept is the “Favorited” button. If you click on it, it will put that video into its own “Favorited” file that acts like a channel also.
Final Thoughts
Frequency is very well done. It is very easy to navigate and very simple to add the videos that I want. I definitely like that I can get videos that are not necessarily in the Frequency library, which makes me want to use the web app more.
Like I had mentioned earlier, no, this will not replace your cable, but it can definitely help ease the transition. With anything, cutting the cable isn’t easy and you do lose some of the perks, but web apps like Frequency are starting to point people away from the tv and onto their computer.