Special delivery
A long time ago TV came into our homes via three large networks (four if you include PBS), the news aired at dinnertime and all was well. Then there was cable television with 50 or more channels all brought to your TV via a long piece of coaxial cable.
These days, television is digital and widescreen, and you don’t even have to get programming via cable or satellite or over the air. Now the Internet is a source for TV.
“We’re at the beginning of a new renaissance in TV,” said Steve Rubel, vice president of media consulting group Edelman Digital. “I’ve never been more excited about television as a platform, and I think we’re going to be seeing some big revolutions both in delivery of HD (high definition) content and as a vehicle for niche media.”
The big challenge becomes getting the movies or pictures from where they’re stored – a computer hard drive or some other device – to where you’ll watch them, either on your big-screen HDTV in a living room or the portable screen in your pocket.
Because this is a new system of delivery, there’s a need for devices known as multimedia consoles that help you do just that. These devices include the Xbox 360, Media Center PC and the Apple TV.
Xbox 360
Instead of a trip to the video store, you can use the Xbox 360 to download and watch a rented or purchased movie on your TV.
Introduced primarily as a gaming system, the Xbox 360 (starting at $279.99) has a second life as a tool for renting movies or buying TV shows.
The requirements are an Xbox Live Gold account ($49.99 a year) and an Xbox 360 unit that comes with its own hard drive. Most downloaded movies and TV shows come in both HD (720p) and standard definition.
Movies and shows are paid for with MS points, which you can buy online or as gift cards at your local store. A new-release movie in HD will rent for about $6 or in standard definition for about $4. Television shows can be bought for about $3 in HD and $2 for standard.
You may think movies offered via Xbox would appeal only to males in their 20s, but that’s not the case. You can find family movies such as “Meet the Robinsons” from Walt Disney Pictures, for instance. Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, MGM, Sundance, Warner Brothers and Miramax Films also provide movies for rental on the Xbox 360.
You have up to two weeks to start watching your movie. Once you hit play, the clock is ticking on a 24-hour viewing window. After that, the movies are not viewable.
The Xbox TV fare is also varied, ranging from recent hits like “Desperate Housewives” and “CSI” to TV classics like “Have Gun – Will Travel” and “The Jetsons.”
Purchased television shows don’t expire. If you delete a purchased movie or show, you can simply re-download.
Windows Vista Media Center
The next solution, also from Microsoft, is Windows Media Center. It’s a combination of software on a computer designed to gather and organize movies and other fare. It’s already installed on many PCs though people may not know it. The Xbox system has just one source for movies and TV shows. The advantage of media centers in general is a large range of sources for movies and entertainment.
Several sites now provide over-the-Web content expressly for the broadband-to-TV market. They include Movielink.com, Vongo, CinemaNow and Amazon’s Unbox ( www.unbox.com).
Amazon has developed the concept of the “digital locker,” which lets you store your purchased movies and TV shows on the Internet, to download when you need them to the device you have at the time. Right now, TiVo and Windows Media Center are the only systems that are supported for that service.
You can also record TV shows with WMC if your PC has a TV tuner. If you are going to do a lot of recording of HD TV, you’ll need a large-capacity hard drive.
Windows Media Center comes with a robust programming guide that can be customized for your channel lineup, regardless if get your TV over the air, cable or satellite. Also, unlike TiVo, there is no cost for the guide.
Windows Media Center also offers a menu that it calls “Internet TV.” There you can find full-length concerts, movie trailers, MSNBC news clips and FOX Sports clips.
When it comes to video, the quality is dependent on speed of your Internet connection and how the video source was prepared. In general, movie trailers and the full-length concerts tend to be high quality, while the news and sports clips are more like VHS-tape quality.
Speaking of sports, due to Microsoft’s partnership with Fox Sports, Media Center lets you track player stats for MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. It also lets you get game previews, live scores, and game recaps. All of this, of course, appeals to fans of fantasy sports leagues.
If consumers worry because their computer and TV are in separate rooms, the solution provided by Microsoft and partners is an extender for Windows Media Center.
Until recently, only the Xbox 360 could act as an extender, but now companies such as Linksys, D-link, HP and Samsung are shipping or will soon ship TVs enabled to work with a variety of extenders.
For instance, Linksys makes a DMA2100 extender, which can attach to a standard or HDTV, offers dual-band 802.11n wireless and Gigabit Ethernet wired connectivity. It has an estimated price of $300.
These extenders look like and act the same as the Media Center software on the computer. But they are not stand-alone devices; you need to have your PC turned on for the extender to work.
Chad McKinney, a product buyer at Spokane’s Huppins/OneCall, said he’s seeing interest among digital photographers for extenders. “Extenders are a great way to share your digital photos and movies on your flat screen HDTV,” McKinney said.
Apple TV
Microsoft is not the only company trying to place a media device in the digital living room. Apple recently upgraded its Apple TV product. (The 40 GB hard version of the Apple TV is priced at $229.)
In effect, the Apple TV is like an iPod connected to your big screen TV screen.
With an iTunes account, Apple TV lets you can rent standard-definition movies with stereo sound or high-definition movies (720-progressive) with Dolby surround sound.
The cost is $2.99 for library titles, $3.99 for new releases. Add $1 if you want to get it in HD.
Apple TV does not require a computer; in fact, you can only rent and watch HD movies via the AppleTV unit. Standard definition movies can be rented and played back on your computer or through the Apple TV unit.
Standard-def movie rentals can also be played on the latest generation of iPods such as the iTouch, iPhone and 3G iPod Nano. (Apple sells cables to connect your iPod to your TV via component or composite plugs. These cables retail for $49.)
Rented movies must be viewed within 30 days of purchase. Once you hit play, you have 24 hours to watch.
You can buy movies in SD and HD via the iTunes store as well, and buy TV shows at $1.99 an episode.
The studios offering movies for Apple TV are Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, Lionsgate and Paramount Pictures.
Apple TV also lets you view YouTube videos, listen to your iTunes music, and watch or listen to your favorite podcasts. Podcasts, such as RocketBoom and the Hubble Telescope Podcast, are starting to become available in 720p HD format, which leverages the power of the Apple TV when hooked up to a flat screen TV.
You also can view your collection of online photos (from a site like Flickr) on your flat screen with AppleTV. You can even set the slide show to music from your iTunes library.
Convenience vs. quality
All these systems and services have parental controls to keep children from viewing videos considered too mature for them.
There is also the old convenience-vs.-quality battle to think about when considering buying hardware for Web entertainment. Though these devices offer the ability to rent movies in HD, it is in the 720-progressive format with 5.1 surround sound.
A Blu-ray disc, now the standard for HD movie quality, can play at 1080p with 7.1 surround sound. To enjoy the higher Blu-ray quality, you’ll need a more expensive TV.
The new media devices, despite the varying options, ultimately mean one thing: more convenience and the freedom from being bound solely to one’s cable, broadcast or satellite service.
Roy Price, the director of digital media for Amazon, has seen the future and it’s around us today, he said, adding, “It is now a world where you don’t have to be anywhere. Just click some buttons and you have the show you want.”