monkey!

March 22, 2008

The ultimate internet TV box

I’ve been playing around with various online tv providers lately. It’s a huge growing market, with Hulu being a huge player (But U.S only!) and Miro, a free, open source, available everywhere player that focuses on RSS feeds to fetch episodes across the net.

Despite all these advances in trying to push major and freelance broadcasting online, the mass market simply isn’t going for it. Sure, us geeks and early adopters can enjoy these services, but most people like good old fashioned T.V.

However, with all these services we have all the shows we usually watch, but whenever we want, with pause, rewind, forwarding, no commercials, social features, and much more. Why hasn’t there been a huge adoption of these services?

Simply put, people like to be able to sit down and channel surf. People do not want to watch their favourite shows on a 20″ LCD 3 feet away from them. They want a comfy couch, a remote, and a lot of variety. So how can we get this?

Bring something like Miro, to a set-top box

Miro is in my opinion the best idea so far when it comes to internet T.V. You subscribe to channels (Like you would in any regular cable package). It automatically downloads new episodes of the shows to your library and you can watch them whenever you want. To make it easy for you, it also by default deletes old episodes you’ve watched after 5 days (You have the option to keep them).

Now that you know a bit more about Miro, why not bring this to a set-top box? A small computer running, simply downloading and displaying the content. Miro is very good at doing this for all the various free video casts out there, but how do we get the major networks on it?

A monthly subscription service, like we pay now would work perfectly.

I would be more then happy to pay a set fee each month to get my favourite T.V shows. If Hulu.com can be free, why not do almost the same idea but on the T.V with a monthly fee? Let me create a package of T.V Shows, Series, or Channels. Let’s say I’m a big fan of House, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and Lost. Toss this together for me in a package, throwing in any extras and charge me a small monthly fee of say $5 for just those shows. Let’s say I want episodes from the Space Channel, History, and Discovery. Charge me $10 /month to have a good stream of episodes from these networks and I’d be more then happy to pay that.

All the shows would arrive onto my box, via a subscription like service. Create a model that makes it very easy for me to subscribe to more T.V Shows or channels.

Of course, the problem here lies that we have hundreds of channels, all from different corporations and a bunch of legal issues come in hand. This is why I am loving free internet T.V. (Mostly) quality content produced by people who simply love what they are doing. No legal issues, no fees, just entertainment.

We won’t get this in the near future.

Unfortunately, knowing all the restrictions and legal hassles involved in getting the major t.v broadcasting to other locales, I do not see something like this coming any time soon. In the mean time, I am building a small $200 P.C that will incorporate services like Miro to get free internet T.V on my television so I can watch shows on the comfort of my couch.