My TV - Four Ways to Take it With Me


As a companion piece to my other article about streaming audio around the house, I am ready to help those once again following in my digital footsteps. This time we are talking about how to watch your favorite television shows wherever you want, but more specifically, away from the house.

Not IN the House...

Let's be clear about what we are not talking about. First, there are already a number of viable options for pushing the TV signal itself to another room inside your house. Of course your cable or satellite provider will be happy to charge you for another set-top box to bring the signal to a second TV for example. And, third-party products from Microsoft, Prismiq, and Sony can piggy back on your home network to help deliver the content to another location.

But all these solutions are limited to the home and that is simply not cool enough for you and me, right? Also, we are ruling out simply watching TV at a friend's house or a bar. And, while it is somewhat compelling, we are not including the ability to stream the limited amount of content available on the Internet from your favorite web site. Because that is not YOUR TV.

What we want is to watch our favorite TV programs WHEN we want and WHERE we want. Our own personal channel that caters directly to us! So how do we do that?

Picking Up Where TiVo Left Off

Now I am probably one of the biggest TiVo fans on the planet and I can appreciate more than anyone how they helped break the prevalent mindset that the networks were in charge of what we watched. But the problem is that they didn't go far enough - because they stopped with time-shifting. TiVo opened up our eyes to the ability of watching what I want WHEN I want.

BTW, if you do not already own a Digital Video Recorder (DVR), then I suggest you put down everything right now and run to the store and buy one - they are a delight!

Well with the TiVo revolution came plenty of copycats as well as some great new innovations. Let's start with a simple variation.

Snapstream Media's Beyond TV

I have been a customer of Snapstream since the early days and continue to be impressed with this do-it-yourself DVR solution. These days, it is not as tricky as it used to be to turn a PC into a homemade TiVo but the real winning feature of the Beyond TV solution is its ability to stream recorded content over the Internet. Its not necessarily touted as a primary benefit of their software but by simply punching a hole in your firewall, you can access the Beyond TV machine from anywhere over the net. Once you do, you will be able to browse your entire video library and, providing you have the correct codecs installed on the target machine, enjoy all your TV shows from afar.

A couple of quick clarification points. Streaming content from one machine to another relies on available bandwidth, where the more is certainly the merrier. To have any streaming-from-home solution work well, you need to step up to a broadband connection. And be sure you understand the distinction between upstream and downstream speeds. Most broadband offerings emphasize the downstream (to the home) speed since that is the primary direction of the majority of your traffic. However, when you are streaming video out of the house you may bump against a much thinner "pipe". Video signals are a huge bandwidth hog so keep that in mind.

The verdict here? Well, Snapstream keeps improving this product and for the cost of the software, you really can't beat it. Beyond TV was one of the first and is still one of the best streaming options available.

TiVo To Go

Back to the pioneer, TiVo hasn't quite given up the fight despite having to now defend itself against every new DVR wannabe. They have recently raised the bar though by creating a new option called TiVoToGo which, with the help of additional desktop software (PC only) will pull pre-recorded material from the Series 2 TiVo onto a computer to be viewed later.

All the TiVo-originated content is password-protected and can only be viewed from that machine, unless you burn it to a blank DVD in which case you should have no problem playing it anywhere. Unlike streaming options however, these transfers need to be coordinated well before you plan to watch them so overnight, batch-style jobs will become a new nocturnal activity.

Now you could argue that a poor man's version of this idea has been built into the TiVo since day one. The "Save to VCR" option certainly surprised me when I plugged my first TiVo in five years ago and it sounded like a great feature. But there was the problem of further quality loss in moving to VHS tape and the need to babysit the VCR since TiVo won't let you schedule more than one "save" at a time. TiVoToGo is certainly an improvement on that old-school approach, and if you have the disk space on a media-friendly laptop (one with a "video out" port for example), it is a terrific option - provided you own a TiVo of course.

Portable Video Players (PVPs)

Now, those who know me well will tell you that I am a HUGE fan of the portable video player. I was an early Archos AV300 user years back and now have my grimy meat hooks all over Sony's new PSP. This is the way of the future - if you thought people got jazzed about the iPod, then you haven't seen anything yet. But don't get me started...

In a nutshell, these devices are a hard disk with a good display that can store hours and hours of video programming that originate from a variety of sources. For example, I have had success getting original video content onto my PVPs (e.g. home movies) as well as pre-recorded shows from my DVR (using same, real-time "Save to VCR" option) and even content downloaded from the Internet. In some cases, I had to jump through many a conversion hoop to get the content to play well on the PVP but once you get the right configurations, it turns into a digital assembly line. For example, I could come home from work, plug in the power charger, hook up the video input cable(s) and by the next morning have another full day's worth of programming available. And you should see the envious looks I get on the train from all those white headphone types.

PVPs have some advantages over laptops obviously in that they are certainly cheaper and more portable. These days you can get a good sized hard drive (up to 100GB now) and a respectable screen for viewing the shows for around $600. The vendors have already recognized how much more work they have to do to simplify the capture/transfer of content and are making great strides.

It's probably too early to pick an obvious leader but Archos, Sony, and a number of (Microsoft) Windows Media-compatible players are sure making for an interesting race.

Sling Media's Slingbox

This last option is a little different than the others and promises to make a big splash in the coming months. The Slingbox is a new piece of hardware that piggybacks onto an existing video component like your set-top box, your DVR or even your DVD player. Not quite as imposing as a dedicated computer (as with the Snapstream solution), the smaller Slingbox is designed to solve two basic problems associated with getting access to your shows from far away.

The first is how to control the video source device. Using their own software installed on your PC, you use a virtual remote on the screen to send the corresponding IR signals to your device at home through the Slingbox. This makes it easy, for example, to execute the TiVo "menu" command from your laptop just as if you were holding the remote control in the same room.

The second and more challenging problem is how to make the streaming content look as good as possible. We talked about the issue of bandwidth above and this is where Sling Media should shine. They have gone through great pains to build a product that optimizes the stream based on the available bandwidth which means it should be able to accommodate a wide range of streaming scenarios. The simple scenario is catching up on a TiVo-ed show during your lunch break where the network speeds are high all around. The future scenario which is more compelling to me, is tapping into the Slingbox from my smartphone while I am waiting for the doctor, commuting back and forth to work, or in line at the DMV.

Sling Media will ship their product in the next few months and will likely make a big splash. The one-time cost of a Slingbox (no subscriptions necessary) should make it easy to justify the purchase, especially as people make the next mental leap to what Sling calls "placeshifting".

In Summary

There you have it; there is really no excuse for leaving your TV shows at home. When you think about it, it's really a crime that you pay $30-$100/month for programming which you cannot enjoy once you leave the house. Thankfully, we are getting closer to the days when we will laugh at how silly that concept was. And our children will look at us with bewilderment when we tell them that we used to have to sit around the TV in the SAME room to watch 24. 'Course by that time, the show will have escalated to 72 and Jack will no doubt be pulling Guinness-level feats of courage and delivering his own brand of justice over a three-day weekend!

 

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