OT Net Video on Ur TV Status? Roku, WDTV, Boxee &?

will-3 wrote on 12/8/2010, 1:03 PM
1 - What is the status of being able to watch Internet Video on your TV Set?

2 - Who are making special devices other than...
a. Roku
b. WDTV (Western Digital TV Live)
c. Boxee (Boxee Box)
d. Apple TV
e. Who else?

3 - Some TV's are coming with built in electronics to view Net Video... right?

4 - Who's "system" are they using? Any of the above mentioned?

5 - The BIG Question is what video can you get on the net? I understand that YouTube is not available on all devices... true? If so which devices have You Tube permission?

6 - Is Google about to introduce Google TV? Does that require you to connect your computer to your TV or is there a special box for Google TV?

7 - Do any of the special boxes let you just surf anywhere on the Net? My last check point seemed to be that they made such claims but were actually still limited to some degree... true?

8 - Roku will allow selected content providers to establish their own channel... are any of the others doing the same?

9 - This probably isn't a broad based solution but why can't folks who want to just hookup an old computer to their new HDTV?

10 - I think the limiting factor in most of the boxes I've looked at is some will play certain internet video & television channels while others will play a different set of internet video & television channels... with maybe some overlap. Would you all agree that before this can become widely accepted the 'viewers' must be able to view any video on the net?

11 - Any TV's with built in net viewing electronics allow you to go anywhere on the net...? If so which one? If not which provides the most options?

Thanks for any comments and updates on the status of all this.




Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 12/8/2010, 3:19 PM
My recommendation: HTPC, a.k.a. a Home Theater Personal Computer.

Take your PC and connected it to your TV set. Get an IR keyboard and mouse, and you can watch ANYTHING, plus surf the net, etc.

The stuff built into the TV sets is pathetic. Roku, Apple TV, etc. are very good, but the content available is narrow compared to what you can get on your PC.

I can go on, but the best bet is to spend a few hours over at the AVS Forums. They have an entire section devoted to this.

I have seen quite a few of these devices, like Roku, and even had an entrepreneur bring one here to demonstrate. Initially they are very intriguing, but they stop short of being compelling because of the limitations. By contrast, an HTPC can do anything you like with any form of disc, thumbdrive, Internet stream, etc.
Laurence wrote on 12/8/2010, 5:00 PM
The Roku does Youtube and Vimeo, but it isn't immediately obvious that it does Youtube. Adding Youtube is easy and once it's set it's easy to access it in the future. Youtube support is really good. You can call up your favorites, do searches etc.

Here are the official Roku channels:

http://www.roku.com/roku-channel-store#1

The Roku has the obvious channels that you see when you click the "add channel" option, but then it has private channels that are accessed by entering codes. Here are some of the private channel options:

http://www.thenowhereman.com/roku/
http://www.roku-channels.com/

Being a musician I added SoundCloud and MP3Tunes.com so I can play back my own music.

I also added the Onion News which I find to be less of a parody than Fox.

Definitely the Roku is my favorite of all the options. Really inexpensive. The XDS does 1080p, surround sound and plays back mp4s off a USB port. I have three Rokus: one in the bedroom, one in the family room, and one that I use with a portable TV.
srode wrote on 12/8/2010, 6:03 PM
We just got an LG Bluray player - BD570 which streams video from a computer, or from the web using a built in wireless adapater through our Home network. Netflix, You Tube and several other services are available through it and there are software upgrades that can be downloaded which presumably will expand streaming services in the future. Works very nicely and took about 10 minutes to hook up after reading the manual - that includes hard connections, setting up the wireless including passkey for WPA2, and getting Netflix going. Can't believe I paid over $300 for our other bluray player just 2 years ago and this was less than half that on the black Friday weekend. I watched a couple videos I put together using Vegas that are in my video folder on the computer and they played very smooth with no issue, as has everything I've watched on it. Music and pictures can be streamed too.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/8/2010, 6:16 PM
Beware of the Playon software media server that is advertised to work with most of these devices.

It's big attraction is that it streams Hulu, in addition to a zillion other internet media sites. I downloaded the trial version, and was ready to purchase it as my holiday gift to myself because it picked up so much content.

But almost right away I began to notice some very strange behavior, the likes I had never seen on my secure, stable home network.
-- Network dropouts
-- Sustained 60-70% CPU load, memory leak
-- Network being slammed every few seconds at full dsl bandwidth, resulting in many GB of traffic over a short time (big clue).

Reading some "theories" on their website, I double checked to make sure UPnP was disabled, and I was not using Playon's experimental "My Media."

After three days of troubleshooting, and getting patronizing responses from their tech support, I decided to start Playon again with Wireshark running (it's a packet sniffer).

Well, the cause of the problem became apparent immediately. In addition to the media streaming traffic, I was being subjected to nonstop ACK floods over TCP and HTML anytime the Playon server was connected to the internet. Another name for these are Denial of Service attacks. The inundation stopped only when the Playon Media Server was turned off. The attack was coming from TWTelecom.net"148078","286.980583","206.169.246.197","192.168.1.101","HTTP","Continuation or non-HTTP traffic"
After reporting this security hole in their software (big enough to drive a truck through), the one line response from Playon was that they were not affiliated with the servers that were mounting DOS attacks against my home network. Well duhh!!

At that point I wished them well, uninstalled the software, and did a system rollback to last week.

If the attractive "features" of this software appeal to others, as they did to me, be forewarned that it may come with the "gift that keeps on giving" (like a case of crabs).

End of rant.