[David Strom's Web Informant] 4 December 2009: A mixed experience getting free TV online

[David Strom]

Web Informant, 14 December 2009: A mixed experience getting free TV online

Since most of the TV shows are on what appears to be a three-month
vacation, now might be a good time to seek Internet alternatives. I
got the idea from a story last week in the New York Times about how
one of its reporters has gone completely cold-turkey on their cable TV
consumption.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10basics.html?em

It got me thinking about two guys that I know in their 20s that have
taken completely different approaches to their digital entertainment
consumption. Their approaches illustrate what we have to do to get our
TV these days.

J. is single and a DirecTV subscriber, at $95 a month. C. is engaged
but doesn't pay for his TV programming. Like the NYT reporter, he uses
his computer to send video to his TV from various Internet sources,
using a HDMI to DVI cable. Both are relatively computer savvy guys.
Both bought their TVs earlier this spring – this is C.'s first TV
since his college days, and did so because he wanted to make it easier
for him and his girl friend to watch shows both separately and
together. J. has a second TV in his bedroom, and a bigger plasma
display in his living room. Both guys have 10 MB cable connections for
their Internet service.

C. watches a combination of shows from various Web video sites, such
as Hulu and Boxee and some on air TV too. He works in the financial
industry, where he has Bloomberg TV streaming to his desktop PC as
part of his job. J. works in sales and has some downtime during the
work day, where he also watches TV on his PC, but only those Web
stations that aren't blocked by his employer. SpikeTV is his favorite.
 C. likes the Netflix streaming option, J. hates it – "if I wanted to
watch ten-year old movies, I would just find them for free online."

J. is a big computer gamer and has an Xbox and connects other gaming
consoles when his friends bring them by. "The Xbox was difficult to
setup to find my digital media," he told me, much worse the
Playstation 3, which easily found and played the majority of his video
files that he has downloaded to his PC. It is ironic that a Microsoft
gaming console connecting to a Microsoft Windows PC is more difficult
to configure than a Sony console connecting to a Windows PC. C. runs
on a Mac.

Curiously, the two guys also differ on how they watch movies. J.
hasn't been in a movie theater since 1996, and is proud about that
record. Instead, he has downloaded hundreds of movies illegally from a
file sharing service, and makes copies of the videos for all of his
friends. C. goes to the theaters once every two months but says that
it can get expensive, especially at big-city ticket prices.

C. has about 30 GB of music on his PC, most of it illegally
downloaded. His last CD was purchased from a store about nine years
ago. J. bought his last CD in 1996., and also has several gigabytes of
stolen music on his computer. "There is no point in downloading a clip
from a legal site," he told me. "In the time it would take me to
listen to the commercial and the first 15 or so seconds, I can find
the entire MP3 song online and have it on my hard drive."

So what can we learn from these two guys? First, going completely
free-TV isn't easy. Some shows aren't readily available on the
Internet. For example, HGTV has exactly 12 shows on Hulu at the
moment, which is a very poor sample. Yes, you can find some old shows
(C.'s current fave is the vintage Adam 12 series), but your mileage
may vary. Yes, they are adding shows all the time, and in some cases
you can find the shows on the networks' own Web sites. I watched a few
episodes of FlashFoward on ABC.com, but I had to watch short
commercials and click on a button to continue playing the show when
the commercials were done.

Second, the system isn't spousal friendly, at least not for my
generation. When I checked to see about my wife's favorite local TV
station, they didn't have any stream that I could watch from their Web
site. HGTV's Web site is also miserable, making finding a show more of
an Easter Egg hunt, and I mean that not in any good way. I know
free-TV isn't ready for my wife yet. C.'s fiancée is happy with their
free-TV setup, but it has taken her a while to get used to the
arrangement.

Third, while the TV producers and networks are trying mightily to
avoid another Napsterization of video, they have yet to succeed. They
have experimented with copy protection and that seems to be on the
wane, and are now concentrated on streaming. Some episodes are
available for sale on iTunes.

One thing that is clear is that broadcast networks "must-see TV" is so
over. Both guys don't watch much in the way of sports or news
programming. Both watch shows on their schedule, not the networks'.

Finally, the number of add-on devices and gotchas is still mind
numbing if you want to deal with the Internet channel. For ABC's
shows, you need to download a player and not use Safari. Netflix has
the best and widest streaming support but you'll need a computer, a
supported Blu-Ray DVD player, Xbox or PS3, or their Roku device. Some
current shows don't show up for days or weeks online. Others only have
excerpted clips.

Speaking of Roku, I bought mine a month ago and unlike J., am happy
with the Netflix choice of those older movies, especially the ones
that have been upconverted to HD status. There is little interruption
in the video streams, even with a Wifi connection to my network. And
Roku continues to add other services, such as Pandora roll-your-own
music channels, to make it easier to get content to my living room.

We certainly have come far with free TV -- it wasn't all that long ago
that we were using videotapes and buying DVDs, both things that seem
so quaint now. Streaming video gets better and better as our Internet
pipes improve.

But we still have a long way to go before the Internet can replace the
cable DVR. Certainly, Hulu is worth taking a look at and seeing if you
can find your favorites and queue them up to watch on your computer.
And as Netbooks and used Mac Minis are around $300, there isn't much
friction in having one of them connected to one of your TV outputs.
The big remaining issue is having to deal with the various software
pieces to try to play the videos.