I’d previously written a post about what the NetFlix streaming service was and how it worked (you can read that post here).  When I’d written that post you could only watch NetFlix video streams on a computer.  Now there are so many different ways to stream that content that I thought I'd take a minute to list the different ways that I watch NetFlix right in my living room right now.  This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but just an example of how pervasive this ability to stream movies and TV shows has become.  Here, then, in no particular order, are the ways that I can watch NetFlix in my own living room]]> Just a few short years ago NetFlix was only in the DVD rental business.  Things have changed during those years, though, and Netflix members can now stream content across the internet using just about every device in their living room instead of waiting for those shiny disks to show up in their mailbox.

I’d previously written a post about what the NetFlix streaming service was and how it worked (you can read that post here).  When I’d written that post you could only watch NetFlix video streams on a computer.  Now there are so many different ways to stream that content that I thought I’d take a minute to list the different ways that I watch NetFlix right in my living room right now.  This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but just an example of how pervasive this ability to stream movies and TV shows has become.  Here, then, in no particular order, are the ways that I can watch NetFlix in my own living room.

Roku Digital Video Player

The Roku Digital Video Player is a small box which hooks up to your TV to access the NetFlix library over the internet.  When it was first released its sole purpose was to stream NetFlix video but the folks at Roku have been busy and there are now a slew of additional content sources for the Roku.  (I’ll be writing a post on those new channels soon.)

For a lot more information on the Roku Digital Video Player you can read my original post here.

Playstation 3

You have two options when it comes to watching NetFlix content using a PS3.  The first (and simplest) is to request a disk from NetFlix which will connect your PS3 to your NetFlix account.  For now, at least, that disc has to be in the PS3 to stream the content but a future firmware update is supposed to eliminate that requirement and put a link to NetFlix right on the XMB.

You can also use the PS3’s UPnP capabilities to connect to a PlayOn server and access your NetFlix content that way.  Like the Roku box, using PlayOn gives you other content options in addition to the NetFlix streams.  For a more detailed look at PlayOn please see my previous post here.

Windows Media Center

If you’re running Windows Vista (Home Premium or Ultimate editions) or Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions) you have access to your NetFlix streams through the NetFlix tile under the Movies option.

XBox 360

Like the Playstation 3, the XBox 360 can access the NetFlix streaming service directly (through its dashboard) and indirectly (using PlayOn).  Unlike the PS3, though, the NetFlix access  is built right into the dashboard.  Also unlike the PS3, unfortunately, you have to have a Microsoft Live Gold membership to be able to use that NetFlix capability.

The XBox 360 can also act as a UPnP client and can access UPnP servers such as PlayOn.  If you have an XBox 360 but you aren’t paying for a Live Gold membership this may a way to get to your NetFlix content.

The XBox 360 has one additional way to get to those NetFlix streams.  All XBox 360s can act as Media Center extenders and can act as a front-end to any computer in your house which is running one of the newer flavors of Media Center (see above).    While you can use this Media Center Extender capability to access most of the features of Media Center you can’t use it to access the NetFlix tile.

As always, there are ways to get around that particular problem.  There are two extensions for Media Center which extend NetFlix access to a Media Center Extender:  vmcNetFlix (read my post on that here) and vmcPlayIt.

Computer Hooked to TV

If you have a laptop or other PC you may also be able to connect those computers directly to your TV.  Newer televisions make it much easier to connect a computer and, even better, many newer computers include an HDMI output so that your television sees your computer in the same way that it sees your DVD player or your cable box – as just another video source.

Other Options

That a pretty extensive list of ways to get that NetFlix content onto your television and that list only includes the ways that I personally have access to.  The NetFlix website lists a bunch of additional hardware which has its viewing software already loaded, including televisions (LG, Sony, and Vizio), Blu-Ray players (Insignia, LG, Samsung, and Sony), and TiVo.  Even Nintendo has announced that it’s Wii video game system will have NetFlix streaming capabilities by the end of the year.

The Future is Streaming

It’s pretty apparent that NetFlix sees streaming as its future and is trying to get its streaming software onto as many different types of hardware as possible.  TV’s, video game consoles, TiVo’s – pretty much whatever is connected to your television can, or soon will be able to, stream NetFlix content.  Considering the strides that they’ve made towards that end in just the last few years I don’t doubt that they’ll succeed.

You may have heard of MythTV, the free TiVo-like application that can handle just about all of your multimedia needs. It can record and play back TV shows, including HDTV programming. It can be used to view your pictures, your weather forecast, and your favorite RSS feeds. It can rip and play back your music CD's and your DVD's. It can even display the list of movies you have in your NetFlix queue.

And it only runs on Linux.

So what if you're a Windows user who wants to find out what MythTV is all about? Up until recently your couldn't, but now you can. Here's how.

How many devices do you have in your house that are capable of displaying high-definition content but have no way of getting high-definition content? If you have an HD television you can use your TV's tuner (or external cable/satellite box) to tune the HD signal. But what if you also have a computer? Or two? Or three? Those devices are probably also capable of displaying HD content but have no easy way of actually receiving HD content. So how do you get that HD content to each of them without having to buy a separate HDTV tuner card for each PC?]]>

Watch HDTV on your computers, not just on your TV

How many devices do you have in your house that are capable of displaying high-definition content but have no way of getting high-definition content? If you have an HD television you can use your TV’s tuner (or external cable/satellite box) to tune the HD signal. But what if you also have a computer? Or two? Or three? Those devices are probably also capable of displaying HD content but have no easy way of actually receiving HD content. So how do you get that HD content to each of them without having to buy a separate HDTV tuner card for each PC?

Perhaps the easiest way to get HD content to multiple display devices is to use the HDHomeRun network-enabled tuner from Silicon Dust. This tiny little device (about the size of a VCR tape) contains not one but two HD tuners. The HDHR can accept input from two different sources (cable and an antenna, for instance) . It doesn’t connect to any display device directly — rather, it connects to your home network via an ethernet jack and streams the HD content to your display devices. As long as a display device can connect to your network and knows how to handle HD content you can watch HDTV on that device.

Here are just a few ways to do that:

VLC Player

One of the most popular (and powerful) pieces of software for displaying video in just about any format is the open-source VLC player from VideoLAN. The VLC software is available for Windows, Mac’s, and Linux and can handle just about any type of video you can throw at it (check out the compatibility matrix here). In fact, the software that Silicon Dust provides for use with the HDHomeRun assumes that you’ll be using the VLC player and will automatically call VLC to display the content when you want to watch a particular channel.

TSReader

Another popular piece of software is TSReader. This software is more specific in its focus than the VLC player in that it deals only with MPEG-2 Transport Streams. Fortunately, that’s exactly what the HDHR sends across the network. TSReader comes in a few different versions but the free “Lite” version will work just fine to display HD content from the HDHR.

MythTV, SageTV, BeyondTV, Windows Media Center

These are DVR applications that give you the TiVo-like capability of recording television shows, including those in HDTV (these applications provide many more features beyond that — weather, news, web browsing, picture viewing, music libraries, internet radio — you get the idea). Another thing they all have in common is that they all support (or soon will support) the HDHomeRun as an input source.

At the moment MythTV and SageTV are both officially supported. Support for Microsoft’s Windows Media Center is supposed to be available before the end of the year, and Beyond TV has unofficial support now with official support coming soon.

TVPlay

I have a network-enabled Roku HD1000 connected to my HDTV. One of the developers of software for the Roku has released the TVPlay application (still an alpha release) which allows me to watch live HDTV using the HDHR tuners just like I can using the tuner in my HD cable box. That’s very handy when the two tuners in my cable box are both busy recording.

Almost Endless Possibilities

Because the HDHR is on the network and not attached to a specific computer you can do things that would be otherwise impossible. Imagine being able to watch an HDTV program using VLC on your Windows PC using the HDHR’s first tuner while your Linux-based MythTV server in the basement is recording a different show on the HDHR’s second tuner. Two tuners not enough? No problem — you can add a second HDHR and have access to four HD tuners on your network. Add a third HDHR and you have 6 tuners.

In many respects having your HD tuners on your network is no different than having storage on your network. Using some sort of NAS makes disk storage a commodity which can be consumed by all of the devices on the network. The HDHR makes its HD tuners a commodity available to all of the devices on your network. The tuners, like the NAS disk space, are a consumable resource available to any device with the ability to use them.

Future Capabilities

The developers at Silicon Dust have released a set of API’s which can be used to interact with the HDHR. Any hardware which is capable of sending commands using TCP and receiving video as an MPEG-2 transport stream using UDP should be able run an application which can use the HDHR as a tuner. As more and more home theater component become network-enabled the list of devices capable of using the HDHR as an HD tuner should continue to grow.

The HDHR development community is quite active and rapidly growing. The response from the Silicon Dust developers is nothing short of amazing. The turn-around time between the first request for a new feature and the time it becomes available isn’t measured in years or months but in weeks or even days.

Reality Check

Don’t throw your cable box out yet! The HDHomeRun does not have a CableCard slot (and I’m assuming that it never will). That means that it can’t tune content that your cable or satellite company has encrypted, such as premium channels or HD versions of non-network channels (DiscoveryHD, for instance). I don’t think it’s going too far out onto a limb to predict that these companies aren’t interested in ever allowing their HD content from those non-network channels to be available to any device that has the means to record them without enforcing any type of copyright protection. (In fact I’m sure that they’d also encrypt the HD network channels if the FCC didn’t prevent them from doing so.)

The HDHR doesn’t have any analog tuners so it can handle only ATSC/QAM (digital) channels from OTA and unencrypted cable sources. For cable TV subscribers that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re limited to the HD network channels that are broadcast without encryption. My cable system, like many others, is simulcasting all of its analog content as digital channels. In fact, new subscribers in my cable system’s area get cable boxes that only contain digital tuners, just like the HDHR, and I’m sure that as we near the transition to all-digital broadcasts this will become more and more common. Because my cable provider simulcasts all of its programming the HDHR can tune many more channels than just the network HD offerings.

Final Thoughts

When I first heard about the HDHomeRun I thought it was a great concept and now that I’ve used it for a little while I can also say that it has been well-implemented. The idea of moving the HD tuners onto the network opens up many new configuration possibilities and gives you flexibility you couldn’t get otherwise. The price is right ($170 from 9thTee), especially considering that you get two HD tuners and you can use the HDHR to watch TV on any computer on your network without having to purchase HD tuners for each of those computers.

Do yourself a favor and check out the HDHomeRun. If you already receive HD programming it’s an easy way to make that programming available to more display devices than just your TV. If you don’t receive HD programming this might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for — just pick up an HDHR and an antenna and see what you’ve been missing.

Next Up

I’m working on an article that uses the flexibility of the HDHR and the power of virtual machines. Have you ever wanted to run MythTV on your Windows PC?

Stay tuned.

Edit: I’ve posted the article about how to run MythTV on a Windows PC.

You'll also find small devices that allow you to connect your external hard drive to your home network instead of connecting it directly to your computer. One of these devices is made by Linksys, and it goes by the official name of "NSLU2". It's more commonly known by its unofficial name: "The Slug". ]]>
Anyone who’s wandered the aisles of their friendly neighborhood big-box computer store has seen the shelves full of hard drives. These basically come in two flavors: internal hard drives, which get mounted inside of your computer, and external hard drives, which connect to your computer through a USB (or FireWire) cable.

You’ll also find small devices that allow you to connect your external hard drive to your home network instead of connecting it directly to your computer. One of these devices is made by Linksys, and it goes by the official name of “NSLU2″. It’s more commonly known by its unofficial name: “The Slug”.

The Slug is nothing more than a very small computer. It has an Intel processor, a little bit of memory (32MB), and it runs a flavor of Linux as its OS. Since it uses Linux the nice people at Linksys, in order to be compliant with Linux licensing, had to publish the modifications which they made to Linux in order to get it to run within the Slug, Once those modifications became publicly known it was only a matter of time before some enterprising hackers figured out how to extend the Slug beyond it originally intended purpose.

In a nutshell you can run all types of applications — web servers, FTP servers, SSH servers, music servers, web cams — through this little device which is just a hair bigger than a deck of cards. It’s not exactly a super-computer but it does OK for itself, especially considering that it’s original purpose was to mount a USB hard drive onto a home network. Oh, and it still serves that purpose, even while running all of the other applications.

If you have a small website or a low-volume SSH or FTP server that you run at home and you’d rather not have a server running all of the time consider installing and modifying a Slug to handle the job for you. It’ll set you back about $80 but you’ll be able to turn off your “real” server, not to mention having that external hard drive mounted on your network.

Just don’t pour salt onto it.

For a detailed look at how to hack the Slug and great step-by-step instructions on how to install Slug-compatible applications visit nslu2-linux.org.