Availability

Back in early 2007 the ability to stream Netflix videos was a bit of a novelty and was only available using Internet Explorer while sitting in front of a PC.  Now, just a few short years later, that software is embedded in practically every television set, DVD or Blu-Ray player, and gaming console that you can buy, as well as in stand-alone products like the Roku.  I took a quick inventory of my own living room and came up with this list of the ways that I can watch Netflix streaming on my TV right now:

• Built into my Sharp TV
• Sony Playstation 3
• Microsoft XBox 360
• Nintendo Wii
• Roku video player

Not long ago I was limited to using Internet Explorer on my PC if I wanted to stream Netflix and now, 5 short years later, virtually every device hooked up to my TV (not to mention the TV itself) can do the job.  That’s amazing.

And Netflix is now also available on platforms which didn’t even exist or were just in their infancy 5 years ago: smartphones, tablet PCs, and “pads” all have the ability to stream Netflix video.  That’s even more amazing.

Content

Back in 2007 the Netflix streaming catalog was much smaller than it is today and mainly consisted of older-catalog movies and 20 or 30 year-old television shows.  Netflix has been hard at work over those intervening years trying to shore up its service and has added newer, even if still not the newest, content.

While they’ve added content on both the television series and theatrical release sides of the service they’ve had much more success in getting the streaming rights to more recent television shows added to the lineup than they have in getting the streaming rights to newer movies.   I’m sure that has to do with the fact that the big media companies simply didn’t anticipate the amount of interest that there would be in streaming videos through Netflix and, as a result, sold the streaming rights to those shows to Netflix at a price that Netflix could afford without raising the rates they were charging subscribers.

In fact, I think Netflix’s ability to get their software onto so many different devices so quickly has made the streaming portion of their business much more popular than it would have otherwise been and that fact has gotten the attention of those same media companies that originally sold the streaming rights to Netflix at a reasonable cost.  Once those original streaming contracts ended the content providers decided to charge Netflix much more for the rights to their content, to the point that Netflix was backed into a corner.

Pricing

In 2011 Netflix had a difficult decision to make.  If they wanted to keep the same amount of content available to their users they would have to pay the content owners much more, and if they paid the content owners much more they would be forced to raise their prices.  The alternative would be to not pay those higher prices for streaming rights and watch their streaming catalog get smaller and smaller.  Netflix chose the former.

In hindsight the decision was probably the correct one but they way that it was implemented was an unmitigated disaster.  Instead of simply explaining the situation and slowly raising their rates to handle the added expenses Netflix decided to suddenly double their rates and tell the users that they had simply been paying too little for their streaming service all along.

As if the price increase wasn’t problematic enough they also decided to split the business into two separate entities: the streaming service would still be called Netflix and the DVD-rental service would be an independent entity named Flixster.  Users could choose one or the other for the price they had been paying or they could choose both services but pay double the price they had been paying.

Needless to say those choices haven’t gone over well with users.  Netflix has since abandoned the idea of splitting the service into two entities and has tried, at least a bit, to explain the reasoning for the price increase but the damage which those decisions has caused is going to be difficult, if not impossible to repair.

The Future

So what does the future hold for Netflix?  Well, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that the content providers are going to try to squeeze more and more money out of Netflix for the rights to stream their services.  They simply point to the number of Netflix users streaming videos and the prices that those users are willing to pay as examples that their content has been undervalued.

Netflix has said over and over again that their future is going to be more and more about streaming and less and less about physical DVD rental business so they are going to have to try to find some happy medium that satisfies the content holders, their streaming service customers, and their bottom line.  Maybe they can convince the content holders that they’re being fairly compensated for their content.  Maybe they can convince their customers that they need to pay more money for the same amount of content that they get now or pay the same as they do now but receive Iess content.   Meanwhile, the shareholders are grumbling as Netflix loses subscribers and is spending a lot of money to get into markets in other areas of the world.

They say that the future is going to be televised.  Netflix is betting that it’s also going to be streamed.  I think that, for Netflix, the next 5 years are going to be even more interesting to watch than the last 5 years have been.

Needless to say, it’s the inclusion of a CableCard slot in the HDHomeRun Prime which really distinguishes it from the original HDHomeRun.  You can use the HDHR Prime without a CableCard and it will, like its predecessor, be able to tune in OTA and unencrypted QAM channels from your cable provider (assuming that your cable provider still has unencrypted channels).   Drop in an activated CableCard from your cable provider, however, and the HDHomeRun will be able to tune in all of the channels which you’re authorized to get from your cable company.

The other major difference between the original HDHR and the HDHR Prime is the number of tuners.  There are actually two different versions of the HDHR Prime – one with 3 tuners and one with 6 tuners.  And, if that’s not enough, you can always add more that one HDHR Prime to your home network. 

Limitations for Sage Tv and mythtv

The HDHR Prime is compatible with a number of popular computer-based DVR solutions such as Windows Media Center, Sage TV, and MythTV, but there are some limitations to what it can do if you’re not using Windows Media Center (“WMC”, included in Windows Vista and Windows 7).

When your cable company transmits a show it also transmits a flag that identifies certain restrictions which your cable company has put on the show which control how, or even if, you are able to record that show.  Pay-per-view shows, for instance, are almost always marked as “copy never”, meaning that you can’t record the show at all – you can only watch the show “live”.  Other shows may be flagged as “copy once”, meaning that you’re able to record the show but can’t make a recording of that recording.  The least-restrictive flag is “copy freely” which means that there are no restrictions at all of the recording of the show.

None of the software mentioned above will record a show with a “copy never" flag so WMC, Sage TV, and MythTV are all on equal footing there.  The problem that the non-WMC software runs into is with the “copy once” flag.  Microsoft has made sure that everything recorded with WMC includes DRM (digital rights management) information that guarantees that those shows won’t be able to be copied a second time.  Since Sage TV and MythTV can’t make that same guarantee they aren’t allowed to record shows marked with the “copy once” flag.

How much this would impact a Sage TV or MythTV user depends on how many shows their local cable provider is marking as “copy once”.  If the provider is setting the “copy freely” flag for all of the shows then there won’t be any impact at all.  Many providers will, at the very least, flag shows on premium channels as “copy once” but, beyond that, may also set that flag for other shows and those shows can’t be recorded within Sage TV or MythTV.

Build your own DVR and tell your cable company to keep their box

Users who are using Windows Media Center with their HDHR Prime don’t face those “copy once” limitations and can record all of their shows within WMC.   Playing those show back on a computer may be fine for some users but, for those of us who are accustomed to watching TV shows on a TV, there is a solution that uses hardware which you might already own.

Every XBox 360 has a piece of software built into it know as “Windows Media Center extender”.  That software allows the XBox 360 to “talk” to the computer running Windows Media Center and to display the WMC interface through the XBox and onto the TV.  For the purposes of viewing live and recorded television shows the experience is really no different on the XBox than it is on the computer.  You can even set the XBox 360 to launch the WMC extender by default when it turns on so that you don’t even have to interact with the 360’s dashboard at all.  Users with the HDHR Prime, a semi-modern Windows PC, and an XBox 360 really can tell their cable company to just keep their box.

Then again, you may still want to keep that box

So, if the HDHR Prime can record everything and we can use an XBox 360 to watch all of our TV shows on our TV, why would we want to keep the cable box?  There are two services that the HDHR Prime can’t provide for you: pay-per-view and on-demand (streaming).  If you are a regular user of each of those services you’re still going to need a box from your cable company.  You may be able to save a few bucks on your monthly bill by trading in your DVR for a box without any recording capabilities but you’re still going to need their box if you’re planning to watch shows on pay-per-view or on-demand.

Conclusion

The HDHR Prime certainly addresses the major shortcoming with the original HDHR – a shortcoming which has gotten larger and larger as cable companies have encrypted more and more of their channels.  The Prime also adds a third tuner (of 4 more tuners for the larger model), just in case you just can’t record TV shows quickly enough. 

For users who already have a Windows Vista or Windows 7 PC and an XBox 360 you’re already one HDHR Prime away from setting up your own fully-functional DVR.  And if you currently use a DVR from your cable company and you never watch pay-per-view or on-demand services you can pretty much replace that DVR with the HDHR Prime/PC/360 combination.  

Any way you want to look at it the HDHR Prime is a long-awaited improvement to an already-great piece of hardware.

The bad news with many of these services is that you’re still tethered to the computer when you want to use them.  Hulu and YouTube are designed to be viewed from within a browser.  NetFlix works the same way, although it does offer the Roku NetFlix Player which can be connected directly to your TV (read about that here).

I’ve talked about various ways to be able to watch that content on your television instead of on your PC but, outside of Roku’s NetFlix Player, most of those solutions get pretty complex.  But now there’s a new piece of software out there which may finally allow you to easily watch that web content on your television.  It’s from MediaMall Technologies and its name is PlayOn.  Let’s take a look.

In a previous article I talked about a way to connect devices in your living room to content on your computer using exciting acronyms like UPnP and DLNA and a PC-based UPnP server called TVersity (you can read that post here).   PlayOn works in very much the same way in that it gets installed on your PC as a UPnP server and is able to take an existing video source and convert it into a format that can be displayed on a device which you may already have in your living room.

At the moment PlayOn’s list of supported devices is much smaller than TVersity’s (currently only the Playstation 3, XBox 360, and HP MediaSmart televisions are supported, although the Wii is supposed to be supported by the end of the year).  Also, at least in its initial beta release, the list of source material which can be served up by PlayOn is hard-coded and is limited to content from some of the more popular streaming video web sites (Hulu, YouTube, CBS, CNN, and ESPN).  The ability to stream video from local sources rather than only from internet web sites is expected in a later release.

On the “plus” side the installation of PlayOn is quite easy and the server is already configured for use with the above-mentioned streaming video sites.  TVersity, on the other hand, comes pre-configured with the ability to access YouTube videos but not streams from the other sites. (It’s possible to add additional sources to TVersity but those sources have to present their streams in a format which TVersity can understand.  Currently there is no way to use TVersity to stream videos from Hulu, for instance.)  Also, the makers of PlayOn say that a future release will allow NetFlix users to watch their streams through PlayOn.

At the moment PlayOn only pulls the SD versions and not the HD versions of streams from its online providers.  I’m sure that has to do with the processing power that would be required on the PC side in order to transcode the HD video on-the-fly.   Still, I hope that they make the HD streams an option in a future release so that users with beefy systems can use those better feeds.

So, should you install PlayOn or TVersity?  That’s easy – you should install both.  Although they both act as UPnP servers they have different strengths and weaknesses.  TVersity is a full-featured UPnP server which can handle music and photos in addition to video, gives the user much more control over codecs and transcoding quality, and is compatible with just about every type of media file and UPnP-compliant hardware out there.  PlayOn is simple to install and configure, has instant integration with Hulu and the other streaming video services, and, at some point, will even be able to stream NetFlix content.  Oh, and TVersity is free, while PlayOn will cost you $30 after a 60-day trial period.

If you have a Playstation 3, XBox 360, or you own an HP MediaSmart TV I’d say that you should give PlayOn a good look.  It just may change the way you watch TV (and what you watch on it).

Unfortunately, in order to play those movies you had to use a special plugin for Internet Explorer, and that meant that you had to watch them on a computer.  So, if you’re like me and you wanted to watch those movies on your TV, you had to be able to hook your PC (I used a laptop) up to your television.  It worked, but it wasn’t exactly convenient.

Next came the vmcNetFlix add-in for Media Center (read my post on that here).  This add-in allowed people who were running the Vista version of Windows Media Center to watch the NetFlix streaming videos inside of Media Center instead of through Internet Explorer.  Even better, it allowed people who had Media Center Extenders (like an XBox 360) to stream that content to their TV without having to have a PC in the living room.  That worked better, but it still required a PC (running Media Center) and a set-top box (the XBox 360 or other Media Center Extender).

But now there’s a way to watch NetFlix streaming videos without using a computer at all.  It’s from Roku, and it’s called the NetFlix Player.  Let’s check it out.

The Roku NetFlix Player is a tiny (about the size of a paperback) set-top box that attaches to your home network and outputs video directly to your television.  It allows you to stream NetFlix content and display it directly onto your TV.  No laptops, no Media Center Extenders — nothing is required for video playback except a valid NetFlix membership, a home network with a broadband internet connection, and a television.

Connecting it

The device can connect to either your wired or wireless home network.  The setup procedure for both is quite simple but does require you to have a DHCP server somewhere on your network (just about every home router and wireless access point has this capability turned on by default).  If you’re using the wired connection there really isn’t anything else which needs to be set up.  If you’re using a wireless connection you’ll have to supply the SSID and, for those access point which have been secured, you’ll also have to supply the password during the setup.

Once the NetFlix Player establishes that it can connect to your home network it will check to make sure that it can connect to the internet and, specifically, to the NetFlix website.  If there are no problems it displays a 6-character code.  You have to use a computer to log into your account on the NetFlix website and enter that code which then binds the player to your NetFlix account (a one-time operation).

As as physical connections go the NetFlix player comes equipped with an ethernet connector, composite, s-video, component, and HDMI video connections, RCA-style audio jacks and an optical (Toslink) connector.   If you can’t connect this device to you television it may be time to seriously consider getting a new TV.

Feeding it

While you’re on the NetFlix website make sure that you have at least a few movies in your “Instant” queue.  NetFlix now has two different queues for you — the “DVD” queue, which is where the DVDs which get mailed to your house come from, and the “Instant” queue, which is where you maintain the list of features you’d like to access through the NetFlix Player.  The NetFlix Player will show you all of the items in your Instant queue but doesn’t give you any way to add additional content to that queue so you’ll still need to use a computer to do that.

Using it

The user interface for the NetFlix Player is extremely simple to use.  There a only a few options under the Setup tab, like setting the display type (4:3 or 16:9) and the network connection information.

The Instant Queue tab shows everything which have placed into your “Instant” queue on the NetFlix website.  At this point the interface shows you all of the entries which you’ve entered in the same order that they’re in on the website.  There are no sub-categories like genre (Horror or Drama), type (movie or TV show), or even the ability to search for a particular title by name — just a “flat” listing of all of the content.  If you don’t have many entries in your Instant queue it probably won’t be a problem but if you’re queue is full (you’re allowed 500 entries) then I can see how this may become an issue.  I’m sure that this is an area which Roku will be making some changes.

There are some additional features which make navigating your content a bit easier.  For instance, if you choose a TV series the player will show you all of the episodes on the disc you’ve chosen along with the names of the episodes.  That allows you to just pick one episode instead of having to watch the entire disc.  Overall, the interface is quite attractive, intuitive, and simple to use.

Downloading it

Once you select the video stream you’d like to see things get interesting.  The first thing that happens is the player checks to see what kind of speed you’re getting on your internet connection.   There are a number of factors which can affect your speed, including the maximum bandwidth which you’re allotted by your ISP, other activity on your home network, and, if you’re using a wireless connection, the strength of your wireless signal.

Once the NetFlix Player determines what your bandwidth capabilities are it decides between 4 different streams of different quality offered by the NetFlix streaming servers (0.5Mbps, 1.0 Mbps, 1.6Mbps, and 2.0Mbps).  The idea is that the player want to give you the stream with the highest video quality which your connection to handle but doesn’t want to choose a stream which is going to result in a lot of pauses as it buffers the stream while you’re trying to watch your video.  NetFlix recommends that you have a minimum of a 1.5Mbps connection in order to assure a smooth experience with the NetFlix player.

After the player decides what stream it’s going to use in contact the NetFlix server and asks for that stream.  The player will buffer a bit of the stream before the video starts just in case there are a few network slowdowns or other hiccups while you’re watching your video.  The buffering can take anywhere from about 10 to 30 seconds.  If your connection slows down while you’re watching your video to the point where the player needs to keep buffering the stream it will “dumb” you down to a slower (and lesser video quality) stream.

Judging it

Compared to a DVD the highest quality image is just a bit soft and occasionally shows a tiny bit of pixellation from the encoding process, especially during abrupt scene changes, but even the worst-quality video stream is certainly “watchable”.  The audio is also passable, although at this point the audio for all of the videos is only analog (PCM).  All in all the audio and video quality are quite good, especially considering that the content is being streamed over the internet.

Futureproofing it

That being said, the real promise of this player might will be realized when NetFlix starts serving High Definition content.  Roku has said that their box can handle those HD streams and that they’ll be rolling out a firmware update when NetFlix starts their HD streaming.  They’ve also said that you’ll have to make sure that you’re using the HDMI connection and that your equipment can handle the HDCP copyright protection in order to take advantage of that HD content but, with a very few number of exceptions, every TV that has an HDMI input should meet those requirements.

Wrapping it up

So there it is.  Roku’s NetFlix Player does just what it says it does — it gives you the ability to watch streaming content from NetFlix right there on your television.  The setup is painless, the UI is well-done (if a bit Spartan at this point), and the whole process, from beginning to end, is quite smooth.  Considering that the box only costs $100 and will be able to handle the HD feeds that NetFlix has promised to deliver, if you’ve every wanted to be able to watch video streams on your television instead of on your computer then this is the device that you’ve been waiting for.   Give it a shot — you won’t be disappointed.

One of the main problems with using Watch it Now is that you are required to watch the video content using a special Internet Explorer plugin, and that means that you can only watch that content on a PC instead of on the TV in your living room.  The solution to that problem was to use PC or a laptop which was hooked up directly to your TV.  Now there’s a better solution, and its name is vmcNetFlix.

What is it?

vmcNetFlix is a 3rd-party add-in for the version of Media Center which ships as part of Windows Vista Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate.  This add-in integrates the Watch it Now feature directly into Media Center so that you can watch a video stream from NetFlix as easily as you can view pictures or watch other recorded video.  Even better, the Watch it Now video can be viewed on any Media Center Extenders you may have hooked up to the TV in the living, room, including the XBox 360.

Installing it

In order to use vmcNetFlix you’ll first have to be able to use the “real” Watch it Now feature from NetFlix.  vmcNetFlix doesn’t try to circumvent or duplicate any of the technology that’s used in the plugin supplied by NetFlix — instead, it just uses that plugin from inside of Media Center instead of from within Internet Explorer.  That means that you won’t be able to use vmcNetFlix unless you’ve already installed the Watch it Now IE plugin from the NetFlix website and you know that it’s working properly on the same system which is running your Media Center application.

Once you know that your installation of the NetFlix plugin is working properly you can install the vmcNetFlix application.  The application is designed to work with the version of Media Center which comes with the Premium or Ultimate versions of Windows Vista so if you’re using the XP-era Media Center you won’t be able to take advantage of this add-in.

Using it

After you run the vmcNetFlix installer you’ll have a new choice available to you when you start up Media Center (look under Online Media -> Program Library).  When you pick the vmcNetFlix application for the first time you’ll be prompted for your NetFlix username and password.  vmcNetFlix uses this information to log into the NetFlix website and pull down data about the catalog of videos available for streaming, including their cover art, genre, and descriptions.

The application makes extensive use of the cover art to help make your content quite easy to find.  You can choose from the list of content which you’ve added to your “Instant” queue on the NetFlix website, browse the complete list of available streaming content by genre (Drama, Comedy, TV Shows, etc.), or check out the “Top 50″ list to see what other people are watching.  Once you find the content you’d like to watch just hit “Play” and you’ll be on your way.

Watch it Later

One additional feature of vmcNetFlix which the original Watch it Now plugin doesn’t have is the ability to save the video stream onto your hard drive so that you can play it back at a later time.  While there may be no benefit to doing that If you’re at home and have a working internet connection, it may be a handy feature to those of you who are looking to download content so that you can watch it without being tethered to the internet (like on a laptop while traveling, for instance).

Other Features

While the main goal of vmcNetFlix is to allow you to stream Watch it Now content from within Media Center, the application handles much more than just streaming video.  You can also perform other NetFlix tasks like adding movies to your DVD queue, viewing your rental history, or even seeing what new videos NetFlix recommends for you.  The list of vmcNetFlix features is complete enough that you may never have to go to the NetFlix website again!

Conclusion

If you’re a NetFlix member and you own a computer running Windows Vista Premium or Vista Ultimate you should check out vmcNetFlix.  It provides an easy way to handle most, if not all, of your NetFlix tasks, and also allows you to seamlessly integrate your NetFlix streaming content right into your Media Center.   And if you also happen to have some type of Media Center Extender (remember, the XBox 360 counts here) hooked up to your TV this might be just what you’re looking for –  a way to watch NetFlix videos on your TV instead of on your PC.

So that’s vmcNetFlix — it’s fast, it’s free, it works well, and it may even allow you to watch NetFlix content right in your living room.  Check it out.

In a previous post I’d talked about how to run MythTV, the very popular multimedia software, under Microsoft Windows (you can find that post here). The basic problem is that MythTV only runs under Linux — there’s no such thing as a port of that application to Windows. That previous post talks about how it’s possible to use a virtual machine to set up a Linux virtual machine within a Windows OS so that Windows users can run MythTV, with a few caveats.

Now that I’ve been using andLinux I wanted to see if it was possible to run MythTV on a Windows installation without having to use a virtual machine. It is — and here’s how.

The Basics

First of all, of course, you have to have andLinux installed on your Windows OS. If you’re not really sure what andLinux is or how it’s different that a virtual machine you should read my previous post, “andLinux — an easy way to run Linux applications right on your Windows desktop“.

Installing MythTV

Once you have your andLinux installation up and running you can install MythTV just like you’d install any other Linux application — using Synaptic (for a GUI installer) or using apt-get (from the command line). Once MythTV is installed remember that you first have to run the “mythtv-setup” script, just like you would with any other installation of MythTV.

Some Caveats

Using andLinux to run MythTV under Windows has the same set of limitations that we ran into when we ran MythTV under a virtual machine. Those limitations are a result of the way that andLinux (or our VMWare virtual machine) see the hardware we have in our Windows system.

TV Tuner

The MythTV application running under andLinux has the same problem as it would running under the virtual machine — it has no way of seeing a TV tuner card in your PC. The solution to the problem is the same as it was when we used a virtual machine –use a tuner card which is located on the network instead of a tuner card which is located in a PC. In my case I use the HDHomeRun by Silicon Dust. You can find a more detailed description of that tuner in a post that I’d written here.

Watching Video

Just like the problem with the tuner card, watching video through the MythTV front-end running under andLinux suffers from the same problem as running MythTV from within a virtual machine. In both cases the problem is that the Linux OS isn’t using your graphics card directly; instead, it’s using either a virtual graphics card (in the case of the virtual machine) or an X-Server (in the case of andLinux). In either case there just isn’t enough graphics horsepower to be able to display full-motion video with no choppiness.

There are other ways to view shows which are recorded in MythTV though, and I cover some of the more popular solutions in the previous article I’d written about running MythTV under windows. These solutions may not be as simple as using the MythTV front-end but they will do the job.

Conclusion

Using andLinux to run MythTV is certainly a viable alternative to running MythTV within a virtual machine, especially with the simplified Linux installation made possible by using andLinux. If you’re a Windows user who’s interested in checking our MythTV I think that using andLinux is the simplest way to see what all of the fuss is about.

These days just about everything used in a home theater, from DVD players to video game consoles to amplifiers to the televisions themselves, is some type of computer. Because they are computers, many of these devices have capabilities far beyond their originally intended purpose. D-Link, for example, makes a line of DVD players which can also play videos stored on your PC, and DirecTV’s DVR can be used to listen to your music collection.

Like anything else that deals with technology, though, these devices don’t always play nicely together. Many of the devices have special quirks or requirements that make it difficult for them to interact with each other and trying to overcome those obstacles can be a frustrating process. That’s where TVersity come into the picture. Let’s check it out.

TVersity is a free application which can take just about any multimedia source (photos, music, video) as its input and can convert it on the fly to just about any multimedia format. We’ll use a problem I ran into as a real-world example to help understand why that’s necessary and how it all works.

Learning through Example

My main TV is located in my living room and is connected to a DirecTV DVR box. The latest version of the firmware for my DVR allows me to stream video from other locations in my house so that I can watch those videos on my TV. The problem I have is that the DVR can only handle video which is in the mpeg format and I have a fairly large library of videos which are in other formats (like avi, flv, wmv, xvid, and divx). TVersity allows me to watch all of those videos through my DVR by converting all of the my videos to the mpeg format which my DVR expects. How?

Understanding UPnP and DLNA

Before we can understand how TVersity works we’ll have to have indulge in a little bit of alphabet soup. UPnP stands for “Universal Plug and Play” and DLNA stands for “Digital Living Network Alliance”. Catchy names, aren’t they? DLNA is really just UPnP with a tighter set of rules regarding audio and video — for our purposes they mean pretty much the same thing so we’ll just treat them that way and call the whole thing “UPnP”.

The whole idea behind UPnP was to come up with a standard where different types of multimedia devices could talk to each other and exchange content over a home network. Devices which can display content are called “renderers” and devices which can provide content are called “servers”. In my example my DVR box is a UPnP renderer and the TVersity software running on my PC is a UPnP server.

When a UPnP device (in this case my DVR) first accesses my network it identifies itself to all of the other UPnP devices on the network. This introduction is known as the “discovery” phase. As part of that discovery phase the device also tells those other UPnP devices what its basic capabilities are. In the case of my DVR it says something like “Hi. I’m a UPnP renderer, my model number is HR20-100, and I’m capable of playing music, displaying photos, and playing video.” (Needless to say, that’s not an exact translation.) At that point the UPnP servers respond to the introduction and tell the DVR something like “I’m a UPnP server and I have some music, photos, and video which I can send to you.”

Filling in the Gaps

Although the UPnP discovery phase lets my DVR know where to go to get its content, it doesn’t paint a complete picture of what the DVR really needs. You’ll note that my DVR said “I can play video”, but what it really needed to say was “I can play video, but it needs to be in mpeg format.” That’s where TVersity comes into play.

TVersity maintains its own catalog of different UPnP enabled devices and their capabilities. In my case when my DVR says that it’s an HR20-100 TVersity looks up that device’s capabilities and sees that the video needs to be encoded into an mpeg format. Although TVersity comes with a long list of supported devices there are more and more UPnP devices appearing every day. If you happen to own a device which isn’t in TVersity’s list you can always just add its information to TVersity’s catalog (an xml file named “profiles.xml”).

Delivering the Goods

At this point TVersity has all of the information it needs to send the video I’ve requested to my DVR. It accomplishes this by transcoding the video from one format (let’s say that it’s a wmv video file) to another format (the mpeg stream which my DVR needs). My DVR doesn’t know that any of this is happening — it just thinks that the UPnP server it’s connected to (TVersity) has some mpeg video files that it’s making available. How that’s accomplished showcases another aspect of TVersity’s power.

TVersity handles this transcoding by making use of a library of codecs which it installs as part of the normal TVersity installation. We can think of these codecs as the engine which TVersity uses to translate the wmv file on my PC to the mpeg stream required by my DVR. Although TVersity has the necessary codecs to handle transcoding the most common file types out of the box there are additional codecs available on the TVersity web site to handle just about any other video format.

Using those Cores

Transcoding a video file can be a very CPU-intensive operation. Fortunately, TVersity is a multi-threaded application, meaning that it can take advantage of the processing power available in the newer dual-core (or even quad-code) processors by splitting up the workload across all of the available cores. In my case TVersity is capable of using my quad-code Intel Q6600 CPU to transcode high definition wmv files (720p) to high definition mpeg files without ever pushing my CPU above 50% utilization. There are many factors which dictate how much CPU is required, including the format and resolution of both the incoming and outgoing streams, so your mileage may vary.

Configuring TVersity

Configuring TVersity is a pretty straight-forward process. You have to tell TVersity where to go to find your multimedia (audio, video, and photos) files. Those locations can be on the PC where TVersity is running or through a network share. TVersity also gives you the ability to grab additional content from the internet (like YouTube videos or your favorite podcasts).

If you happen to be using a rendering device which TVeristy supports out-of-the-box you’re pretty much done at that point. If not, you’ll have to make some changes to the profiles.xml file to tell TVersity how your device is going to introduce itself and what requirements it has when it comes to consuming media.

Getting Started

There are more and more devices appearing on the market which have UPnP/DLNA capabilities built in, and just about any of these can use TVersity. These devices include everything from DVRs (like my DirecTV box) to DVD players to televisions. If you’ve purchased a home theater component over the last few years you may already have one of these devices in your living room. Do you own a Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Sony PSP, or even an Apple iPhone? Those devices are all capable of accessing media through TVersity, too.

Even if you don’t have a UPnP device in your living room you can still use TVersity on your computer. TVersity itself includes a UPnP client so you can browse your multimedia library and play content right within the application. Other software, like the ShowTime component of Nero’s DVD burning suite, can also act as a UPnP client.

Wrapping it Up

So that’s TVersity. TVersity allows you to sit in your living room and access the photos, music, and video which are stored on your computer or available through the internet. It’s free for personal use, it’s easy to use, and it does what it’s supposed to do. Check it out.

Now what if I told you that there was a way to do that same thing with much of the video which you watch on the internet? There is, and its name is Miro. Let’s take a closer look.

Overview

Miro is an open-source project which began its life as a video player (it was known up until the latest release as “Democracy Player”) which could handle just about any type of file format you could thrown at it. Over time, though, it has morphed from a universal video player into a full-blown internet DVR.

When you watch content through Miro that content is actually first downloaded to your PC (even if it comes from a streaming video site, like YouTube), just like it would be with a DVR. It’s the timing of those downloads that makes Miro more flexible than my DVR. When I program my DVR to record the next episode of a given show I have to wait until the network broadcasts that show before it’s available on my DVR. Using Miro I can download and watch any given (or even all) episodes immediately.

Miro Channels

Like the DVR in my home theater I can use Miro to view a list of channels, see the listing of the shows on those channels, and decide if I want to record those shows. The major difference between Miro and my DVR is that Miro’s channels are internet video sources, not traditional television sources. Instead of ABC, CBS, and CNN, Miro allows you to record content from internet video sources like YouTube, Ask a Ninja, and the Onion News Network.

Actually, Miro is extensible — if you can’t find enough content in Miro’s Program Guide (over 1,500 channels as I write this), you can add additional channels. As long as the website you’d like to add supports full Media RSS feeds it can be added to Miro. Many of the more popular video sharing sites (like YouTube, blip.tv, Dailymotion, and Revver) already support this type of feed so it’s easy to add content from those sites as additional channels. I’d like to see my home theater’s DVR do that.

Speaking of content, the shows that I’ve downloaded using Miro run the gamut in both the quality of the show and the quality of the video. The available content ranges from hard science to music videos to instructions in how to make complex origami. The video quality is also variable, ranging from the typical hard-on-your-eyes YouTube flash video to crystal-clear high-definition. Actually, Miro is a great way to watch some HD content if you don’t have a high-definition TV – the Miro video player is pretty easy on system resources so even a fairly old PC is probably capable of handling some HD content. There’s even a special HD tab in the Program Guide if you’d like to browse only HD content.

Conclusion

Miro is a fantastic piece of software which has changed how I watch internet video (and where, but that’ll be a different topic). The user interface is very well thought-out, the options are simple to understand, and the execution is flawless. If you enjoy watching internet video give Miro a try. It really is a DVR for the internet.

The latest attempt to deliver quality TV over the internet is called Joost. It’s still in beta but it’s far enough along to demonstrate that its creators have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. Joost may even offer a glimpse at the future of television.

Let’s take a look at what Joost is and what makes it different.

So what exactly is Joost? Joost (pronounced “juiced“) is an application which runs on your computer (PC or Mac) and lets you watch television shows (or other types of video) streamed over the internet. Joost is what’s known as “IPTV”, an acronym for the catchy phrase “Internet Protocol TeleVision”. You can think of Joost as a type of cable company except that, unlike a traditional cable company, the programming is all “on-demand” and comes to you over your broadband internet connection. Pick your channel and your show, hit the play button, and the show starts. Because all of Joost’s programming is on-demand you can watch any of its programming at any time — there’s no set schedule and no need to record anything so that you can watch it later.

Now that we know what Joost is let’s look at how it’s different from previous IPTV attempts.

One of the major things Joost has done differently has to do with the way in which content is actually delivered to the user. The failed IPTV services all used a model which featured a set of servers delivering content directly to users. That’s how a site like YouTube works, with all of its video stored on its own servers and streamed to each user individually.

Joost is a more like a P2P (“peer-to-peer”) file sharing system than a central storage system. That’s not entirely surprising since the founders of YouTube are also the founders of Skype (the VOIP phone network) and Kazaa (the P2P file sharing network). In a nutshell, a P2P system leverages the network connections of the users which are connected to the service to help deliver the programming. If you’re watching the same content as other people on the network you’ll be getting some of your content from each of those other users and they’ll be getting some of their content from you.

Utilizing a P2P approach has a number of major benefits, the biggest of which is that it reduces the amount of bandwidth that the Joost servers have to handle. At any given time only a part, if any, of the content that a user is watching is coming directly from the Joost servers (the remaining part of the content coming from other Joost users). Because of this reduced network load Joost can offer higher-quality video since the network load is spread over a larger number of players. Unlike services which aren’t P2P-based, Joost’s performance should actually improve as more and more users are added.

Another area where Joost outclasses its predecessors is in the area of its user interface. The Joost user interface is a bit of a cross between a modern “Web 2.0″ interface and a TiVo. Under the covers the interface is built using XULRunner, the same technology that the Firefox browser uses. The developers clearly didn’t want the application to look like a web browser, or, for that matter, even like a computer application. In fact Joost looks more like it could be a stand-alone appliance rather than a program running on your computer and could easily be controlled using a remote control rather than a mouse and keyboard. Transitions between on-screen menus involve some nice, smooth animations overlayed on top of the video giving Joost a sophisticated user experience.

Yet another major thing that Joost has going for it is in the area of content. Previous attempts at IPTV have either provided copyrighted content illegally (like the episodes of The Daily Show which recently had to be removed from YouTube) or have provided legal content which nobody was interested it watching. Joost, meanwhile, has managed to sign up some major content providers, such as CBS and Viacom (the parent company of MTV, Paramount, and Comedy Central). As Joost ramps up its service more and more content from these providers is becoming available to Joost users.

When you add all of that up Joost is able to provide some pretty compelling decent-quality video through a simple-to-use interface. At this point the video quality of Joost isn’t quite TV-grade (let alone HDTV grade) but it’s much better than the video that you get from other services (YouTube, for example). Because of the P2P delivery system that Joost uses they could potentially ramp up that video quality as the number of Joost users increases.

The content that’s currently available through Joost isn’t fantastic but it’s much better than the content that was offered by Joost’s IPTV predecessors. By the time Joost nears the end of its beta cycle the deals that Joost has struck with the major content providers should allow it to flush out its catalog. CBS has already promised some of its big-name shows (CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, CBS Evening News, CBS Sportsline, and Survivor) and, hopefully, Viacom will offer some of the content which it forced YouTube to remove (“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, for instance).

So what does the future hold for Joost? Assuming that it continues to expand its relationship with media providers Joost could very well be positioned to succeed where the other IPTV ventures have failed. It has the content, the delivery mechanism, and the user interface that a successful IPTV offering needs. Since it’s build using the XULRunner framework it could potentially run on many types of devices, not just on your desktop computer. The company has stated that it plans to open up its API — that should allow Joost to be ported to all different types of devices. Imagine using your Playstation 3, your XBox 360, or even your Wii to run Joost so that you could watch its programming on the TV in your living room instead of on your computer monitor. Who knows — one day you may even be able to buy a Joost set-top box and ditch your cable company.

Joost is currently free (they plan on making money through commercials and other types of advertising) but you have to be invited to participate in the beta. If you don’t know anyone in the beta program you can always sign up for an invitation at the Joost website.

Joost is going to be an interesting experiment to watch. And I mean that literally.