Watching TV on the Web

So now that I have been at my parents' place for a while, I have finally returned to a broadband connection with unlimited up and download quota. This is a nice alternative to the 2GB max I have at the University.

So, of course I began by firing up bittorrent and what not, to download some of the TV stuff I have been missing out on. But after a while I became aware of how outdated I was, since it seems during the time I was studying, a number of new on-demand options have emerged on the web. I have test driven a few, and would like to give you my basic impressions here.

veoh: The veoh website offers a bunch of channels and series that can be watched directly in your browser. The site is both community and broadcaster driven. Anyone can upload clips, and start new series or channels. Unlike YouTube though, the quality is generally better, and full movies or episodes are available. However, watching on the webpage only gives you access to the first 5 minutes of each video. To watch the rest, you need to download the veoh player. The nice part: Once you have the player, you can download the videos to your computer for offline watching. This is something I really value, as it allows me to get my favorite movies now, and watch them later when I'm back behind the uni quota. Overall, veoh left a nice impression. There is some pretty nice content here and there, but as with many of the current web TV options, most of it is very old or really cheesy. This is most likely due to licensing issues (though if you look hard enough, you can find some current content).

DivX Stage 6: Stage 6 is very similar to veoh. It is a community driven website with a lot of content (although I have no numbers, it felt to me like Stage 6 has much more content than veoh). I liked Stage 6's responsive website and clean design. It was easy to find movies, and to sort them by date, rating or length. On the downside, you do need a plugin to watch the movies, and I did not find a way to download them. Although the site is responsive, I did have long waits until the movies started playing. The quality however is usually better than on veoh, and most of the content is presented in widescreen.

iTunes Podcasts: Okay, this one is a bit older, but I feel it should be used for comparison here. Browsing the podcasts in iTunes is really nice, and although it's not a place to find something you are looking for, it will provide you with a lot of quality content that is just fun to watch. The German content I watched was available instantaneously, and in fairly good quality (although fullscreen viewing was rather blocky experience). Again, I really like that you can download episodes, or even subscribe to them. And even when I was downloading a few episodes in the background, I could still watch live content simultaneously. This changed however, when I watched some American content. I needed to wait approximately 15 seconds before the video started playing. This could be tedious when I was just trying to watch small clips, and needed to wait so long for every one of them.

Joost: Finally, I'd like to say a few words on the new star of internet TV, Joost. If you really want to get that couch-potato feeling, where you just need to switch on the tube, Joost is for you. It provides you with an elegant fullscreen interface, and the video quality of the content is just gorgeous. Joost is still fighting for more content, and there still isn't enough out there. That, I believe, is mainly due to Joost streaming licensed content from broadcasters, rather than being a video sharing site like the ones mentioned above. On the bright side, Joost can show off with broadcasters like MTV (showing punk'd episodes) or NHL playoff games. To make the platform attractive to broadcasters Joost plays advertisements between shows, or fades little product hints onto the screen during playback. It doesn't really bother me though, as it lets me rest assured that Joost won't be sued anytime soon. (I was also surprised to find the ads played in German language on my computer. Seems they are broadcasting user-dependent ads).

All in all, there is no clear winner (yet), so it really depends on what you want to do. I find myself switching on Joost most of the time, since I after working on my thesis, I am usually to lazy to go off searching for content. I like the feeling of simply switching on TV. Who will make it in the long run is still unsure. I am also unsure about how legal each of these services are. The safest bet is on Joost, as it has too much media attention to wander off into some shady area. The others however, I don't know about. There is one thing I do know already though: I'm going to miss this when I get back to the Uni.