if I want to find out if a given show is on Netflix, Hulu, or whatever, I need to first do some homework, and then deal with their own interfaces with their own UI quirks
Wasn't fixing (patching?) that problem supposed to be the value add of Boxee over XBMC?
Yeah, they failed. I'm moving away from my Boxee Box, and now for me it's pretty much just a device for playing vudu.
GoogleTV tries to paper over this mess, allowing you to search for what you want and give you a list of places (free, for-pay, and otherwise) that will stream you want you want. It almost works.
The AppleTV does present a pretty unified interface to multiple services, including Netflix. The shows I buy show up when they are available, just like a DVR. For full seasons of shows, I simply go into the Netflix area and pick the show and resume playback where I left off. Work could be done by the other platforms to help unify things as well as a DVR can. I know how well this works from having a ReplayTV (RIP
) that seamlessly combined two different subscription services into one interface and it is an important point.
Even having to switch between different providers is too much. Even switching between your subscribed iTunes content and Netflix is too much, IMO. What happens when the show you've been paying for on iTunes becomes available on Netflix, or the other way around? It's a pain. I like that Google lets me search for things across providers, but they don't actually have a great variety of providers to search through.
iTunes/AppleTV does solve one problem that I don't believe Hulu or other services do, and that's keeping up to date. Does Hulu have a no-effort way of telling you when there's a new episode of a show you like available? If not, that means that you have to keep track of when all your various shows have new episodes, and that just sounds like a chore that I got rid of when I got my first Tivo. Again, we're going backwards. But again, even though subscribing through iTunes would take care of that issue, it's cost prohibitive to someone like me, because I just wouldn't save any money at all (I'd probably spend more).
Then there's one last issue that internet TV simply cannot address yet: ESPN. I watch a show every single day called Pardon the Interruption. It was a show my dad and I watched a lot together when he was stuck in a chair and couldn't go anywhere, and we both loved it and I continue to love it. I like that I can get all my sports news in a 30 minute, humorous presentation. Unfortunately ESPN is so ridiculously tied to the cable TV industry. I can't imagine how they'd make a transition to internet TV.
ps-before you mention it, yes, PTI has a podcast version of every one of their shows. Here's the fun facts about that:
- the shows are audio only, so you miss the funny/incredible videos they talk about
- the episodes are ~22 minutes long and come to whopping ~5MB file sizes
- as a result of the compression, it sounds like the podcast was created by holding up a microphone to a TV playing the show
Previous Topic
Index
