Consumers really do want to access internet video on their tellies, market watcher In-Stat has concluded. The research that led In-Stat to make this claim comes out of the US, but it's hard to believe there would be any significant difference had the company surveyed Britons instead beyond the inevitable lag in the numbers of …

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Thursday 11th March 2010 13:29 GMT Alan Clinch

Sky is the limit

The big problem with implementing this in the UK is Sky. They have always bought exclusive rights to subscription on demand movies, even though for years they had no technology to deliver this.

This would be a big driver for this kind of thing which is why whever you hear about it mentioned in the US it's Netflix.

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Thursday 11th March 2010 14:16 GMT Tom Wood

media PC + TV

So a LCD telly is really just a big computer monitor. Plug in any old PC and you've got yourself a media centre PC or whatever you want to call it. So why not combine PC+TV together into one box - a LCD telly with basically the components of a laptop (plus maybe a couple of bays for bigger hard drives) stuck to the back?

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Thursday 11th March 2010 14:33 GMT Elsie

More tea Vicar?

I'm lucky enough to own a Panasonic Plasma which can access their "Vieracast" system and whilst this is OK, it's also damn frustrating as they're using a single portal for the whole of Europe. So whilst I can watch You Tube, Eurosport clips or browse Picassa (why??!) I have no interest in the German and Czech broadcasts. There needs to be more content than this to make it a viable solution rather than a gimmick. In fact, Vieracast is so poor that it's hardly used. I use the TV's network port to stream media from my NAS but that's the end of it.

As for the report saying "We don't want the internet on our TV's", that's cobblers! I'm looking forward to my final ever bonus in April so I can by an Revo to mount behind the TV and get full internet access and not be tied to the limited offer from Panasonic. We want more, not less!

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Thursday 11th March 2010 15:34 GMT The Vociferous Time Waster

Consoles

If you want internet TV just get a console. I can watch iplayer on a weeeeeeee if I want to and frequently watch on demand movies on my xbox, all on my 34 inch telly.

Building it into the TV is just pointless, it takes away the choice, but putting stuff like iplayer into set top boxes isn't a bad idea. I saw an HD Freesat PVR which did iPlayer (and youtube, yawn). Put that alongside my xbox (which gets sky over Live) and I have internet telly sorted.

Of course it also helps that I have a blistering broadband connection from bethere, I doubt the freetard 'broad'band interweb users will have so much fun.

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Thursday 11th March 2010 16:58 GMT batfastad

Solution...

Plug a computer into it then. Avoid the horrible integrated nightmare.

Bought a Zotac ION board last year and built it into a nice mini-ITX case. Have it on 24-7 and only uses 30W of power with 2.5" HDD and slimline DVD drive. Digital output to my surround sound, HDMI output to my TV, USB Freeview capture card, customised remote. Simples.

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Thursday 18th March 2010 23:32 GMT irinafinkler

No Hardware is Needed

Very interesting post. My personal favorite is Stream Direct TV (http://tinyurl.com/mystreamdirect). It offers 4500+ HD quality channels from across the world plus a free Digital Video Recorder. Watch everything – TV shows, Entertainment, Music, movies, sports, news and business. No hardware is required. Unlimited and uncensored access 24/7! One low fee and no monthly payments. The best part - there is no bandwidth restrictions and it is not p2p!

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