Internet TV is Here

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Note: Apologies for the long gap between posts. We've had quite a busy 6 months, but we're back to a bit of a routine now and I hope to be able to post more regularly.

My wife and I recently moved to a new house and one of the highest priority utility hookups on our list was internet access. The only available broadband connectivity was through the local cable company which, like all cable companies (insert sneer here), offers mostly package deals. That left us with an interesting question. Do we get cable TV or take the plunge and go Internet TV only?

I should preface this by saying that we don't watch a ton of TV and the TV we do watch is mostly movies and a handful of TV shows (Mythbusters, Madmen, Dexter, etc). If you're the kind of person that loves to channel surf and watch live TV, Internet TV is probably not for you. For us, it's more than enough and has several advantages:

- We were already using Netflix on demand on our computers, so moving it to the TV was a natural next step. Most of the devices out there supported Netflix, so this was a no-brainer.

- We HATE commercials. Broadcast television is so littered with mind-numbing, soul-destroying ads that we just gave up watching certain shows. Boo. Internet TV is (usually) much better about this, particularly if you're using pay services like Netflix, ITunes, Amazon, Hulu Plus etc.

- It's cheaper. Well, in the long run anyway :). Our internet access with the local cable company was roughly $40 cheaper per month without TV included (depending on the package, current offers, etc). Our Netflix subscription is $9.99 a month. Most of the media center devices out there ranged from $100-$700, which, even in the most expensive case, would pay off after the first 2 years. For the cheapest, it's saves us money after the first 4 months!

Once we made that decision, I needed to figure out which media center to get. Once upon a time, I had built us a home-brew Windows Media Center 2005 box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Center). My wife absolutely hated the thing. It was big, noisy, confusing and it had a nasty habit of developing problems that she couldn't fix by herself. It stung to let go of my little pet project, but I had to admit that she was right, so I disconnected the old machine and started looking at new options. After a copious amount of geeking out over features, price and flexibility, I narrowed our choices to the list below. Note that this is not intended to an exhaustive list as there are many other options available (Boxee, MythTV, etc). This is just our the list of finalists.

Device	Ease of Use	Netflix Support	Hulu Support	Price	DVDs	Games	Notes
Windows 7 Media Center (+ new low profile hardware)	Poor	Yes	Yes (w/ IE)	$500+	Yes	Yes
AppleTV 2	Excellent	Yes	No	$100	No	No	Good integration w/ iPhone and iPad, iTunes content
Roku XD|S	Good	Yes	Yes	$100	No	No
XBMC or Boxee (+ new low profile hardware)	Poor (Same problems as Windows MCE)	Yes	Maybe?	$500+	Yes	Yes
Google TV (Logitech Revue)	Excellent	Yes	No	$300	No	No

After some soul searching, we decided that price and ease of use were the most important aspects, so we decided on AppleTV. It also had the advantage of being simple to use with the iPhones (My wife and I each have one) and iPad.

Normally, I'm not an Apple fan boy. I think they're a little too proprietary with their software. I have to admit, though, after a few months of messing with the AppleTV 2, I'm impressed. The device is ridiculously easy to use (no more cursing from the wife :) ) and it just works. My Windows Media Center was constantly requiring maintenance and tweaking. After spending the few minutes to set it up, the AppleTV has worked perfectly. The quality of the video is great considering it's streamed and we've had little or no connection issues. The remote app on the iPhone is pretty well done as well and makes it a thousand times easier to type something when you're searching for a movie. The on-screen keyboard is ok, but can be really painful if you're typing something long-ish. Oh, and did I mention that it's *tiny*. It's not much bigger than a hockey puck, which makes the real estate near the TV a little less cluttered.

That being said, there are a few things that are frustrating. The prices for iTunes movies is a bit higher than I'd prefer. I know it's the going market rate for digital rentals (about $5 per HD movie), but given that I can watch unlimited Netflix on the same device for $10/month, it seems a bit high. The lack of a DVD player, while understandable given the nature and price of the device, means we have to keep a separate DVD player around for Netflix-by-mail movies. It would have been nice to collapse everything into one device. The amount of content could be improved as well. An App store could make it possible to get things like Pandora or games on to the TV pretty easily. Rumor has it Apple is planning an App Store for the AppleTV, but there's been no confirmation yet from Apple.

All in all, it's been a very good experience, especially for the price, and I'd buy it again given the choice. Next project: Jailbreak the AppleTV and install XBMC to see if I can squeak every ounce of functionality out of our new toy :).