Watching TV on the Web

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If regular TV doesn't float your boat and you don't have satellite TV, don't despair. You can turn to Internet TV.

Internet television is nothing new, but it's only now with faster broadband connections that it's becoming quite viable for the average home viewer to get some of this content on their PCs.

However, what we've discovered in the process of writing this article is that despite being around for a few years now, the technology for streaming TV content on the Net is still very much in its infancy.

There is generally no particular standard, the videos are pretty low quality, and not to mention a distinct lack of support from the big television networks of the world in providing content.

Nevertheless, using our home broadband Internet connection, we went online and had a look at the world of IP-based television (i.e. television available on the Net).

AZUREUS VUZE

AZUREUS is one of the most popular front-ends for BitTorrent, which, while not in itself illegal, is usually the gateway to a lot of illegal content.

However, the makers of Azureus have recently been trying to clean up the idea of so-called torrenting, trying to turn it into a viable and speedy way to distribute legitimate high-definition content with the introduction of VUZE, the updated Azureus client.

VUZE still runs the internals of the open-source Azureus client, but the interface has been updated with a search feature that lets you browse and download legitimate and free HD content.

VUZE distributes content the same way you get BitTorrent content – click on a link on the browser and download the small torrent file, and wait for the file to download.

Currently, VUZE has a lot of free content, but is quite short on real TV shows – most are HD trailers and independently-created videos although there are a few shows that have been licensed to VUZE to show, such as BBC HD and Showtime!

Unfortunately, not all the content is available to users outside of the United States and the system still has a few bugs.

Plus, you can't immediately watch a show – you have to wait for the download to be fully completed before you can start watching and this could be hours or days from the moment you click on the link.

Nevertheless you can get VUZE at http://www.vuze.com/.

Pros: Works on regular BitTorrent peer-to-peer network; nice browser for checking out videos

Cons: Have to wait till entire video is downloaded; lack of compelling content

JOOST

ALTHOUGH still in beta, Joost is turning out to be an interesting online television experience.

Wrapped around a slick yet simple interface, Joost works on the same principles that drive free terrestrial TV – the use of advertising to help support the cost of the shows.

Started by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, better known as the founders of Skype and Kazaa, Joost promises to offer streaming content that is near-TV quality at very high speeds.

Joost's main draw is that unlike most free TV alternatives, it offers some pretty well-known (if not A-list) shows from channels such as AXN, MTV, Adult Swim (Cartoon Network for adults) and some sci-fi content from Alliance Atlantis (Total Recall 2070, Earth: Final Conflict, etc) as well.

While the concept of streaming TV is not new, it's how Joost achieves this that is interesting.

Unlike traditional forms of video streaming which rely on delivering video from a number of central servers, Joost utilises peer-to-peer technology to distribute video streams, thus only a small number of servers are needed to "seed" the content.

This content is then propagated to more clients and from there to even more, and so on.

QUALITY VIDEO: Joost offers some content from Alliance Atlantis, shown here is Total Recall.

The main advantage of this technique is that there is very little load on the servers, and the more clients log on, the faster the video streaming becomes, thus allowing users to watch on demand television almost instantly.

In contrast, using the traditional method of offering up content from a central server would mean slower and slower streaming speeds as more and more users log on to stream content.

From our tests, there were occasional stutters (after all the service is still in beta) but we were quite impressed by the speed and quality of the videos.

As we said, programming is also not bad at all on Joost, with quite a number of music and sports channels available as well as some entertainment channels.

If you want to get Joost (pardon the pun) check out http://www.joost.com/.

The current beta is by invitation only so ask a friend who already has Joost to send you one.

Pros: Videos display almost immediately at amazingly good quality; better content than most.

Cons: Still in beta; some channels (like Adult Swim and BBC) not available in our country.

MITV

ON THE local front, there are actually very few companies that offer TV over the Internet.

MiTV is one of the few, and although it initially offered streaming broadband content with a few channels from neighbouring countries, the company is now on hiatus while it prepares for a "re-launch" in the near future.

Pros: None

Cons: A non-starter right now as far as streaming video is concerned.

WORLDIP.TV

DESPITE the name, World IP TV (http://www.worldip.tv/) does not offer international programming – instead, the "World" part seems to refer to offering the world our local programs.

Yes, in other words, it offers exclusively local content from our own terrestrial TV stations like TV3, 8TV and NTV7.

Apparently, the service uses an in-house developed streaming engine that compresses and streams the video in MPEG4 format – the files are small enough that it will work on a relatively slow broadband connection of just 250kbps, but will of course be better if you have a faster connection.

The advantage of WorldIP.TV is that it works through your regular browser – we found that while it doesn't seem to work with Mozilla Firefox (probably due to lack of the appropriate plugin), it worked just fine with Internet Explorer.

LOCAL CONTENT: WorldIP.TV offers content from our terrestrial TV stations like TV3, 8TV and NTV7.

The programs are strictly local content only, with shows like Akademi Fantasia, 8 E-News and Melodi, but probably the most useful are the news broadcasts from the local stations, which are refreshed every 24 hours.

Picture quality is not bad and runs as a streaming video using Windows Media Player in windowed mode, or can even be stretched to full screen mode, offering pretty reasonable quality.

The relatively small video sizes means that you don't have to wait very long before the show starts playing and will continue mostly without stuttering.

Pros: Pretty fast.

Cons: Only local content offered; video quality is not great compared to other clients.

ASTRO BROADBAND

APART from its satellite TV service, Astro actually offers a broadband TV option – however, contrary to what you might think, it does not include any content from the regular service.

Instead, Astro Broadband TV has football, football and more football – yes, it's video streaming strictly for football enthusiasts only.

You can get to Astro Broadband TV by going to http://www.astro.com.my/ and clicking on the Broadband TV tab.

STRICTLY FOOTBALL: The Astro Broadband TV is aimed at footie enthusiasts only.

Skip this if you're not a football fan.

Pros: Football, football, football

Cons: Football, football, football

VEOH

THE new kid on the block is Veoh, and so far it looks like a pretty promising service, although the legality of some of the videos are a little suspect.

Backed by media mogul Michael Eisner, Veoh offers a variety of interesting content from YouTube and, more interestingly, shows streamed from major TV networks like ABC and Fox.

Veoh lets the viewers choose between two methods of watching videos – either using the online interface as it streams at http://www.veoh.com/ or via a special downloadable player.

US TV : The Veoh website offers some streaming and downloadable content from major US television networks.

Most content seems to be user-uploaded, as well as sourced from YouTube, Google Videos and many other sites so there's obviously some content which is strictly not legal.

Where Veoh differs from YouTube is that instead of grainy, low-quality videos that you can only watch online, Veoh offers downloadable content for much of the videos in higher quality, when you use the Veoh client.

The Veoh client works using peer-to-peer technology and currently downloads are pretty fast – I tested downloading a 140MB file and it was fully downloaded in about 45 minutes on my Streamyx connection.

An interesting aspect of the Veoh client is that it allows you to subscribe to, for example, a TV series, and download all episodes of that show automatically – something which can also be done in Azureus, but not as easily.

A quick browse of the videos available online include Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Batman Begins and loads of Japanese anime series – again whether these are legal or not is not entirely clear.

The client itself is pretty easy to use and looks good, although the interface still needs some work and there is a distinct (probably intentional) lack of settings for more advanced users – such as the ability to cap download speeds or to assign your own ports.

Unfortunately, like VUZE, you have to wait for your videos to completely download before you can watch them, although the upside is that the download speed seems to be a lot faster than VUZE is right now.

Veoh itself allows you not only to download and watch content but also to upload your own videos to the site to share with others.

Pros: Lots of content; can watch via web browser or client; high-quality videos

Cons: Have to wait for videos to download

source: thestar.com.my