D* Vod

[varaonaid]

Hi,

I've searched around and can't seem to find much basic info in D*'s VOD service. I'm just curious if it's PPV only, if they have free offerings, if it's mostly SD, etc. Any info you could offer or even a link where I can find that information, would be awesome! Thanks so much in advance!

Rae

 

[goaliebob99]

Its a mixture of both... There is PPV, and Ton's of free offerings. While the HD side of things have been lacking, they have been adding a bunch of hd on the HDVOD side lately. All the free offerings are from channels like noggin, cartoon network, Nick, MTV, ect. It compares to Comcast's VOD.

 

[goober22]

It is mostly free with some PPV. It's pretty much what cable VOD is - probably 80% free content, 20% PPV w/fees. It will have a "$" next to the paid content with the price.

 

[jokeworm]

I just signed up and I must say - I am quite impressed with the offerings. I did not think that there would be nearly this much available.

I'm very surprised that they are not shouting this from the rooftops as it would be a HUGE selling point if they were able to get the message across .. would certainly have gotten me to signup a few weeks earlier.

I do not generally subscribe to premium movie channels .. but will probably keep Starz after my free trial .. just for the on-demand alone... (approx 200 free movies between starz and encore on-demand)

Seems like most channels are using the on-demand to show 4 or 5 episodes of their most popular shows .. not a bad idea .. give you an idea to see if the format is the kind of thing that you might like ...

sample content ...

CNN - approx 50 clips/segments
HGTV - approx 50 episodes of most popular shows
Food - Approx 50 episodes of most popular shows
Style - Approx 25 episodes of most popular shows
E! - Approx 30 episodes
TBS - about 15-20 episodes
Comedy Central - 30 episodes/clips
TCM - 20 Movies
FMC - approx 25 movies
A&E - approx 50 episodes ..

you get the idea ... there are about 60 on-demand channels available right now ... if you figure that the average channel has around 40 episodes ... that's approx 2500 episodes/shows/movies to chose from.

As far as i can tell - there is very little content that is pay-per view.

I would say it was closer to 95% free 5% pay (mostly the artsy movies) - Have not had it long enough to know how frequently the content is changed around .. but i know that the Starz adds/removes/changes out approx 15/20 new movies each week.

 

[DaveO]

I just signed up and I must say - I am quite impressed with the offerings. I did not think that there would be nearly this much available.

Ok, dumb question, where on the D* site can I find anything about VOD? I've never seen it listed anywhere. Where did you sign up for it?

Doing a search on the D* website for VOD or video on demand returns nothing at all.

 

[DaveO]

Ok, dumb question, where on the D* site can I find anything about VOD? I've never seen it listed anywhere. Where did you sign up for it?

Doing a search on the D* website for VOD or video on demand returns nothing at all.

Duh, ok, I see "on demand" on my remote and figured that you need an internet connection for it.
I'll have to look into how to set up my dvr to connect to the internet.

 

[jokeworm]

I meant "just signed up with directv" .. not "just signed up for the VOD"

.. but .. to activate ... i hooked up my ethernet cable to the HR-21 ... went to - menu - setup - system setup - network - then "test connection" - once that worked ok - i rebooted the receiver ... left it a couple of hours and i eventually saw the channel 1000 - directv on demand was available .. then a few hours later the individual channels started coming in - the next day pretty much everything was showing in the guide and was available.

Looks like it does take up to 24 hours for the whole guide info to download to your receiver.

 

[rad]

Ok, dumb question, where on the D* site can I find anything about VOD? I've never seen it listed anywhere. Where did you sign up for it?

Doing a search on the D* website for VOD or video on demand returns nothing at all.

Since it's still a beta product I guess they don't advertise it, but here's a link you can check out, DIRECTV on Demand

 

[DaveO]

I meant "just signed up with directv" .. not "just signed up for the VOD"

.. but .. to activate ... i hooked up my ethernet cable to the HR-21 ... went to - menu - setup - system setup - network - then "test connection" - once that worked ok - i rebooted the receiver ... left it a couple of hours and i eventually saw the channel 1000 - directv on demand was available .. then a few hours later the individual channels started coming in - the next day pretty much everything was showing in the guide and was available.

Looks like it does take up to 24 hours for the whole guide info to download to your receiver.

Thanks, so it looks like all I need is an ethernet cable. I thought that there was some kind of box needed between the recvr and the router.. Not so it looks.

 

[charper1]

No, you can hard wire if you can (looks, distance, etc) but IF you can't, then you can you a wireless adapter/bridge. But neither is specifically required, its a user call.

 

[varaonaid]

Wow! I had no idea that the VOD library was that extensive or that they changed it up regularly. I'm very impressed. I was worried that it would be primarily PPV but I would use the free VOD a lot! Thanks *so* much for all the info!

 

[jcrandall]

I think they secure network partnerships (abc, nbc, cbs, fox, pbs) and they are good to start advertising and promoting it against comcast. Comcast touts their VOD as special, and after using both Comcast has a small advantage of speed, but they are also the customers ISP.

Directv can easily have more content if they want to.

 

[jokeworm]

Comcast has a small advantage of speed, but they are also the customers ISP.

I just started a download on the travel channel - it was a 45 min show .. went right into my list and started playing the show .. never missed a beat. It really is "on demand" - I have never had to wait for a download to complete or "buffer" itself - my downloads seem to happen at a faster rate than i can watch them.

Have to admit - I've not yet tried HD .. but I'm very happy with it so far .. and the limited ads in most of the shows are great.

 

[autiger62]

Is VOD available ONLY in a streaming mode, or can you download a video to your DVR and watch it later? If you can D/L to DVR, does the selection expire? I suspect that the PPV's do but what about free stuff?

 

[JAG72]

Is VOD available ONLY in a streaming mode, or can you download a video to your DVR and watch it later? If you can D/L to DVR, does the selection expire? I suspect that the PPV's do but what about free stuff?

Yes you can download to your DVR to watch later. That is basically all it is doing. To watch now you have to wait until X amount of the program has been download so it will not be any unwanted pauses during the show.

 

[varaonaid]

Hey, that's cool that it's both immediate and truly "on-demand" as well as being able to d/l and watch it later via DVR. This is a great feature that E* doesn't really have an equivalent to right now, as far as I can see. And I agree that if/when D* promotes it, it will really be a selling point. There are loads of times when I sit down and would watch something from the beginning if I could choose it from a VOD library. And, if I'm not mistaken, didn't one of the previous posters mentioned that the premiums have VOD's as well (obviously if you sub to the channel ). If so, that's awesome...

 

[dddane]

ok .. i couldn't find any other general on demand beta feedback threads, so i'm posting my feedback here..

first, it has a suprisingly abundant amount of on demand content available..

i don't have an ethernet cable near my DVR and was debating whether to buy a bridge or run a cable.. i was about to buy one when someone yesterday at work completely randomly asked if i wanted one, she is moving and brought a box of stuff in she didn't need... so i hooked it up.

apparently the wireless method is supported but not recommmended by them.... i don't fully understand this, since the slowest link is the broadband--by far. the wireless is plenty fast to support downloading at the fullest speed of whatever broadband i might have.

the problem is my broadband is ATT dsl, which sucks... i have now had it a year and am probably cancelling it to get comcast cable modem (as much as i cringe at the thought of that), or i'm calling them out to make them fix it... (my neighbors downstairs is the exact same dsl yet his is faster most of the time...). it's a tad bizarre, but they can never pinpoint any issues.

anyway...

it works reasonably well.. but things download at a snail's pace. so it's not as good as comcast VOD by any comparison on that front, it's more on demand in the sense of "look through the list, check what you want to download before you go to bed, next day it's there" .. (my connection is somewhere around 700 kbps)... even with the fastest cable modem i don't think the mentality of how to use it would be much different.

occasionally when it's downloading it's telling me it's having problems connecting to the internet... i think it's bogging down my connection too much... and then it's even starting to cause slowness on my laptop while content is downloading. i don't mind that it's having problems, but it's annoying that it has to pop up and tell me.. i wish it would just continue on when it can... and i wish you could just schedule the downloads, so it really could just download overnight, even if i selected to download it right now.

so here is my wish list:
-ability to turn off internet connection errors
-ability to throttle bandwidth used so it doesn't hostily take over my broadband
-ability to schedule VOD downloads overnight by either an actual scheduler, or just a fixed window period that never changes, not immediatly download when added to queue ... (i see there is a "pause download" button, but resuming is a manual process)
-...in the future it would be nice if the Internet connectivity was used for other more useful stuff ... since a DVR is a computer and they try to charge you PC type prices for getting one, they should add more PC-like functionality... (web browsing?? who knows).
-media sharing would be nice... either downloading your DVR's content from the web, or other receivers in the house, etc... (does the "CE" betas do any of this?); along the same lines, web scheduling of my DVR content would be nice
-i'm sure a lot of others here would appreciate a USB wireless adapter capability, since that's a $20 part vs a wireless bridge which is 3x that.
-is there a way to remove all "$" items from the list? i'm not likely to spend money on a movie released in 1995, let alone 1970... (there are some of both of these)
-hitting the "back" button from when you're viewing the specific show/VOD item takes you back to browsing the list you were on, but it seems like it's redownloading the whole list.. it's slow and clunky because of this

 

[varaonaid]

Thanks for the feedback. Always good to hear actual user experiences.

Sounds like your DSL connection could be a big part of the problem. Some of the other posters had immediate access to the VOD library and programs without waiting for the download. With the other internet connection errors you were getting (and past problems) this seems the likely issue.

web scheduling of my DVR content would be nice

If I understand what you're wanting in this "wish", D* offers it already. Check out this link for more info.