Got my ITVN

[skierrob]

I got my ITVN box yesterday. Here's a few comments:

1. I'm disappointed there is no option for telling the box that I have a 16x9 television instead of a 4x3 television. All I can do is either stretch it on my plasma or watch everything in a 4x3 box (including wide-screen content). Oh well.

2. The picture quality seems "ok" at best. Seems very pixelated in some scenes. I know it's SD and not HD but it looks worse than most Dish SD channels.

3. I do LOVE the ability to use Starz on demand. Lots of good selection of movies right now. I hope they "change up" the offerings a lot so I'm not looking at the same movie list 6 months from now. I also love that it only takes a few seconds for a movie to start -- you don't have to wait for it to download (unlike Akimbo, where everything downloads first).

4. When I called at the end of August, I was told if I subscribed to the Starz pack I would get the base $9.99 stuff also. Now, I'm being told that's extra. I'm disappointed in that. I can see paying $15 for Starz and the extra basic stuff, but can't justify paying $25 for it. I'm also not sure I can justify paying $15 just for Starz alone since I don't watch that many feature-length movies in a month.

5. I would have thought it would have been fairly easy for them to throw some basic "media center" technology in the box, so I could access my pictures, video files and .mp3's from the ITVN box without having to switch to my computer. It would be a great upgrade if that could be possible in the future.

I'm not sure I'll keep it past the 30-day trial, but ITVN really is proof that IPTV has the capability to go mainstream. I just hope they can license more content.

Robert

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Press the up arrow when your watching TV to bump up the bandwidth. Most boxes are defaulted to the lowest bandwidth setting.

I do wish however they would bump up the PQ on the Setanta channel.

The ITVN box is basically a small self contained web browser with Windows Media 9 built in, there is no hard drive in it. I am sure it can do more, but they are focusing on adding new content and channels.

 

[skierrob]

Scott:

Thanks for your comments. I am already on the high bandwidth setting. I think I'm just too used to watching nothing but HD content on Dish and I don't do too well when I'm stuck with a SD picture. *grin*

In terms of 'media center functionality', all I'm really hoping for at some point is the ability to have the ITVN box look at the hard drive on my computer and pull files one at a time off of my computer system. I don't think the ITVN box would need a hard drive for that -- just enough memory to hold the file (picture, music or video) that is currently being played off of my computer's hard drive. I think that's how the Linksys media center players also operate, but I might be wrong about that.

I really DO think that ITVN can be the perfect companion to a Dish or DirecTV subscription, and I think ITVN really shows that Dish / DirecTV could provide true on-demand programming via broadband if they wanted to. Right now, on demand programming is the one thing I really miss about my old cable tv subscription -- the ability to watch Showtime On Demand, HBO On Demand, etc. was awesome. And since Dish isn't "taking the lead" with on demand programming through a broadband connection, ITVN is the best choice out there for on demand programming without spending $20 a month for basic cable on top of the $5 for a digital box, $10 - $12 for Starz / HBO On Demand, another $10 - 12 for HBO / HBO on Demand, etc.

Of course, I'm with Dish because they have awesome HD programming. My cable provider only provided about 8 HD channels. So I was willing to live without On Demand stuff in exchange for all the great HD on Dish.

But now, with ITVN, I can have a bit of both.

Now, if only ITVN struck agreements with HBO and Showtime, and were able to figure out how to provide HD feeds of HBO, Showtime and Starz without needing tons of bandwidth, I'd be in heaven!

Of course, I'd also be in heaven if Dish Network announced tomorrow that they were going to provide Starz On Demand, HBO On Demand and Showtime On Demand via broadband connection. But I know that won't happen.

Robert