Yeah I think that any online video service that is not well-integrated with off-the-shelf set top boxes is going to have a limited audience.
For most people watching movies or shows on the computer is about as likely as reading a book on the computer. Our setup for television is an HD Tivo using the OTA digital tuner. I have UVerse, broadband connection only to get network access. Then for movies we use a combination of Netflix through snail mail, streaming Netflix through Tivo and Amazon Unbox downloads. That ends up about $50/month total for TV + Internet, viewable on, well, the TV, and it's way more TV than we can (or should) watch. Given the Netflix snail mail aspect, we can watch any movie we want, but most of what we want is available on demand or recorded onto the Tivo OTA. We have to wait for cable series for a little bit (Dexter, for example) but that isn't a big problem. FWIW I have tried MythTV in the past, but I'm not a fan. I had issues keeping the client and server in sync, and they would break the protocol on me. Also, it was generally crashy and my wife has NO tolerance for any system that will lose her shows. And then there's hardware... using a general purpose computer for video throws into relief any and all hardware performance issues. I'd rather have a purpose built engineered system for video. That might make me a candidate for a "off the shelf" MythTV box if Tivo ever gets excessively evil or bites the dust. But for now they add a lot of value by tight integration of Amazon and Netflix. -- John. _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list [email protected] http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
