As someone who has built their own custom Home Theater PC, I will say that it is an "experience" and not one for the faint of heart. Building it to begin with is a large project, and if you choose Windows as I did, supporting it never ends. My TIVO was rock-solid but my HTPC tends to break at the most inconvenient times and there are other snaffu's like DVD's that wont play because of their wonderful copy protection.
Despite the difficulty, it is nice have a single box in the living room that can watch regular TV or HDTV, play a movie on DVD or hard drive, pipe all my music to the stereo and play Internet radio stations. Which is probably why so many companies are chasing "convergence."
There have been several articles of late on downloading movies. Dont get your hopes up though; the hurdles are legal not technical.
Watching your PC on a TV is cumbersome? Not if you own an Apple laptop...
Watching From the Living Room
Tech Firms Scramble to Provide Easy Ways to Connect PCs to TVs
April 11, 2006
As more popular entertainment becomes available over the Internet, the urgency is growing to complete one of the technology industry's great unresolved quests: devising products that let users watch video from the Internet on their television sets with ease.
The industry's biggest players, including Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Intel Corp., along with an array of Silicon Valley start-ups, are focused on bridging the gap between TVs and PCs -- and plenty of interim solutions exist. For now, though, the technology still isn't quite ready for average consumers to use easily, and television programmers are being careful not to over-reach with their new Web television efforts.
Device-makers like Cisco Systems have come out with products that let users play videos stored on their PCs on a television set. But they aren't applicable to the Disney approach. ABC is releasing its free episodes of "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and "Alias" in a "Webcast" form that will not allow viewers to store copies of the videos on their computers.
Viewers who want to watch the ABC shows on their television sets can still connect PCs directly to TVs via cables. But that approach is cumbersome, particularly if they are in different rooms. In addition, ABC is delivering its shows in a format designed to look good on laptops and PC monitors, but not necessarily on big-screen televisions.
Movielink is a step but far from consumer friendly.
Movie Debut: Films for Sale By Download
April 3, 2006
When the hit "Brokeback Mountain" is released on DVD tomorrow, fans won't have to visit a store to buy the movie. In a first for a major new studio film, broadband Internet users simultaneously will be able to legally purchase and keep an electronic copy using their computers.
The "Brokeback" online release is the result of a deal that Movielink LLC, a movie-downloading service, has made with five major studios -- General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal Pictures, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox. The pact finally allows consumers to download and own a copy of major film releases, both new and catalog titles. In the past, online services like Movielink have only allowed users to rent films downloaded from the Internet, and then only weeks after the movies hit bricks-and-mortar stores. Now, consumers will be able to buy electronic copies the same day the DVD is offered by Best Buy Co. or Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The deals represent a serious step forward in online movie distribution, which has been bogged down by a variety of technical issues and business concerns.
"This is a sign that the studios have moved beyond seeing the delivery of movie downloads over broadband as simply a need to combat piracy to seeing real consumer demand and wanting to fulfill it," says Jim Ramo, Movielink's chief executive.
Movielink, a cooperative venture of the major film studios, isn't alone in opening this new chapter of online movie distribution. CinemaNow Inc., a competitor, has made a similar arrangement with Sony and Lionsgate and also plans to begin selling films this week.
The new pacts are far from perfect -- both of the deals essentially discourage viewers from watching the movies they buy on televisions, virtually forcing them to watch on computers. Movielink will allow consumers to burn a backup DVD of the movie and to keep the movie on as many as three computers. But the discs burned from Movielink will play only in computer hard drives, not on DVD players. If consumers have a Microsoft Media Center Edition PC, they can stream their copy of a Movielink movie to a TV set connected to a Media Center extender or Xbox.
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There are other catches. The movies on both services require more than an hour to download, even on a high-speed connection. Both services, however, run technology that allows viewers to start watching a few minutes after the movie starts downloading. The studios haven't promised to make all new titles available at the same time as the DVD versions. Walt Disney Co. hasn't yet signed up for the sales or the earlier release dates.
Movielink and CinemaNow are already being challenged by possible competition. Several other electronic movie-purchase services are in the works, including one from Amazon.com Inc. Meanwhile, Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store -- which offers TV shows and other video content for sale -- has held discussions with movie studios about feature-film content, but so far hasn't struck deals.
Moviebeam is interesting because it uses a closed network, not the Internet, to download content. A closed system may have more ability to get past the legal hurdles.
A New Way to Avoid the Video Store
We Review Digital Gadget Prestocked With 100 Films; Selection Is a Drawback
8 March 2006
AFTER A LONG DAY at work, there's something calming about filling a bowl with popcorn and watching a movie at home. But the experience can be diminished if you have to drive to the video store to rent a DVD. And it's worse if you get there only to find that the film you want is out of stock.
Even if you subscribe to a DVD-by-mail service, like NetFlix, you may have to wait for the most popular films, and the movies you have on hand at any one time might not fit your mood. Plus, you have to pay a monthly fee.
Now, a new company called MovieBeam is aiming to ease those DVD issues. It is selling a $200 digital gadget prestocked with 100 movies -- some in high definition -- that you can rent at the click of a remote-control button for as little as $1.99. There's no drive to the video store, no chance of a movie being out of stock, no monthly fee, no waiting for the mail.
The MovieBeam service doesn't require a computer or Internet connection, and it operates independently of your cable or satellite provider. The MovieBeam box, which looks like a slim DVD player without a slot for DVDs, is basically a smart hard disk drive that connects to your TV and receives new films every week via a small, inconspicuous indoor antenna.
MovieBeam, which was developed by Walt Disney Co., and is now an independent firm partly owned by Disney, is only one of a number of new digital services aiming to compete with the likes of Blockbuster and NetFlix.
Most of these competitors, including older services like MovieLink and CinemaNow, and newer ones like Vongo, are based on the Internet. They offer downloadable movies for a per-film fee, or via a subscription.
But these sites require a high-speed Internet connection and, even then, you may have to wait while a film slowly downloads. Also, the movies they sell wind up on a computer, and aren't sent directly to a TV set, where most people prefer to watch movies.
Others, such as Comcast's On Demand service, do arrive directly at a TV set, and are instantaneous. But they can be costly, and also suffer from a limited selection.
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