Akimbo - TV Over The Internet

[peano]

Akimbo is the first fully functional marriage of TV and the Internet, combining easy access to new and fresh video content with the comfort of watching it on your TV- all using the Internet. The Akimbo Player—the hardware of the Akimbo system—is a stylish set-top box that connects your broadband Internet service to your television set. Simple on-screen menus make it easy to choose and receive up to 200 hours of high quality video that the Akimbo Service delivers right into your Akimbo Player.

[I_Want_My_HDTV]

Neat idea, except Rogers will cut off your high speed if you watch too much TV with it. :lol:

I saw a similar system a while ago that uses two boxes. One sends TV signals over the internet and the other receives them. It is designed so that people in Japan can send television shows to family members in other countries. The boxes are built using Linux PCs.

[WQP]

www.akimbo.com

It's tempting - but they have a limited library and it's hard to tell what's actually included in the basic rate.

Anyone actually tried this yet?

[jem]

I haven't tried it yet, but I am seriously tempted by the Media Center version.

[classicsat]

Read this thread:
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/for...ad.php?t=21334

My take: There is a good bit of programming on Akimbo exclusive to Canadain broadcasters here, to legally, you are not entitled to receive them through the Akimbo service, and likely will be prevented from.

IMO, unless there is some specific Canada cleared content on the service, it wouldn't be worth the trouble, until they have broad interest programming on it.

You might be better of getting a DVR to use with the programming service you have now.

[Jeffy]

DIY IPTV service: Assuming you have a cousin (or whatever) living in the USA and he's got a DirecTV subscription and unlimited broadband. He can get one more DTV receiver very easily and install it in a closet somewhere. You add a Sony 'Location Free TV' base unit to the closet. Now go home and you can watch and control DirecTV from Kanada.

Broadband makes the border quite porous to 'TV'. Akimbo sounds like a good start.

[SensualPoet]

I happen to have Akimbo (aka broadbandtv.com). The STB was CAN$300 from the Vancouver office. Monthly subscription fee is US$9.99 and covers a modest amount of "free" programming. (There is also an option for a lifetime programming fee of US$179.) Many programs are $1 to $5; they reside on the unit's hard drive typically for a 30 day license window.

The rub is that most of the interesting content is locked out for Canadian subscribers. This includes: A&E, Adult Swim, Animal Planet, BBC, Cartoon Network, CNN, Discovery Networks, DIY Network, Fine Living, Food Network, Granada TV, GreenCine, HGTV, History Channel, Military Channel, Stage One, Tennis Channel, TLC, Travel Channel, Turner Classic Movies and Wheels TV.

You'll recognize a lot of the names as have license arrangements with cable and satellite companies here. There is no easy fix to that.

The picture quality leaves something to be desired -- it's not bad but it is not as sharp as regular SD on cable. There is no HD content.

You can also chew up a lot of bandwidth getting programming and if you use an Internet provider that sets download limits you might run into prolems if you are a heavy user.

But it's also kinda cool, too. You can browse the net from the office and programming is downloaded to your STB automatically.

Basically this is release 0.3. A good idea; a working proof of concept; a work in progress. It's a much better deal in the US because of all the extra content.

[Jeffy]

"...interesting content is locked out for Canadian subscribers....no easy fix..."

There's an old joke, "On the Internet, nobody knows that you're a dog." The cartoon shows a dog surfing the 'net. Probably from The New Yorker.

Replace 'dog' with 'Canadian' and it is still true - if not quite as funny.

[classicsat]

Originally Posted by Jeffy

DIY IPTV service: Assuming you have a cousin (or whatever) living in the USA and he's got a DirecTV subscription and unlimited broadband. He can get one more DTV receiver very easily and install it in a closet somewhere. You add a Sony 'Location Free TV' base unit to the closet. Now go home and you can watch and control DirecTV from Kanada.

Broadband makes the border quite porous to 'TV'. Akimbo sounds like a good start.

Actually, Slingbox is what you want there. Although used in that sort of instance would violate numerous rights, if not a law or two.

Originally Posted by Jeffy

"...interesting content is locked out for Canadian subscribers....no easy fix..."

There's an old joke, "On the Internet, nobody knows that you're a dog." The cartoon shows a dog surfing the 'net. Probably from The New Yorker.

Replace 'dog' with 'Canadian' and it is still true - if not quite as funny.

The difference being that a Canadian is a person of a particular, and separate, geo-political content market than a USAan, a dog simply being a different species.

It boils down to the broadband/internet actually not erasing distribution rights border, so that if somebody wishes to enforce rights, they can and will.

The only real fix is to loosen the content market rights rules. to allow continent or worldwide IPTV rights, meaning the Canadian rightsholders are only good for TV, or for the IPTV provider to work with Canadian specialty channels for Canadian IPTV rights.

Any futzing around with grey market or IP proxting or whatever would violate the rights of Canadian rightsholders.

[Crispy]

"The only real fix is to loosen the content market rights rules....."

Actually the easier fix is to change your PC regional settings to "United States", clear your cache and then reload the site and voila your viewed as American.

Of course this fix is referring to the Media Center Edition plugin version.

Crispy

[dialog_gvf]

TiVo comes to Canada --very quietly

More than three million Americans have embraced their TiVo boxes, which plug into cable or satellite TV connections and record content. Their cultish enthusiasm has come to be billed as the TiVolution.

Compatibility

If you subscribe to digital cable, it's likely your digital cable box can automatically switch between the "A" and "B" feeds. In this case, the TiVo® service will work with all of your channels.

For SD it sounds like TiVo directly controls the cable STB, and thus can record the outputs from the STB (i.e. the STB becomes TiVo's tuner). And I guess it has a standard analog cable tuner too.

Not much use for HD, given our zero support for CableCARD and Firewire.

Gary

[guido]

From everything I've heard, TiVo plays nicely with the Rogers Box.. I has to communicate via IR blaster to change channels etc.

[nfitz]

Originally Posted by guido

From everything I've heard, TiVo plays nicely with the Rogers Box.. I has to communicate via IR blaster to change channels etc.

So what are the attractions of using a TiVo PVR over the SA units? With all the HD content, having more than 20-hours of recording time would be nice! Are they cheaper to rent?

Nick

[57]

Nick, I believe you missed the point. This is an SD TiVo discussion. There have already been plenty of similar threads - type TiVo into the search engine. TiVo has a "superior" IPG and options.

If you want more than 20 hours of HD recording and you've got an SA8300HD, simply add a SATA drive. (discussed in the SATA thread).

[nfitz]

Originally Posted by 57

Nick, I believe you missed the point. This is an SD TiVo discussion. There have already been plenty of similar threads - type TiVo into the search engine. TiVo has a "superior" IPG and options.

Uh, I'm not seeing any other posts for TIVO on Rogers ... lots of sideways references for TIVOs ... lots of moaning about how much better TIVO is. But nothing about TIVO on Rogers ... also not seeing why this thread preclude discussion of HD ... anyway, I'm searching ... perhaps you can point me to the correct TIVO on Rogers thread ...

Am I the only one on this forum, who is starting to get frustrated with every response to a post being "but we said this 254 days ago in this thread, didn't you read it" responses? At that, am I the only one frustrated by this big huge uber-threads, where your supposed to read 500 posts, but can't find any signal in all the noise? These uber-threads are not very organic ...

Originally Posted by 57

If you want more than 20 hours of HD recording and you've got an SA8300HD, simply add a SATA drive. (discussed in the SATA thread).

Yeah, well aware of that thread ... had no desire to to start screwing around with Rogers' hardware ... on another forum someone was flaming me about opening a Rogers box on the outside of my house to fix a connection ... not sure I see the difference here ... (P.S. Just popped over to that thread ... case in point. There are 396 posts in there ... 396 posts is no longer information, it's abusive! Time to lock it, and let a new thread start!)

Nick