What goes around comes around: TV shows and movies that hopped over to the Internet are finally coming back home to the TV with all sorts of goodies, and it's about time.
This year saw the emergence of four major media streaming competitors - Apple TV ($99), Roku XDS ($99), Boxee Box ($199) and the Google TV-powered Logitech Revue ($299) - that each boast a different mix of popular free and premium services like Netflix, Pandora, YouTube and Hulu.
"In home theater, compared to other electronic devices like phones and computers, change is a very slow process," says Richard Lawler, the associate editor for tech site Engadget HD. "The combination of content and hardware that can access it takes time to sync up and it's only within the last 12 months that consumer demand, cost to manufacture and, most importantly, content availability have aligned to a degree that makes it all worthwhile."
It might take a while for consumers to actually become aware of these new services, but Netflix has become so ubiquitous that it accounts for more than 20 percent of Internet traffic during peak times, according to a report from networking equipment company Sandvine. Similarly, a Comcast survey found that already two-thirds of its customers had "time-shifted" prime-time TV, or watched a show later using a digital video recorder, video-on-demand service or Internet-streaming.
"We're really in the infancy of these sorts of products," says Jim Willcox, senior editor of electronics at Consumer Reports. For many consumers, bringing a nonlinear medium like streaming video to a traditionally linear medium like TV is a completely new experience.
That's why Willcox thinks TVs with these services built in, like Sony Internet TV (which runs Google TV), might be the most accessible for consumers. They combine multiple devices into one neat package and provide a familiar interface.
That's also why Matthew Moskovciak, associate home theater editor at CNET, thinks many people will find the Apple TV easy to use. The refreshed movie and TV show rental service is a natural extension for users of other Apple products like the iPhone and iPad, which work seamlessly with the service.
What many people may have a difficult time with, though, is finding free content from the major networks. ABC, NBC and CBS all blocked Google TV devices from streaming full episodes of their shows through Hulu. In fact, only a handful of devices, like Playstation 3 and Roku, currently support Hulu, but these all require a subscription to the premium version of the streaming service. That said, there is still a wealth of different channels available among these devices. The Roku XDS especially, which Moskovciak calls "the best cord-cutter," offers a huge variety of content with additional services like Amazon Video on Demand, MLB.tv, Pandora Internet radio and other niche channels. The Boxee Box offers a similarly diverse range of content, along with Facebook and Twitter integration. Google TV is essentially a full-featured Web browser, so it offers access to almost any streaming video that would be regularly accessible from a computer. Choosing a service can be difficult.
"The key thing to do is to focus on your specific needs and get a device that performs tasks you know you will want," Lawler says. "That said, if you're not willing to face the possibility of upgrading again in 12 months for another gotta-have-it feature, you may want to wait."
Theoretically, even expensive TVs with built-in streaming capabilities should be able to keep up through software updates. But manufacturers are still trying to read the marketplace, and so the technology is likely to change rapidly. With some of the cheaper streaming devices and Blu-ray players hovering around $100, though, taking advantage of Internet-streaming media on the TV can move from "investment" to "impulse buy."
