[opendtv] Analysis: TV's Future Is Here, but It Needs Work
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 07:03:27 -0400
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/technology/circuits/02pogue.html?th&emc=th
June 2, 2005
TV's Future Is Here, but It Needs Work
By DAVID POGUE
YEARS ago, our futuristic fantasies involved robot butlers, video
wristwatches and flying cars. These days, we would be happy to have a
cellphone with no dead spots, e-mail without spam and the ability to
watch any TV show, anytime we want it.
Actually, they are making progress on that last item. A company
called Akimbo has a tantalizing idea. What if you had a TiVo-like
set-top box, complete with a hard drive that could hold 200 hours of
video - but instead of recording live broadcasts, you could tap into
an enormous library of shows, stored on the Internet, and watch them
whenever you liked?
It's a great concept. TV executives would benefit, because they would
gain a meaningful afterlife for all the shows they have spent
millions to produce - and then broadcast only once. You would
benefit, too, because if you missed some episode of "Desperate
Housewives" or "The Amazing Race," you could just hop over to your
set-top box and download away. It would be like the video-swapping
made possible today by software like BitTorrent, but the service
would be legal.
Unfortunately, Akimbo can offer only what the networks and cable
channels are willing to contribute. And these days, just hearing the
phrase "Internet downloads" generally sends television executives
into paranoid fits. As a result, the Akimbo library is so puny and
overpriced that the enterprise is interesting only as a "what not to
do" case study.
The Akimbo box ($200, but on sale at Akimbo.com for $100 until June
30) is a VCR-size unit with an 80-gigabyte hard drive. It requires a
high-speed Internet connection, either wired (Ethernet) or wireless
(with a specific Linksys U.S.B. adapter).
You connect the Akimbo box to your TV, using standard
red-white-yellow RCA cables or, for slightly better color, an S-Video
cable (not included). Activating your account involves a few minutes
in front of the TV, another few at a Web site and a few more in front
of the TV. The Akimbo downloading service, without which the box is
useless, costs $10 a month or a one-time $170 fee.
Now for the moment of truth: using the remote control, you peruse the
library of 2,000 programs available for downloading.
And then reality slaps you hard: Akimbo's library is laughable. As
Akimbo's Web site puts it, the list includes AdvenTV, "the first
on-demand Turkish station in the U.S."; Veg TV, "vegetarian cooking
instruction"; and Skyworks, "helicopter flights over the most
spectacular landscapes of Britain."
Here is the entire list of sports categories: Billiards, Extreme
Sports, Golf, Martial Arts, Documentaries and Yachting.
You will not find "Desperate Housewives," "The Amazing Race" or any
other network show. The catalog largely consists of shows from
no-name networks, productions from overseas networks and even short
video clips that can already be seen free on the Web.
Some cable networks have contributed material, including Turner
Classic Movies, CNN, A&E, Cartoon Network, Food Network, the BBC and
National Geographic. The selection is limited to a few series from
each network, but at least they are not Turkish sitcoms.
But that is not even the worst of it. If you drill down far enough
into the menus to arrive at the description page for a certain show,
you often come upon the chilling words: "$2.99 (30-day viewing
period)."
That's right: not only do you pay for the Akimbo box and its monthly
$10 fee to get no-name shows, you also have to pay per show. And even
then, the show you buy will erase itself after a month!
This is piracy paranoia run amok. It's insane to think that anyone
would pay so much for cheesy cable reruns and oddities like
three-minute how-to videos for new mothers.
To make matters worse, the rental terms are different for every show.
Some are free. (Akimbo says 40 percent are free, but that tally
includes movie trailers, video blogs, two-minute CNN snippets and
other free stuff from the Web.) The rest cost 50 cents to $5;
pornographic movies are $10 (parental controls are available). Some
stay on your hard drive forever, some self-destruct after 7 or 30
days, and some give you only a two-day window to watch.
Some channels charge per month rather than per show. For example, you
can pay $2 a month for a channel dedicated to Latin culture, $10 for
an all-boxing channel or $13 a month for a children's science channel.
Some of this is not Akimbo's fault. It desperately needs material for
its catalog, so it has to comply with what the networks demand. (This
flailing, of course, is exactly what the music-downloading business
did before Apple broke through the chaos, set the price standard at
99 cents a song and included a copy-protection system. Where's Steve
Jobs when you need him?) But some of Akimbo's failings are all its
own.
Downloading to the Akimbo box usually takes at least as long as the
show itself, and you can't begin watching until the show is fully
downloaded, so it's not exactly video-on-demand. (The speed of your
Internet connection drops during downloading, so it's best to stick
to tasks like reading and sending e-mail.)
The box stores video in Windows Media Player format, which freezes
and drifts out of audio sync from time to time. The box takes about 8
to 12 seconds to begin playing any show. Nothing happens until
several seconds after you press Rewind or Fast Forward, and there's
only one speed: Excruciatingly Slow.
Fast-forwarding 30 minutes into a show takes two and a half minutes.
But that's warp speed compared with rewinding, which is not even half
that fast - and sometimes crashes the machine, shutting it down. You
pine for the days when you could rewind tape by hand.
There are also some subtle bait-and-switch tactics. For example, you
have to drill down four screens deep before discovering that a show
requires a fee or a monthly membership, or is only two minutes long.
And despite Akimbo's claim to be "the first digital quality
video-on-demand service over the Internet," the video quality is
erratic. None of it is high-definition, none of it looks as good as a
DVD, and some of it has the blockiness and pixellation of a Web cam.
One children's series is so obviously a transfer from a VHS cassette,
you can actually see the white streaks of the VCR's dirty heads.
Then there are the poor design decisions, like a remote with no
illumination and listing screens so small that they cannot show the
full names of shows and their descriptions.
In short, Akimbo is a train wreck. But there are a few points of light.
The box is very quiet. You cannot transfer any of your shows to a
computer but you can copy them to a VCR or a DVD recorder's analog
inputs. And there are some offbeat gems of programs among the chaff.
The other good news is that Akimbo is well aware of its problems. "We
don't tell everyone to buy it," said Steve Shannon, the company's
founder. "We say, try it out; we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
It's meant to appeal to people who have an interest in a particular
channel. If you're really into billiards, you might want this thing."
Later this year, the company intends to replace the box's current
operating system with one that will offer faster (and multiple-speed)
rewinding and fast-forwarding. Akimbo also says that it is talking to
several movie studios about offering reasonably current movies.
(They'll be available 30 days after their release to video stores.)
The company also hopes to add year-old network shows eventually, but
don't expect current mainstream fare. "The big networks don't want to
experiment," Mr. Shannon said.
If Akimbo can fix the problems and, more important, bring its
partners to their senses on pricing and time limits, maybe there's
hope.
But in its current incarnation, Akimbo will not win any awards for
value or selection. On the other hand, it might just walk away with
High-Tech Turkey of the Year.
E-mail: Pogue@xxxxxxxxxxx
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
