There is some television that just needs to be watched live, wherever geographically you happen to be. When tied up at the office until late, travelling for work or play, or keeping an important dinner-date with family, live TV will wait for no man. It is no longer good enough to set your VCR or DVD recorder before you leave the house, so you can watch the All Ireland Football Final, or the first in the new season of Lost, when you get home.
The game and score will be well critiqued by radio broadcasters on your journey home in the car, that’s if you get that far and a mate doesn’t call to discuss the finer points of the match.
Notebook is the new home TV
Not going to be in your living room when your company advert airs for the first time or your girlfriend’s series debuts on TV? Never mind, new technology files these concerns to the archives of the past. It’s now possible, via a high speed, constant internet connection, to view live television, broadcasting to your set at home, more or less anywhere on a PC or notebook.
TV anywhere boxes
Two new set-top box products on the market, available from companies such as Sony and Sling Media can beam any live TV shows available in your home to an internet connected Windows PC anywhere in the world. So when cooped up in a hotel room abroad on a work trip or otherwise, there’s no longer the need to sit through bizarre foreign TV chat shows while missing your favourite soaps at home. The now available technology allows you to control your home TV and digital recorder from an Internet-connected computer even if you are thousands of miles away; also allowing you to remotely watch shows you have recorded on your digital recording device on your notebook PC, anywhere.
Likewise, Wi-Fi spots in airports become more like your living room; at internet-enabled cafes, work places or otherwise, sit back and watch what your family is watching at home. Watch the shows you always watch, from anywhere in the world, live!
Enter place shifting
Way back when, consumers saw “time shifting” technology – the VCR recording function, whereby you programmed your recording device to record a programme from your television when you were not at home or unable to watch it, but could play it back later. The latest technology though has been coined “place shifting” – the time, format and medium remain the same, only the viewer has moved but can still remotely access the set.
“Time shifting” and “place shifting” does sound a bit, to borrow from Einstein, theoretically relative, but the products that deliver this global remote control of your telly are out there and the use of remote access PCs to control not just your television but all aspects of your home and entertainment systems, via a broadband wireless connection are becoming necessary parts of modern living.
Genial boxes
The Slingbox, a product of Slingmedia, offers a break-through consumer electronics device that enables home users to watch their living room TV programming from wherever they are by turning virtually any Internet-connected Windows-based computer into a personal TV. The Slingbox redirects, or “placeshifts,” a single live TV stream from a basic aerial connection, cable box, satellite receiver or personal video recorder to the viewer’s PC – located anywhere in the home, in bed, in the garden, or away via the Internet.
Accepting video feeds through composite, S-Video and coaxial connections, as well as RCA audio, the Slingbox relies on the Windows Media Video format enhanced with the company’s own proprietary stream optimisation technology to stream a single TV channel.
Slingbox comprises a hardware device that also connects to a home router, plus a software client that’s installed on the notebook. In the future, Sling Media plans to add clients for Wi-Fi-enabled PDAs and third-generation mobile phones.
Sony also recently launched its Locationfree technology in Europe, meaning Irish consumers now have a second choice of products with the ability to take their live media on-the-go.
With Locationfree, and a broadband connection, you can watch live TV, play back recorded programmes and even set up future recordings, all from a PC, laptop or PSP system (software version 2.70). Built-in wireless technology gives you the freedom of your own home (and garden), and your high speed internet connection does the rest.
Releasing TV from the living room is only the start. With Locationfree and a fast, always-on internet connection, it’s a simple matter to watch TV and control a set top box or HDD recorder from anywhere on earth with network or wireless access. The process of using this streaming of a live television channel over the Internet – termed NetAV – is as simple as connecting up within the house.
Fast broadband is a must
For consumers always looking to upgrade security in their homes, the new “TV Anywhere” technology has benefits too. It’s is possible to hook your home video camera up to the base stations of these products for a way to see and communicate with friends and relatives abroad or even to monitor home security while you’re away.
Equipped with a high speed internet or broadband connection, today’s consumers’ can gain access to the entertainment they want, at any time, anywhere. The kind of remote access this latest technology brings in was only dreamed about a few years ago, but broadband suppliers such as BT, because of the speed and always-on nature of the connection, are opening the door to the best technological developments this century.
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