How to effectively receive video content

By Adam Engst

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We're in the middle of a sea change in how we acquire and watch video, whether that's serialized television shows, must-see sporting events, blockbuster movies, quirky documentaries or even homemade video clips. Here's a guide to help sort out how to acquire video entertainment.

First, let’s look at how most of us choose our videos:

• Availability. Every method of acquiring video has some requirements, and for many people, those requirements may be impossible or financially infeasible.
• Cost. Television used to be free in exchange for our viewing of commercials, but those days are long gone -- or are they?
• Selection of shows. The rise of cable TV was driven by the slim selection of shows on broadcast TV (which was actually none  if you couldn't pick up any channels).
• Freshness. Discussing the latest baseball game or hit TV shows with friends and colleagues remains a significant cultural common ground.
• Time-shifting. We want control over when we watch. Thanks to new technologies and business models, viewers are overcoming the tyranny of the broadcast TV schedule.
• Place-shifting. Finally, although most people still watch video on TV screens that continually increase in size, portable DVD players have been around for a while, laptop displays are now frequently large and widescreen, and video iPods are becoming ever more popular. We want control over not just what and when we watch, but where we watch it too.

Let’s compare the various alternatives now with these different metrics. You might also want to review the various choices for buying your basic TV service with this article here.

Broadcast over the air

• Availability: Good, particularly in metropolitan areas
• Ongoing Cost: $0, but comes with plenty of advertising
• Selection of shows: Limited to mainstream shows; improved with a DVR
• Freshness: Excellent for TV, poor for movies
• Time-shifting: Requires VCR or DVR, but legal
• Place-shifting: Possible, but requires extra effort and gear

Many of us with our high-speed Internet connections think of over-the-air broadcast television as a quaint vestige of the 1950s, with images of Dad up on the roof adjusting the antenna to improve reception of the big game. The reality is that as of December 2006, about 13 percent of U.S. television households - roughly 15 million homes - still rely on broadcast TV, as do higher percentages of viewers in other countries. And why not? Availability suffers from physical barriers and the selection of shows can be restricted by limited channel reception. But at the same time, advertising-supported broadcast TV is free to receive; provides the latest network news, major sports events, and most commonly watched shows; and doesn't restrict viewers' ability to time-shift.

It's worth noting that a digital video recorder (DVR) like the TiVo significantly improves not just the viewer's ability to time-shift, but also broadcast TV's show selection. That's because it enables more efficient mining of shows that are broadcast at odd times.

For those in the United States, it's particularly worth noting that as broadcasters switch from old analog channels to new high-definition digital channels, they can offer more channels. The switch must be complete by February 18, 2009, so by that point you'll need a converter to use existing analog televisions, or you'll need to buy a new digital TV.

Cable/Satellite

• Availability: Excellent
• Ongoing Cost: $20-$80 per month
• Selection of shows: Very good; almost requires a DVR to sort through
• Freshness: Excellent, especially for sports fans
• Time-shifting: Requires VCR or DVR, but legal
• Place-shifting: Possible, but requires extra effort and gear

Broadcast isn't yet dead, and satellite TV is increasingly attracting subscribers, but cable TV still rules. In the United States, some 60 percent of households (65.6 million homes) have cable, and another 27 percent (30.1 million homes) subscribe to satellite TV. Cable and satellite subscribers report paying an average of $58 per month thanks to extra services, and it's easy to see bills in the $80 per month range.

Cable and satellite TV fare very well when it comes to freshness, with plenty of real-time news, sports, and current programming, and they also do well in terms of show selection. However, the massive amount of programming available is applied in shotgun fashion, so you can easily find yourself flipping through hundreds of channels without finding anything you want to watch. As with broadcast TV, place-shifting requires extra hardware and fuss; few people will go to the effort of extracting video from a TiVo to watch on an iPod.

Purchasing pre-recorded video on DVDs

• Availability: Excellent with an inexpensive DVD player
• Ongoing Cost: $25 per month or more
• Selection of shows: Good
• Freshness: Poor
• Time-shifting: On a per-DVD basis
• Place-shifting: Requires laptop or portable DVD player

The market for pre-recorded video started with the VCR but has been almost entirely supplanted by DVD. Although VCRs and DVD players are essentially equally popular, with between 75 and 82 percent of U.S. households owning one, the VCR is in significant decline, with sales of DVD players outstripping VCRs 40 to 1 globally.

It is hard to calculate the monthly cost of purchased content if you were to exclusively watch DVDs, but it could be hundreds of dollars a month if you buy lots of different movies.

The selection of shows is good, but not great, because back catalogs are still being transferred to video, so, for instance, not all seasons of the 1990s TV series "Northern Exposure" are available yet. It's not just TV shows either; reportedly, only about 50,000 of the 500,000 or so movies listed on the Internet Movie Database have been digitized and made available on DVD. Plus, the lag time between the airing of new TV shows and the theatrical release of movies and the subsequent release of the DVD hurts both show selection and the freshness of available content. Place-shifting is legally possible only if you own a portable DVD player or DVD-equipped laptop, since you can’t legally make copies of DVDs, even ones you have purchased.

Netflix and online video rental services

• Availability: Excellent
• Ongoing Cost: $5-$48 per month
• Selection of shows: Good, with queue and genre caveats
• Freshness: Poor
• Time-shifting: On per-DVD basis
• Place-shifting: Requires laptop or portable DVD player

Purchasing pre-recorded content may make little sense for one-time viewing, but renting DVDs is an entirely different cost proposition. A Netflix subscription costs between $5 and $48 per month, depending on how many DVDs you want checked out simultaneously. One advantage of the Blockbuster Total Access service is that you can also pick up DVDs at a local Blockbuster store if you can't wait for snail mail delivery. In terms of show selection and freshness, Netflix is nearly as good as the option of purchasing pre-recorded video - the main difference being in the lack of adult content. Another slight ding for Netflix's show selection is that popular new releases generate waiting lists, so you may need to wait a little longer to receive a hot new movie.

Netflix brings a new twist to the issue of time- and place-shifting. You can watch any DVD you've received from Netflix whenever you want, though ripping (copying) it to a hard disk for later watching is not just illegal, but also violates Netflix's own Terms of Use.

P2P file-sharing services

• Availability: Good (requires broadband Internet and a modern computer)
• Ongoing Cost: $0 (but requires a large time investment)
• Selection of shows: Poor
• Freshness: Mediocre
• Time-shifting: illegal
• Place-shifting: illegal

Although ripping DVDs is illegal, it still occurs. The legal liability has not prevented massive sharing of video online via peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing services, because downloading is free, beyond the cost of a broadband connection.

However, p2p downloading makes users pay in other ways. Finding and downloading particular movies or TV shows is time-intensive and often fraught with frustration and failure. Problems include being unable to find the desired show or movie, download times measured in days or weeks, ending up with a foreign-language dub, poor audio or video quality, and more. The selection of shows is impossible to predict, since the availability of a given show varies constantly with who's online. The freshness of content can be good, since users are more likely to share the latest releases than old movies, but there's no guarantee that you'll be able to download the latest episode of anything.

Not surprisingly, most of the users of the P2P file-sharing services are young people with more time than money, and for whom downloaded video has a whiff of danger and the cachet of rebellion.

iTunes Store

• Availability: Good (requires broadband Internet and a modern computer)
• Ongoing Cost: $75 to $675 per month, or $1.25 to $11.25 per hour
• Selection of shows: Poor, but improving
• Freshness: Excellent
• Time-shifting: Easy and legal
• Place-shifting: Easy and legal, but requires laptop or video-capable iPod

Not all video downloads are inherently illegal and thanks to Apple, it's now possible to purchase a variety of TV shows and movies from the iTunes Store, provided you have a broadband connection.

The selection of shows is, on balance, poor. Apple is adding shows and movies continuously, but in comparison with the wealth of video content available in any other forum, the iTunes Store doesn't yet match up. What it does have is quite fresh, though, with new TV shows appearing quickly, along with first-run movies, and some sports shows. TV shows cost $2,movies either $10 or $15. There are also discounts for buying a season pass for multiple episodes.

Of all the methods of acquiring video, downloading from the iTunes Store is perhaps the friendliest to time-shifting, since you can at any time decide what you want, buy it, and be watching nearly instantly. (To be fair, Netflix now offers the similar Watch Now service with some of its movies, but only on Windows XP.)

Competing with the iTunes Store is Amazon Unbox, which, like the Netflix immediate download approach, works only with Windows and broadband-connected Series2 or Series3 TiVo units. Purchasing TV shows and movies costs essentially the same as at the iTunes Store, though Amazon Unbox also offers movie rentals for between $2 and $4.

Online streaming from the television networks

• Availability: Good (requires broadband Internet and a modern computer)
• Ongoing Cost: $0, with ads
• Selection of shows: Limited to a selection of mainstream shows
• Freshness: Excellent
• Time-shifting: Limited to the episodes of shows made available
• Place-shifting: Requires laptop and broadband Internet connection

In recent months, the major television networks have started to change their role from pure providers of content to distributors as well, thanks to the Internet. Episodes of a number of current TV shows are provided free via the networks' Web sites, though with ads that cannot be skipped. The quality of the players varies a little and suffers a bit at full screen, but seems generally fine over a broadband connection. Both time-shifting and place-shifting are supported with this approach, although both have some limits. The networks don't provide full back catalogs of shows, so you may have to watch on a fairly regular basis or purchase missed shows from the iTunes Store. And place-shifting is inherent in the system... as long as you're watching on a laptop and have a broadband Internet connection available. As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to record these video streams for later viewing on a video iPod.

YouTube

• Availability: Good (requires broadband Internet and a modern computer)
• Ongoing Cost: $0
• Selection of shows: Insanely large, but no complete television show episodes or movies
• Freshness: Excellent
• Time-shifting: Easy and legal
• Place-shifting: Legal, but requires video-capable iPod or Internet-connected laptop

The sea of change that's threatening to engulf mainstream video is led by Google's YouTube and similar services. While not approaching commercial TV programming, the millions of short home-made videos are popular. It's in violation of copyright law to upload complete TV shows or movies.

So what should be your video strategy?

If you're trying to figure out what of this cornucopia of options makes the most sense for you, here are a few thoughts, based on viewing patterns I've observed:

• TV-involved. If you eagerly await the new shows every season and follow the plots of multiple series, or if you're addicted to watching live sports on TV, then cable or satellite TV is the only way to go. The selection is very good, the freshness can't be beat, and the cost per hour drops as you watch more. Do yourself a favor and get a DVR, though, so you can control what you watch when - there is no reason in this modern world to enslave yourself to the whims of network TV schedulers.
• Movie buff. The choice is clear here - you need a Netflix subscription. You're unlikely to find many movies you want to see that Netflix doesn't carry, and both the monthly and per-hour costs are bargains compared to purchasing the DVDs yourself.
• Kid vid. Since children so often want to watch shows repeatedly, purchasing pre-recorded content on DVD or VHS tape is the best deal and provides the best selection. The iTunes Store is also a contender in this space, if what you want to see is included in the 35 TV shows and 66 movies in the Kids category, and as a bonus, digital files won't wear out or get scratched. If you don't want a kid monopolizing a computer for watching DVDs, an Apple TV or a portable DVD player would be a help. For another option, consider subscribing to cable for a period of time, loading up a TiVo with kid shows and movies, and then canceling your subscription.
• Time-constrained. If you don't wish to spend what limited time you have on TV, while not cutting it out entirely, go with a Netflix subscription, supplemented with current TV shows from the iTunes Store and networks' Web streams. You'll stay in control and save money by restricting the amount of video available to watch to just those items you really want to see.
• Tight budget. If your goal is to pay as little as possible for video, either pull out the rabbit ears for over-the-air broadcasts or turn to the Internet, where you can download vast amounts of video for free, legally. To supplement Internet video with commercial video, I recommend either a cheap Netflix plan or selective use of the iTunes Store's multi-passes or season passes. Whether or not you choose to download video from p2p file-sharing services is up to you, but at the moment, it seems relatively safe from prosecution, although it's a large time sink.

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