Internet video on your TV Video

Internet video on your TV Video Transcript

There are loads of good video available on the Web. However, you want to watch it on the big screen. Dozens of companies say they have the solution and are fighting for your dollars. I'm Tom Merritt from CNET.com and I'll show your options on today's Insider Secret. Each and every one of these machines streams video you get from the Internet to your TV, but they all do it in different ways. And one does the opposite. Let's start with the thing most want to do. Watch a movie. Two of our boxes do strictly that. For about 300 bucks, you can get the Vudu box. This is a nice box. You can rent movies for $1 to $4 or buy the movies and store them on the 250GB hard drive. Why would you buy a movie? Well the rentals expire after 30 days, regardless of whether you watch them and after you begin watching them, they expire 24 hours later. No watching a movie in parts over several nights you people! The movie industry doesn't allow that. So let's move on to something cheaper and with somewhat fewer restrictions. The Netflix player from Roku. It's only $99 but it's totally different. You have to have a Netflix account that carries a monthly fee. But then you can watch any movie in their digital library on demand, as many times as you want, whenever you want. What's the catch? No storage. This is strictly a streaming device. Also the Vudu still has a better movie selection. But as you can see, there are other ways. The Apple TV lets you buy or rent movies similar to the Vudu. One version is $229 with a 40GB hard drive and the other is $329 for 160 GB. So you get less space for more money than the Vudu, but it also syncs with iTunes on your computer so you can get podcasts, all your music, and it even streams YouTube videos. Nice eh? Except it will only handle iTunes compatible videos. So no WMAs or any kind of video downloads from any service other than Apple's. Let's solve that, with an Xbox 360. First, you can rent movies and buy TV shows through the Xbox store. But the cool thing is that through the media extender functionality, the 360 can stream multiple types of video from your computer, including AVIs, and .MOVs. Perfect right? Don't get too excited. The movies and TV shows sold at the iTunes store have digital rights management, so nothing you buy from them can stream through the Xbox. And it's a game console, so it sells for $350 for only 20 GB of storage and $450 for 120 GB of storage. So it kind of only makes sense if you also want to play games. Also no YouTube or any other streaming Web video through the Xbox. Can't anything play all my videos no matter where I bought them AND let me see streaming services like YouTube and Hulu? Why yes. A PC with Windows Vista. This Gateway PC is an example. It has a terabyte of storage, can connect right to the TV using HDMI or composite cables, and is capable of 5.1 surround sound. It comes with a remote and the Windows Media Center software lets you easily view most of the video you download. However, the media center program won't play iTunes Store video. However, it's a PC, so just install iTunes and watch any of your stuff from there that way. It will also stream any video, including Netflix video just like the Roku. Pretty much settles it, right? This can do it all. And it only costs a couple thousand dollars. Oh. Right. Got anything cheaper? Well yes. Let's say you don't care so much about the streaming. You download your videos. You don't want to pay for a game console and you do want the option of as big a hard drive as you can dig up. Presenting the Popcorn Hour. It sells for $129 and can stream virtually anything from any PC on your network. You can also install hard drives internally or externally if you want the capability to download directly. It even does a bit of streaming video. The interface is a bit clunky, but it works. If you don't mind geeking around a bit, it's great at what it does. Let's wrap up with the oddball device I mentioned at the beginning. It's the Slingbox This one lets you watch your TV programming on your PC from anywhere you have an Internet connection or on some mobile phones. It's the Slingbox. $180 for the Slingbox Solo or $230 for the Slingbox Pro. The Solo can do HD by component cable only and has a single input. The Pro can do multiple inputs and with an additional adapter can do HDMI. Whether you want to stream the bedroom TV into the office computer, or watch your home TV programming at the office, Slingbox lets you do it. There you have it, multiple ways to get Internet video onto your TV, and one way to get your TV onto the Internet. That's it for this edition of Insider Secrets, I'm Tom Merritt for CNET.com.