The online television market is growing daily, and new
companies are entering the fray regularly, some of which are copycats,
and some of which are more original and innovative.
Back in November I wrote
about a service that at the time, I thought was set
to redefine the way
consumers purchase television shows over the Internet.
SyncTV President John Gildred explained:
“[SyncTV
allows users to] download any episode of any show on that channel any
time you want,”“You will
have a whole catalog of all the shows under that channel for a really
small price of just a couple of dollars per month.”
This week, after receiving an invite into the private beta, I
have
been checking out the SyncTV player, which is a required download to
access the service.
Easy To Navigate
The SyncTV player has a neat and easy-to-navigate
interface, with large buttons in the lower portion providing easy access
to your library, the SyncTV content menu, and current
downloads.
The
search feature is also an added bonus if your library gets to large to
scroll through. Within the Preference menu there is a useful parental
control feature, which allows users to block or password protect the
playback of downloaded content based upon its
TV rating.
I was somewhat disappointed to see a lack of any additional
options
other than setting a simple device name. Also, since it comes with a
black skin, why not allow users to create and share more looks for the
player.
Bread Crumb Buttons
A welcome addition is the use of “bread crumb” buttons located
just
under the menu bar at the top of the player.
These make it easy to keep
track of where you have been by showing the category and sub-categories
that you have gone through to get to your current screen (such as
within the episodes for the show 6teen in the screenshot
above).
Clicking on any of these buttons will take you directly back
to that
category.
Content & Video Quality
After taking a look around the player, I got down to what
really
matters which is the content and video quality. This is where it seems
like the service is lacking and needs more attention.
There are only
six channels available for users to select programming from. Among
these, Showtime is perhaps the only recognizable name with Dexter and
Brotherhood being the only shows available there.
Much of the rest of
the content currently available seems geared towards children, which
helps to explain why some parents might praise the parental control
feature.
Pricing & Download Speeds
As far as pricing, many shows have have free single episodes,
with entire season downloads as low as $4.99. The premium Showtime
content runs $1.99 for single episodes and $24 for an entire season.
The download speeds were quite impressive, and videos can even
start
being watched before the download is finished. After having downloaded
shows completely however, I ran into excessive skipping and choppy
playback, which seems odd if the video was downloaded to my PC’s hard
drive.
It looked as if the videos were streaming online. After
downloading 3 different videos, this problem occured with all 3, and
ultimately, I was unable to actually sit back, watch, and enjoy a show.
Conclusions
SyncTV
is still in an early
private beta form, so hopefully the amount of content available will
increase and all of the playback issues will be addressed. Right now,
it’s probably better to stick with Apple iTunes
and Amazon
Unbox episodes, where you have more choices.
This article is based on a Profy post written by Michael Garrett.
