Sometimes recording's not the point--you don't want a show forever, you just want it when you want it. For those occasions, you might like on-demand television. On-demand TV is basically what TV would look like in an ideal world, according to Steve: It gives you the ability to find a show and watch it whenever you want. You don't have to remember to program it into your DVR; it's out there for you at the touch of a few buttons.
Angela seems a bit skeptical of Steve's "ideal" claim, but presses onward. Prices are pretty even with what you'd pay at a chain video-rental store, she says, and on-demand TV is a la carte like a rental store, too. And, again like a rental store, there's a time factor: In most cases, you've got 24 hours to watch on-demand content and then you're locked out again. (Service, as you might guess, varies among cable providers.)
Turns out Steve's quite the regular on-demand TV user, and his service doesn't charge for movies. He loves the "remore controls" available: You can pause, fast-forward, or reverse, though the controls aren't as flexible as they are with DVRs, and a couple of times he's put a program on pause and been dumped back to the beginning. (And fast-forwarding, he says, doesn't work all that fast with this stuff.)
If you subscribe to a premium channel like HBO or Showtime, you have access to most of the current movies and series over on-demand channels right after they first appear on the main channel; again, depending on your provider, this may be a free service for you. While a show is on hiatus, you'll often be able to catch up on episodes you missed from prior years. And on-demand TV truly means right now--press the button and you 're watching it.
What's generally missing is high-definition programming--presumably because it would suck up more bandwidth than the cable companies have. And for now, the networks haven't gotten on board in any substantial way, though it's rumored that will change sooner rather than later. Of course, the satellite guys have a bandwidth problem here too, so on-demand TV is not a service they offer, nor will they any time soon. Just a fact of dish life.
There's another wrinkle in TV home delivery: It's known as IPTV, with the "TV" standing for exactly what you expect it to and the "IP" standing for "Internet protocol." Basically, think of it as sucking up TV from the Net to your living room, your computer, or your video IPod. Some TV networks are putting up entire shows, or extra material for fans. If you want to watch IPTV on your TV, you don't necessarily need a computer; a service called Akimbo uses its own DVR-like boxes, your Net connection, and a specialized online service to grab its programming.
Akimbo offers a lot of content your local cable providers might not have--like a Bollywood channel of Indian movies and a channel that offers nothing but Chinese TV serials. The catch is that much of this stuff will set you back additional fees, so the unit becomes, in essence, a video vending machine.
And the Duo didn't like Akimbo's fees. You can end up paying a buck for some 45-minute rerun from the History Channel. Worse, Akimbo deletes many of the shows automatically after a specified period--often 30 days--even if you've paid for them. And you can't watch a show while it's being downloaded, which usually takes about half as long as the show itself, so it's not exactly on-demand TV. But while you're waiting for the new content, you can watch something else you've already downloaded.
Ad Choices