Watching television is more than just fun — it
can be a real experience in which the whole family can take part in. Of course
there are favorites for the parents that the kids don’t care about (and
vice versa), but the fact that the TV can be the focal point of the living room or
wherever it is placed can’t be denied. Maybe that’s
why so much attention is directed towards the TV — whether
it’s placed on a cabinet by the owner or mounted on the wall by
a professional installer like Just One Touch. Getting so much attention is
especially true now with big screen, high resolution TVs so readily
accessible and affordable for everyone. Not to mention that they can be curved
and specially designed (i.e., organic LED) too.
But what makes the TV “work” is
the content that appears on the display. And until recently the only way to get
that content has been to be locked into a subscription deal where you had to
accept lots of other shows you didn’t care about — or
were forced to moderate what you could see by how much you were willing to
spend every month. That’s where a home network comes in
because it lets the TV “stream” content
to it and then display it. This is why TVs are so “smart” today,
because they let you watch television shows without all the hassles that used
to be the default. Here’s
some examples of what we mean.
Smart Apps
Almost every major TV manufacturer has apps that can be accessed from
a menu: the so-called “smart app” features
that are actually stand-alone programs hiding inside the TV. Up to now all of
the “apps” that dealt with TV channels were
little more than just clip shows and bits and pieces of television shows — think
of them as recaps, previews and teasers of actual TV shows. But now there are new apps that don’t
do that — they provide the same experience as would be found in
turning a knob (to speak “retro”) from one channel
to the other. And they do it through the Internet, streaming the content
through the home network and into the television. These apps are highly
appealing to the viewer because they function exactly like that of a
regular “channel”. Are you a sports fan? Then the MLB
(Major League Baseball) app will let you watch baseball games live. How about
being a movie fan? Then HBO NOW will let you watch (for a fee of course)
everything that the premium channel offers on the TV both present and past. But
here it’s coming through the Internet, free of any subscription
commitment (other than its own). And there are plenty of other TV channels, for
example ShowTime, on their way to the TV too.
Streaming Television Channels
For some, watching television means being able to “flip” through
the channels in real-time and watch whatever is on, on whatever channel the TV is displaying. But it’s now possible to
avoid having to use a TV antenna or a satellite receiver or a cable box
to watch live television - by that we mean the programs that appear on the TV
day after day, 24/7. A number of systems for doing this are becoming
available — Apple
is to make their own version available sometime at the end of this year or into
early next — but one that is now
out there comes from Sony and is called PlayStation Vue. It works
through a PlayStation 3 or 4 game console. If you’re in an area of the
country that Sony makes available (such as Los Angeles or Philadelphia), then
you can stream live television channels from both the broadcast side of things
(i.e., ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) or from the cable side of things (CNN, Cartoon
Network, Fox News, etc.). Sony also provides DVR (digital video recording)
capabilities as well as all of the features expected and provided through the
TV: the console being a “TV tuner” for
all practical purposes and allowing the programs to be watched on a high
resolution, big screen TV. Among others, there is also the CBS
All Access, which streams live programming from local channels as well as past
seasons of current shows and thousands of classic series.
Watching television is about more than just the content, it’s
about the pleasure of watching shows that grab and hold your attention. A big
part of that is because the TV screen is so much bigger and higher in detail
than any mobile device can ever be. Who says there’s nothing good to
watch — everything is good to watch when you have a great TV
to watch it on!