[mythtv-users] Initial Reaction to ITVN

[Brian Wood]

I received my ITVN STB this morning, setup was straightforward,  
connect to a TV and my router and turn it on, most folks could  
probably handle that.

I have to admit I am impressed with the video quality. You can select  
from three different levels, the best averaging 650Kbps video and  
60Kbps for audio.

The pictures look as good as any I have ever seen at that bitrate. I  
can of course see the compression artifacts, but my Mom, for example,  
can not. It is eminently watchable, on static shots as good as my  
analog cable, although obviously motion causes more artifacts. I'm  
watching on a 32" LCD fed by the component out of the STB.

According to the very limited little booklet, they are using  
Microsoft Windows Media DRM, if that's of interest to anyone. Don't  
know if the output has any sort of DRM on it yet.

I signed up for the "budget bundle" for $4.95/month. I couldn't see  
paying an additional $9.95/month for the LaCrosse Network, or $29.95  
for the X-Rated stuff.

For my $5 I get a limited "Live TV" offering, a tour of the St.  
Lawrence River is on now :-)

And a *ton* of old movies, organized into about 20 channels by genre,  
or you can order up anything they have on demand, apparently for no  
additional cost.

The 24-hour cartoon channel seems to feature Popeye a lot, mostly the  
public-domain stuff you would expect, or you can get any cartoon on  
demand, just like any movie.

If you like old movies this is definitely worth $5/month, available  
only in the US, but I suppose if you lied and had the STB shipped to  
a US address how would they know (although the box outputs NTSC, it  
also refers to an EU version with a scart connection scheme) ??

All in all it seems to be a great service, if you like old movies,  
but I'm not sure what advantage I would gain by connecting it into  
MythTV - Datadirect does not know the schedules, and you can start a  
movie whenever you want anyway. There are no commercials on the  
movies, the only advantage I can see to recording it with Myth would  
be the ability to use acceleration on playback, as you can already  
pause, rewind, FF etc. Even if you wanted to burn a movie to a DVD  
you could do so directly without needing to use Myth.

So a good service, especially for the price, but I'm not sure if it's  
a good addition to Myth, especially without schedule data being  
available or needed. It's more like having a large stack of limited- 
quality DVDs of old movies, without having to change them manually.

But I will definitely keep the service for the forseeable future.



Brian Wood
beww at beww.org