Nero’s LiquidTV offers everything that TiVo offers…straight to your PC. It allows viewers to watch live TV on your PC with the TiVo experience, experience all the familiar TiVo functionality, including using a TiVo remote control, export your shows to iPod, PSP, DVD, or transfer shows from your TiVo box to Nero Liquid TV, and burn TV shows to DVD. You’ll need a subscription to TiVo to do all these things but the LiquidTV offers a free 12 month subscription as well as support for HD viewing and timeshifting.
Bridging the PC to the television, TVersity is a software package that allows a personal computer to stream content to UPnP devices, such as the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii. Their Pro edition brings content from Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Joost, CBS, NBC, The WB, ESPN, TV.com, NFL, Comedy Central, South Park, Marvel, The Discovery Channel, Nation Geographic Channel and more to the television where it belongs. That is, of course, if you don’t own a mac cause sadly TVersity is not mac compatible.
Orb allows both Mac and PC users to stream music, videos, and photos to their laptops and PDA (including Android and iphones) for free. If your computer has a television tuner card, Orb can stream live TV to any of the previously mention devices. This includes local channels and sporting events.
The website mSpot has jumped into the movie rental business offering a wide variety of films for your mobile media device, as well as free viewing of movie trailers. The movies are streamed to your mobile device, through your service; via Wi-Fi for iPhone users.
Found in a number of supermarkets and pharmacies, Blockbuster Express is Blockbuster’s video rental kiosk, allowing you to rent movies for $1 straight from the machine (which, yes, does look a lot like an ATM).
Crackle offers streaming feature-length movies and television (with a surprising amount of the old cartoon shows like “He-Man” and “Voltron” that children of the ’80s used to watch and love). The streaming website includes clips and trailers for upcoming films, works with independent online distributors, and even produces its own entertainment content.
The “Netflix” of Canada, Zip.ca boasts over 72,000 titles. And, like Netflix, it works with a subscription that ranges from one movie out a time, to eight. They also offer Blu-ray rentals at no extra charge.
The CinemaNow library contains approximately 14,000 feature-length films, shorts, concerts, and television programs. CinemaNow allows streaming directly to your computer or Web-enabled TV.
Veoh offers a wide variety of movies and TV shows to stream directly to your home computer.
Choose from LOVEFiLM’s immense library, over 65,000 DVDs, games and Blu-ray, in creating a subscription of one DVD at a time with a limit of two per month for £3.91 to three DVDs at a time and no limit returns for £15.65.
