With television on demand quickly establishing itself as one of the primary modes of watching TV, the idea of watching television live is becoming increasingly antiquated. While direct downloads are an option, it can still be difficult tracking down a lot of content, particularly locally produced programs. PVRs offer some outstanding functionality, with most now utilising dual tuners allowing all shows to record on the fly (allowing you to pause and rewind live TV, utilising services such as Tivo and IceTV, which provide quality electronic program guide information, and offer compatibility with downloadable content.
As smart as all of that is, however, it does mean that your recorded content is usually only available when you’re at home to watch it. It was only a matter of time until a PVR went into the cloud. Enter MyTVR.
MyTVR is a web-based PVR-like service. Users log in, select shows off the EPG, and press the record button. After the show has gone to air, the user can log back in and watch the program recorded on the website.
The service is exactly the same as using a PVR with your television, except its all done through the website and doesn’t use your telly. It’s actually pretty nifty.
Of course, with anything like this, there are positive and negative aspects of the service.
The positives
- All of the free-to-air channels in major metro cities are represented.
- The video quality is reasonably high. It’s certainly not as good as a digital TV broadcast, but it’s no worse than a lot of shows downloaded off a torrent site. Full screen functionality reveals the flaws further, but it is still quite good.
- Shows going to air live can be viewed as they record.
- Mobile recording and viewing by way of a smart phone has been enabled. It worked rather well on my iPhone and offers the chance to watch live TV on the go.
The negatives
- The service is centralised in Melbourne, meaning interstate or regional viewers are unable to record local content such as the news. Viewers can manipulate this to their advantage to watch Melbourne-specific programming such as The Bounce (which airs interstate very late at night on Channel Seven), but I’d see any show hosted by Peter Helliar as a negative.
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