I started writing for MakeUseOf, which is a blog for web application and other free, useful programs! I just posted an article on Ditching your cable company with free, legal alternatives.

Summary:

Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.

Click here to see full post!

This neat - one of my favorite products, BeyondTV, records television (standard or HD) but it is only a Windows program. You can use BeyondTV Link to play video on any other PC on the local network (because of bandwidth constraints - if you want to view over the internet, use the BeyondTV Web Interface or Orb)

Your TV, both live and recorder, could also be done using Orb; however Orb lacks the nice interface BeyondTV Link has.

I’ve been contemplating moving to MaxOS X for my next Laptop purchase; this plus VMWare Fusion really makes it easy to switch over to a Mac for us Windows users.

Windows Mobile 5 did not seem to have an easy way to have YouTube mobile videos (3gp files streaming over rtsp protocol) play to your phone.

However with Windows Mobile 6 Professional and HTC’s “StreamingPlayer” software - playing YouTube Mobile videos, at least through PIE (Pocket Internet Explorer) is easy.

If you don’t have HTC’s StreamingPlayer - check here. After installing the software, you may also need to modify your registry in order to allow rtsp streams to be opened by the player. Here is a link to the registry entries you need to make - again courtesy of XDA-Developer’s forum.

Save the above text to a .reg file, and import to your device (for example, using RegEdit for WM6)

Hopefully if all went well - when you visit http://m.youtube.com, and click play video, the HTC player will launch and play the video. After the video is done the player will automatically close and bring you back to the browser.

Note that for the above to work, you need to either have wifi access or an unlimited data plan for your wireless account - because streaming video WILL take up a lot of data!

Update 8/8/2007:

Screenshots!

Main Youtube Mobile Screen on WM6

Video Page on WM6

Video Playing

In Landscape mode - you can see the quality of the video is not that great even over WiFi

For another great article on getting this working, check here.

Just received an invite for VeohTV Private Beta!

Thanks for your interest in the VeohTV beta!

VeohTV is a free specialized video browser that turns online video into Internet Television.

Watch video from thousands of web sites, in one easy-to-use full screen application. Watch streaming video from major television networks such as Fox and CBS, to independently-produced content available on sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Veoh.com and MySpace.

VeohTV makes watching Internet video as simple as watching television – navigate with a keyboard and mouse or use a PC remote control. VeohTV is like a free DVR for web video. Watch video on-demand or record it to your hard drive to watch later. You can watch your favorite shows in full-screen on your PC, or connect your PC to your television.

Installation and Setup Instructions:
1. Go to: VeohTV beta download page
2. Select the Download button and save the VeohSetup.exe file to your PC
3. Run the VeohSetup.exe installer
4. Enter your private beta key: XXXXXXXX
5. Log-in with your Veoh account

Email us your feedback at veohtvbeta@veoh.com.

Experience Internet Television with VeohTV!

Thanks,

The VeohTV Team

With Joost, VeohTV, YouTube; Orb, Snapstream, Sage, and MythTV; and all of the other “New TV” outfits out there; television is moving off of old-school Cable and moving to the internet. Although it will take a long time for television to move off your PC and onto your Television in your livingroom - it will inevitably happen. It is just a matter of making it easy enough to offer the content on your PC and share it in a way that the average user can handle.

My primary beef with all Web TV outfits (not THAT WebTV) is that all of the content is decidedly low-definition. Bandwidth requirements for HDTV over Internet are pretty hefty - but the pipeline is now available at your house. Verizon’s FiosTV is one such service who offers HDTV over their Fiber lines - they also offer internet plans up to 30Mbps (or 50Mbps in some areas) already. Once the ultra high speed networks come really gain market penetration, there will be more of a push for HDTV over IP.

Finally, there is the whole sticky issue of television studio involvement. Some outfits are backed by major names; for example VeohTV by Disney and YouTube by Viacom, YouTube by CBS. How crucial are these deals? My thoughts are they are very important. But, according to a source I have who is involved with a very beta video streaming services, the networks are knocking down doors at these startups to give them money, with the hopes they will hit the one that grows to become the major new internet TV provider.

When it comes down to it, the two crucial things that are most important to these new startups: the technology and the content. For technology, they need to make this software easy enough to use but still deliver the highest quality content with the easy of use of a remote. For the content, there really is only one way to go - you NEED to partner with a studio that is putting out the titles. Imagine if a show like Lost was shown on Joost - that would soon be a major draw for anyone who is able to access it (including those out of the US who are usually using technologies like Bittorrent to download shows shortly after they are released in the states.

The stakes for the television studios are high as well - if they don’t adapt to these new technologies - and make it EASY for consumers to get their shows (with advertising revenue?) then most people will just take the easy way and download the shows for free.