A week ago I finally got out of my way and bought my first large screen LCD TV. Setting it up took me the better part of an evening. I basically had to rewire everything in my flat as I had to move my network switch to the living room considering the TV and accessories needed more switch ports than the devices in my office. Furthermore while plugging in my router, which also had to be moved, a capacitor inside it swelled up and vomited a little, so it had to be replaced…
After all this inconveniences I finally was ready to enjoy everything German media could throw at me. I spent some time looking at ugly football players in high definition doing their thing (primarily boring me) and I got to enjoy the possibility to actually pause or record television programs, which is an amazing thing I had been able to do only for a brief period of time my VHS-recorder worked back in the nineties. And for digital TV (especially payed TV) this was not even possible in Germany until recently. Nowadays it is of course only possible using about one or two devices (by the same manufacturer) you cannot buy but only rent from your cable provider…
Nevertheless so far quite a satisfactory experience. As the next step I started up my Xbox 360 and instantly got bored, but it worked! So I got to start my brand new Blu-Ray(tm) player (not that I got any of the corresponding media) to find out that it worked as well. Being bored and knowing almost all my DVDs by heart I got experimental and fired up the streaming-clients, which are by default installed on almost all the media-devices you get today (I actually have the choice to watch the Amazon streaming service on my Xbox, the Blu-Ray player or the TV itself…)
First I tried the streaming service of my cable provider (KabelBW) which did not take me long since my cable receiver did not support it and it was stupidly expensive anyway (movies are about $8 per view).
The next streaming service I tried was the Sky Select/Anytime/Go service. As you can see, they can’t even seem to get their naming straight. Let me try to explain: Sky Anytime is the streaming service accessible from your TV receiver. It provides about ~30 rotating movies/series at a time depending on your pay-TV package. Sky Select is their pay-per-view service offering just the newest movies which are mostly not yet available on DVD/BD and mostly suck big time and again cost about $8 per view. Then there is Sky Go, which is a Microsoft Silverlight based streaming for the browser (on Windows) and Xbox (given you pay $7 a month for Xbox Live Gold, which I don’t), Sky Go provides about one or two hundred movies dubbed in German, so no option for me anyway.
Google’s Play service is no option either, since it is only providing movies dubbed in German as well (again costing ~$8 per view).
But the most amazingly stupid service is Lovefilm.de, a service by Amazon. It costs about $16 a month and provides 1300 movies, at least 1200 of which I’ve never heard of. Only 65 of them have been made before 1980, but 1,100 after the year 2000. The application on my blu-ray player is sluggish, it’s not possible to control the playlist from any other device and again there is not english audio track. And if you want to watch FSK-18 movies (not for people under the age of 18, basically any movie with a gun in it in Germany) you actually have to fill out a form and register with your local post office, despite you having had an amazon account for years, paying by credit card (which you only get at the age of 18), and having ordered tons of FSK-18 movies on amazon by mail.
So I will have to stay with traditional TV (at least with the means to record it) and buying DVDs/BDs…