Netflix is growing in popularity in the UK. If the company is to be believed, the movie streaming service has seen a promising uptake on these shores since its launch in January. Electricpig’s been chatting to the people behind the streaming to figure out exactly how your movies get from the cloud to your screen.

Netflix’s cloud architect Adrian Cockroft and its corporate communications director Joris Evers were in town this week to discuss the magic that makes the service possible. Electricpig grilled them into dishing it out in terms real humans can understand, as well as the various problems in bringing content to different areas and devices all at once.

How do Netflix movies get to our screens?

Adrian: “Netlflix has two main systems. One of them is all the control required to set everything up, and the other is the bits that make up the movie. Most of what we think of as ‘cloud architecture’ is under our control, so that’s where our software lives.

“The movie bits themselves are delivered using three content delivery networks. That’s like using the post office to deliver DVDs. They’re companies that we do all the work for – we decide which movies go where and all the addressing and all that stuff, then we give them a virtual envelope.

“We have three suppliers that can deliver bits to you. When you fire up your device, it registers itself with the back end with a series of APIs. It says who you are. Then we do the personalisation stuff that figures out who you are and delivers your choice of movies, based on region.

Netflix slags of Lovefilm

“Those get delivered to the user interface and then you start browsing around. This is all interacting with the APIs at the back end. There’s a separate API for each Netflix device: the Xbox 360, the PS3, the iPad, etc.

“Then when you click ‘play’, it moves onto a slightly different part of the API, which does some DRM key exchanges (so we can handle all the security required to authenticate you to play that movie), then we hand the player a bunch of URLs that one of our three suppliers recognise.”

Why use three suppliers?

Joris: “Sometimes UPS is faster than FedEx!”

Adrian: “Part of the problem is that, from the last number I saw, we accounted for about 40 per cent of the total US bandwidth being delivered – to get that much traffic requires more than one company to handle it. We need at least two to support the traffic – we need three so that if something goes wrong we can still run on the other two.

“So it’s partly as failsafe, partly because these are the three terabit suppliers; they supply in numbers measured in terabits per second. We’re a customer that needs many terabits to run. So we need them for capacity and space.

Lovefilm to Netflix: Bring it

“Some of them function slightly better in some parts of the world as well. All three operate everywhere in the world, but some might have better coverage in Europe, for example. It’s about shifting the percentages of traffic around.”

Why move into the cloud? 

Adrian: “We got into the cloud earlier than most people. We hit a point where we decided that we needed to do something, and didn’t want to build costly data centres around the world. The cloud was a new idea being used by startups but we needed it because we knew we were going to be big. We trialled it and went for it a year or two ahead of most other companies. That’s part of the culture at Netflix; we try to get a competitive advantage out of doing things earlier.

“We’re not unusual in the way we’re doing stuff – we’re just ahead of the market by a year or two. Other companies will be working the way we are in two or three years’ time, but we’ve got ahead of the curve a bit.

“The way we run in the cloud is something that we want to be generic – we want more people using it because the more people are using it, the better it works for everyone. If you’ve got one person using a power station and they don’t want to use power that day, what’s the power station going to do? You need a large number of customers, where one customer becomes a tiny percentage.

Netflix launches a whole series in one day

“The cloud is a utility model – if I’m not using it one day someone else is. Averaged out, that gives a very predictable amount of load – where no one customer can actually drive traffic in any strange way.”

Is a reliance on streaming services like Netflix going to cause bandwidth issues?

Adrian: “There is always one bandwidth issue for any particular consumer: you may have too many people in your neighbourhood going through one point, but in general bandwidth is increasing rapidly everywhere. The money we’re spending on the content delivery networks is being used to improve their ability to provide bandwidth. A lot of the money we’re putting into the internet is going to build out that capacity.”

Joris: “When you want to watch a movie in London, it’s not as if your device is reaching out to our office in the US and streaming from there to here via public internet. There’s too much data and over 23 million people on the Netflix line – it wouldn’t work. That’s why cloud architecture works better – it gets us as close to you as possible through content delivery networks. You’re getting your movie from a system probably very close to you with a copy of Netflix on it.”

Adrian: “Lets say you’re with Virgin Media; that ISP will have a relationship with our three suppliers to deliver content to you, or might have machines actually inside Virgin Media. They work very closely with ISPs.

“What we did for Europe was quite interesting because we realised that running out of the same date centre that we use for the Americas and Canada would cause too much latency in crossing the Atlantic – the experience would be slow.

BBC comes to Netflix

“So we set up with AWS in the cloud in Ireland, which runs between Ireland and the US, but is big enough to run the UK and Ireland should the US system go down. We just keep adding machines to that.

“If for some reason the US site’s not working, it will still work here. There are many possible ways that these things could break, but we’ve built a very resilient system that can survive all sort of outages. Even when it’s broken we’ve made it so it’s hard to tell – you just get slightly different movie choices, for example.”

How different is it streaming to mobile? Is it more difficult?

Adrian: “It’s the same infrastructure. The mobile clients talk to the same back end as the games consoles. We treat them the same way, but we’ve added some extra low bandwidth streams that we wouldn’t otherwise have included, so that you can stream even if you’re on a low signal.

If you can receive enough signal to push bits through, you can stream Netflix. Because the screen is so small you can get away with a low resolution signal. The iPad tends to want a higher quality, but small screens don’t need high bandwidth. It’s adaptive.”

What’s the uptake been like on mobile devices?

Joris: “Most of Netflix streaming happens on a TV through a games console. Those are by far the three most popular platforms. PC comes after that. Then we see a lot of other devices.”

Adrian: “With mobile, actual viewing hours are quite low, but in terms of activity it’s quite high. What you see is that in a given week, people will use mobile relatively often but for short periods of time, and not that intensively. That uses lower bandwidths so it’s less load for us. But mobile drives the business. People want to have it on these devices.”

Should we be wary of subscription streaming?

Joris: “We don’t split it up in terms of percentages, but a lot of people are firing Netflix up on mobiles and tablet devices and trying it out. It’s still a very small percentage, but it’s growing. It’s still a very small percentage of Netflix viewing.”

Adrian: “We saw a jump in Netflix being fired up on a tablet after the Christmas holidays on the iPad and the Kindle Fire. Android bumped up quite a bit with the Kindle Fire. Tablets are being used more than phones, in general.

“You can assume that Netflix will be on anything from any major vendor from now on. If anyone launches without Netflix it would be strange. You don’t have to ask ‘will we be there’ – the question is what will it look like and how will it be integrated?”

Joris: “We want to be on every relevant screen.”

How has Netflix’ UK uptake been?

Joris: “It’s great – better than expected. we release numbers quarterly – the next batch will be in April – but we’re very pleased by the reception we’ve had. We had 23+ million streaming customers globally as of the end of December 2011.”

Puny size

Look at this thing. JUST LOOK AT IT. It’s the size of your average memory card reader, and yet it’s also packing the hardware inside to decode full HD video and pump it to your TV. There’s really nothing else like it on the market. That’s a phenomenal feat, and yet there’s still space for both a USB port and SD/MMC card slot on the front, and both HDMI output and component on the back (a component cable is included in the box). It’s made of cool black metal, is ninja assassin quiet, and aside from one small LED light to indicate power, you’ll barely see it once your movie starts playing.

Buy the Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 media player now

There are two things to bear in mind however. The first is that this isn’t a web connected media streamer. You can’t sling video over Wi-Fi to it as you can a Boxee Box, Apple TV or PS3, and nor can you rent movies to watch on it. No, you have to acquire your video clips…”elsewhere”. We’re not going to say where, but let’s just say it’s made for pirates. Of course, it also plays image files and music as well, so you could use it to bore your relatives with a holiday slideshow.

The other issue is the remote control, which as well as being as mushy as peas from your local chippie, can be rather hard to aim accurately at the Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 media player. That’s infra-red needing direct line of sight, but as a result plugging a memory stick into the front of the player can actually obscure your view, making pausing and playing very frustrating. For forty quid though, we can see this being something you might want to put up with.

Playback performance

Don’t be fooled: the Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 media player will play just about everything you throw at it (MKV, DivX, XVID, AVI, M2TS, WMV9, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, TS, RM, RMVB, FLV, VOB, MOV, MP4 for video, and FLAC, MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV for audio), with Apple’s favoured AAC music format just about the only thing missing off the list. And it does it well too: 1080p video played flawlessly with surround sound and you can toggle subtitles.

In fact, the issues we have are with the fusty UI. While it splits everything neatly into media categories (video, music etc), diving down into each is a laborious process, as you can’t scroll down continuously. It’s one button push at a time, so it’s best not to keep many files in the same folder, and it also has a nasty habit of auto playing the first thing in a folder on start up, which is less than helpful.

The alternatives

As nifty as the Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 media player is, you probably don’t need it for HD video playback if you own a PS3 or an Xbox 360, as there are various free applications which can be used to stream video of any format over your home network. Even a Nintendo Wii can do the same in standard definition.

Check out our best media streamer Top 5 now

Likewise, if you’ve got a set top box with USB playback support you’ll also find you have most of the same features already, albeit with a missing codec here or there. And if you’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S 2 also, an MHL connector will give you all the same playback features and more on your TV, and you can achieve much the same with an iPhone 4 plugged in through an Apple HDMI connector.

There are also media streamers which can pull down video off the internet, including premium content – the second generation Apple TV does it of a fashion, while the Boxee Box brings just about everything to your TV for quite a chunk more. This media player on the other hand will only play clips you’ve already downloaded or acquired elsewhere already.

Verdict

Currently we use a Western Digital media player to watch video files our PlayStation 3 turns it nose up at. It’s small and it’s not fussy. The Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 media player of course is even smaller – maybe a fifth of the size – but we don’t think it’ll replace it: the browsing issues make it far less appealing for anyone with a media player, console or USB playback Blu-ray player under their telly already. Of course, newcomers might disagree given the sub £40 pricetag. Bargain.

The Virgin Media TV powered by TiVo is actually TiVo’s second foray into the UK, with the first in 2000 failing to gain traction on this side of the pond. The new TiVo however, backed by big baller Virgin Media, could make amends, especially with a focus on search and internet TV. In this Virgin Media TV powered by TiVo review we will see if this next-gen box was worth the wait.

Hardware

It's handsome, if not gorgeous - but the whole point is you're not supposed to be looking at it, right?

Featuring three tuners, which allow for watching your favourite program, whilst recording 2 others, a 1TB hard drive for up to 500 hours of SDTV or a very respectable 120 hours of HD, and 1080 resolution, this box is packing some serious clout.

On the back you have connections for HDMI and SCART as well as slots for your Virgin card. There are also two USB ports, which are currently for service only, though may hopefully be opened up at some point in the future, for expandability of storage or external peripherals. Another useful inclusion is the optical audio port, which gives the highest quality digital audio quality currently available. Most users won’t use it as the HDMI carries both sound and picture, but it is a nice inclusion for those who want it. There is an Ethernet port, but as all internet activity is accessed directly through the cable, this again is for service use.

No surprises on the back of the box , and no crucially missing connections

Design-wise, the Virgin Media TiVo is a thing of understated beauty. Gone is the fingerprint attracting, piano black finish of the Samsung V+ box, replaced instead with subtle matte black plastic. Also notably missing are the plethora of lights and LCD displays that became a massive distraction when using the aforementioned Samsung V+ box. Instead they are replaced with a simple display of LEDs that indicate both power and connectivity, as well as number of tuners in use.

Overall the box is really well built, and though it is unlikely it will ever move from where it sits, it’s still good to know that it won’t fall apart in a weak breeze. It also runs as quiet as a mouse, and apart from the occasional click from the hard drive, you won’t even know it’s there.

What’s it all about?

It's easy to use and even easier on the eye

The Virgin Media TV powered by TiVo is a wonderful thing to use. From the moment you turn it on you are bombarded with colourful images, easy to use menus and interactive content that just makes you want to sit and play all day – in fact, we did!

Thumbs up

The TiVo approach doesn’t just fire random TV your way, it learns your viewing habits over time and suggests TV it thinks you will like.

Using a system of giving thumbs up or thumbs down to a program, actor or series, the TiVo learns which shows you like and makes them more readily available to you. It also keeps tabs on what you watch, but the thumbs up system is a good way to fast track to relevant TV.

The Virgin Media TV makes recommendations based on what you watch

On the front page you are presented with something TiVo term the ‘Discovery Bar’ – though a slightly overindulgent name, this bar is actually pretty clever.

Using the aforementioned thumbs up system, over time the Virgin Media TiVo box shows you programs and movies from both live TV and on demand services at the top of the page. This is a great way to easily find new content without having to search.

Search on Steroids

Virgin Media Tivo groups together shows in to collections as well as intelligent recommendations

One of the coolest things on the Virgin TiVo box is how its search works.Say you are looking through the TV guide and you see the movie ‘Fight Club’ is on; you click through to see more info and it takes you through to a cast list. You select Edward Norton.

The TiVo then shows you all the TV and movies that Ed appears in. Now for the really clever bit – Edward Norton was in ‘American History X’, so you decide that you would like to see it. You can either rent it from on demand or add it to a ‘Wishlist Search’.

After using search on the Tivo, you won't settle for anything less

The Wishlist Search is the single greatest invention in TV planning we have seen. To use our previous example, you can add ‘American History X’ to a wishlist search and any time it is on, on any channel, at any point in the future, your TiVo will record it – Isn’t that flipping awesome?

It also works with actors and crew too, so you can tell the TiVo to record anything that Edward Norton appears in, across all channels – ad infinitum.

Apps

Several apps and games come included - BBC iPlayer will likely be the one you use most

As well as amazing TV, the Virgin TiVo comes with an ever growing array of apps – at the time of writing there are offerings from eBay, Youtube and BBC iPlayer, as well as a couple of games and weather apps.

Granted, this isn’t quite as an impressive array as Sony offers on the PlayStation 3 say, but you can expect much more in the near future, as the OS is Flash based, portability of apps will be a quick process and one that developers ought to be keen to be part of.

Check out our best media streamer Top 5 right here

Remote

The remote sadly lacks the QWERTY keyboard of its US counterpart

We never saw anything particularly wrong with the old Virgin remote, however the new Virgin Media TiVo one is really comfortable at least. It’s shape like a stretched peanut and is really nice to hold and use.

It comes with all the buttons you expect as well as the thumbs up and thumbs down functions. It’s a shame Virgin didn’t see fit to include the QWERTY keyboard remote that ships with equivalent TiVo units in the US, but it’s a fault that we can quickly overlook at the moment. In time as more and more apps come on board, I think there will be a number of users looking to upgrade to a more feature rich remote.

Overall

The Virgin Media TV powered by TiVo is one of the best TV innovations we have seen released into the UK market, and it easily trumps the Sky+ HD box in both looks and functionality.

At a £199 install price, and only a few pounds more a month, it’s comparatively reasonable in price too.

It should be noted that you have to be on the Virgin XL TV pack to be eligible for TiVo at present, but we are sure this will change over time.

If you are already an XL customer, we highly recommend upgrading to the TiVo service – it really will change the way you watch TV forever, and if you are a Sky customer coming to the end of your contract – maybe now is the time to ditch the dish and enter the world of fibre optic.

In the same vein as the Asus O!Play HD2, the Digital Stream DPS-1000 is a low price (£89.99) little box that sits under your telly, and streams media from the internet and your local network through to your flatscreen.

It’s certainly not as powerful as the Boxee Box, and lacks the IPTV offerings of the Sony PlayStation 3, but, it’s markedly cheaper – it’s the sort of thing we can see tech savvy teens and young adults installing in their parents’ living rooms to give them BBC iPlayer and shut them up. In a good way.

Buy the Digital Stream DPS-1000 now

Design and build

It's in offensive enough, if cheap looking

The Digital Stream DPS-1000 isn’t as outlandish as the Boxee Box, as gorgeous as the second generation Apple TV or as mutely compact as Western Digital’s HD Media Players. It’s simply a metal shell lacerated with “speed” holes, and a black front face. You can park it under the telly and forget about it, as it’s far smaller than your average PVR. Around the back however, it still finds space for HDMI-out, Ethernet, two USB ports and a SCART socket if you’re still kicking it with a cathode-ray boobtube, so it’ll work on almost any telly.

I think you should see a doctor, that swelling doesn't look healthy

Sadly, the remote is a catastrophe. Now don’t get us wrong, the buttons are all laid out correctly. It’s just we’ve never seen any bit of consumer electronics which looks quite so much like a root vegetable. The bulbous end with which you grip it is an offence to our sensibilities. The keyboard button, which brings up an on screen QWERTY, is also rather picky and choosy about which apps it’ll let you do this in – more on that below though.

Best media streamer Top 5

Other than the irksome problem of typing in login details with a remote control (Which you only need to do once, and you can have several profiles for different users), set up was painless. That is if you’re plugging it straight into your router for a hard wired connection. The Digital Stream DPS-1000 is supposedly Wi-Fi friendly, but it’s bring your own dongle and we weren’t able to test this feature. Hope your router’s in your living room!

Software

The Onyx Media Browser is easy to use and feature packed

The big selling point of the Digital Stream DPS-1000 is the software it runs: Oregan Networks’ Onyx Media Browser. You might not have heard of it before, but it’s the secret sauce to the rather delightful Cello internet TVs sold by Marks & Spencers which we’ve lauded before. The experience is almost identical in fact – it’s just like buying one for a no-net telly and plugging it in.

Now we can’t say that it’s a particularly pleasant UI, or even very fast, but it is simple, and packed with options. As well as BBC iPlayer streaming, there’s support for Lovefilm, Blinkbox and a variety of video podcasts, plus home network streaming. Basically, almost everything the Apple TV does, and then some.

A la carte movie streaming? You got it.

BBC iPlayer and Lovefilm are exactly what we’ve come to expect from set top boxes: standard definition and slightly muddy picture, but they get the job done. Of much more note is Blinkbox, which allows you to stream new release movies a la carte (Lovefilm requires a subscription, and its online viewing selection is still rather meagre). We watched Due Date (£2.99 for 24 hours, with a 30 day limit on first pressing play) on it with no hitches, and playback began instantly. If you’re lacking a games console with movie download service, this is the next best thing, and will definitely come in handy on a rainy day.

Also worthy of note is the set top box’s local media playback skills. You can pop in a memory stick into one of the two USB ports and play back just about any file: to our surprise, it handle even HD MP4 and MLV files without stuttering, as well as your usual DivX AVI files.

You can play back just about any HD movie file off USB

You can also stream media from your home network. PCs will work just fine, and it played nicely with all our server software on our Mac, like EyeConnect and even PS3 Media Server, though only standard definition videos play over the network, it appears.

Sadly, the www. button on the Digital Stream Internet Television’s remote will set you up for a fall: there’s no web browser yet.

Verdict

Forget the Apple TV. Without an iPhone or iPad, it does nothing. The Digital Stream DPS-1000 does more for less, and is still head smackingly easy to set up.

If you have an Xbox 360 or Sony PS3, there’s no need for it, but if you’re new to this media streaming, IPTV lark, it’s a great entry point, and a perfect set top box to shut your technophobic parents up if they’re continually asking how to use this iPlayer thing. Bravo.

Begun as a media centre-style app for desktop PCs and Macs, Boxee gained notoriety as an Apple TV hack, finally making Apple’s set top companion able to play files beyond the reach of iTunes. Now, it’s at home inside a box of its own, how does it measure up? Read our full Boxee Box review and we’ll spill the beans.

It's not exactly subtle, but we like it

The Boxee Box is beautiful. Not in a classic way, and certainly not in an Apple way. This isn’t a minimalist shell with selective ports stuffed in its rear. It’s awkward angled shape is actually a bit of a pain. It won’t stack with other A/V kit. It won’t be neatly tucked into a standard square TV unit’s shelves. And then there’s the softly glowing green logo. The Boxee Box is designed to be seen, but not gawped at.

We parked it next to our TV in pride of place. Everyone who spotted it was interested in its weird design, and wanting to know why it looked do different. “Because it is different” we explained, and we weren’t lying.

Web TV done right

The Boxee Box is more than a media streamer. If you’ve read our Boxee Box review roundup you’ll know it can suck music, photos and movies from shared libraries on your network, and it’ll swallow pretty much any codec you can throw at it (except RealMedia files, it hates those). But while most reviews fixate on the Boxee Box as a set-top box for files at home (which it does exceptionally well), they’re missing the point.

Local playback plays almost second fiddle to the IPTV offering on the Boxee Box

The Boxee Box is the first TV companion to really bring the web to your TV. Fire it up, and it’ll show a list of TV shows that’re available online. There’s no fuss, no bother, and no hint of the hard work that’s going on behind the scenes to bring that list to your eyeballs.

It’s immediately filled with high profile shows: The IT Crowd, Black Books, The Mentalist. This isn’t “Web TV” but rather proper TV delivered via the web. Boxee scours the likes of 4OD and Demand Five, bringing the broadcasters’ online streams to your decidedly offline TV. In the case of 4OD, the video content actually comes in a YouTube wrapper, complete with adverts inserted into it.

It’s a system that works well, but not flawlessly thanks mostly to the specter of Adobe Flash hanging over most content providers’ feeds.

Flash flaws

By heading online to pluck video from major TV stations, the Boxee Box has tied itself inextricably to Flash, but it’s an unhappy marriage. Whereas the Boxee Box’s menus and interface are slick, simple and designed for the big screen, the moment a Flash video is called up, you’re faced with the same interface as your PC. It’s tiny on the TV screen, and almost unusable.

Desktop YouTube is not easy to control from your sofa

Boxee has attempted to counter problematic flash interfaces with its own controls. They work well, with overlaid play and pause buttons, as well as volume controls and the ability to skip backward and foward through videos. However, all too often they break down. Flash video just doesn’t like to be manhandled, and often we were left with a frozen video which needed to be completely re-started in order to continue.

Instead of a true lean-back web TV experience, what you’re left with is a lean-forward shaking a fist at the TV experience, and regardless of whose fault the bugs are, whether laid at the door of Adobe or Boxee, the irksome result is the same.

Flash video, even churned by the respectable D-Link hardware inside the Boxee Box is a repetitive headache. Not only is there a risk that TV streams will stall mid-programme, as happened numerous times during our test, but depending on the TV you set up the Boxee Box with, you might experience display problems to boot.

We tried the Boxee Box with a 46 inch JVC TV and it automatically detected it as a 1080i screen, displaying everything beautifully… except Flash video. We could hear sound, but couldn’t coax a picture out of it. Eventually, we fixed our Flash-related problem by lowering the Boxee Box’s resolution to 720p, but it took us an hour or so of head-scratching beforehand.

Your eyes do not deceive - 4OD on your TV

When tested with a 32 inch Sony Bravia however, everything went swimmingly at full HD resolutions. We can only assume there’s some wonkiness between the D-Link hardware and Boxee Box’s Flash output.

When it works, Boxee’s web-scouring software is simply wonderful, but wonky Flash implementation means it’s sometimes a hit and miss afair.

Add your own sources

As well as offering local playback and a host of TV shows the Boxee Box has found on the web there’s the option to add ‘apps’ or your own content feeds. It’s a neat addition, although calling the mini programs hosted by the Boxee Box ‘apps’ is a little misleading.

Calling them "apps" is cashing in on a buzz word, but the options are certainly welcome

More accurate would be to call them “content areas” although we’re the first to admit that’s not as catchy. They’re neatly coded to avoid looking like web pages, and designed to work with a remote control, but in most cases the content they pull in is simply repurposed from the web.

There are podcast ‘apps’ offering a quick route to the latest video or audio content, and in a few cases broadcasters have offered up ‘app’ versions of their own sites: BBC iPlayer, for instance is present and correct (although very obviously a re-worked version of the standard web page).

What’s really special is Boxee’s “Watch Later” function. Head to Boxee.tv on your computer, and drag a small bookmarklet into your browser’s toolbar and you’ll be able to instantly tag online videos for later consumption on your TV at home.

It’s a stroke of pure brilliance on Boxee’s part. We found ourselves tagging tons of videos from friends and around the web at work, before chowing down later that evening at home. Think of it as Instapaper for video, and you’ll be along the right lines.

Social TV? Not quite

Another string to Boxee’s ‘not just a media player’ bow is its built-in social abilities. There are shortcuts to share programmes through Facebook and Twitter, as well as being able to broadcast your viewing habits to friends.

On the surface that sounds interesting, but in practice it’s really not. Despite having few friends who use Boxee, we soon tired of seeing their viewing habits on our browser, and disabled the function quick sharp when using the Boxee Box.

What’s more, with our own fairly dubious viewing habits in mind (not to mention the prospect of adult material being available through Boxee) we’d rather not spam our friends and inflict our televisual stream of consciousness upon them.

If Boxee can dream up a smarter way to use social networks in TV, we’ll dip our toes: A list of most popular web TV from around the globe might help, or recommendations from the most trusted friends in our social media circle… as long as we don’t find out each time they’ve sat down to Eastenders.

That remote

Yay for the remote. Why can't Sky and Virgin figure this out?

By now it should be clear that the Boxee Box is revolutionary. That revolution might not be polished, have rough edges and leave more questions than answered, but it’s a solid step in the right direction and by far the most revolutionary aspect of the Boxee experience lies in the palm of your hand: the Boxee Box remote.

Designed to be minimalist on one side, and with a full QWERTY keyboard on the other, it really does offer the best of both worlds. Having lived with an Apple TV, and despised its clunky text entry mechanism, the Boxee Box remote is a dream come true. It’s also RF rather than IF controlled, so doesn’t have to be pointed at the Boxee Box to work.

In practice we found ourselves using the QWERTY functions less than expected, but on the odd occasion they were needed (logging in, searching for content) those teeny buttons were a bonafide godsend. Apple could learn a lot here: when it comes to TV interaction there’s a genuine case for more buttons on a remote, as long as you can be rid of them when necessary.

The future of TV?

There’s little doubt the Boxee Box has changed the way we watch TV. Not only are we streaming more video around our home network, from networked storage boxes, PCs and Macs, we’re watching more web TV too. This angular little box sets out an absurdly ambitious store, but largely speaking delivers on every promise.

Sure, web video playback is a hit and miss experience. The set-up could be more reliable (although not much simpler), and we’ve heard tales of wonky Wi-Fi connections impacting some reviewers’ experiences.

In our time with the Boxee Box however, we had relatively few hiccups. We approached it with high expectations, and with a few caveats the plucky upstart delivered the goods. There’s a question of value here though, since the Boxee Box costs around the same price as a nettop computer you could easily load with Boxee software and usher under the TV. You’d get more storage for your money, and the flexibility to play games on it too, if you fancied. That said, Boxee’s remote and eye-widening design make it a hard trade off to make.

It’s ousted the Apple TV from beneath our living room screen, and with the folks at Boxee promising regular software updates, we’re hoping its quirks, especially that janky Flash playback, are eventually ironed out.

Go in with your eyes open, don’t expect too much from Flash at first, and if you’re looking for a bullet-proof media player with eye-popping web TV abilities to boot, the Boxee Box is guaranteed to impress.

LED TVs are outstanding not just for picture quality but also for how wafer thin they’ve become and the Samsung UE46C8000 is one of the slimmest yet at just 23.9mm. In fact it’s so narrow that most of the inputs have to be slotted round the edge as there just isn’t the room to fit them comfortably on the back.

It's so thin, the slots have to go on the side

In an age when virtually every TV is supposed to have a jet black surround, the Samsung UE46C8000 goes against the grain with that coolly sophisticated silver metal bezel and matching quad stand. However, while the stand is weighty and firm and swivels relatively smoothly, the TV can still rock along its access, so take care when plugging it up.

And there’s no shortage of inputs into this 46″ giant – no less than 4 HDMI points, 2 Scarts, 2 USB, Component, Composite, Ethernet, headphone and DVI audio, plus Digital Audio out and a CI slot for paid channels. The only drawback with the set’s super-slimness is that several of the inputs need the supplied adaptors to make them fit , which bulks up the cabling area behind the Samsung UE46C8000.

Check out our Sky 3D review now

Having Wi-Fi connectivity available to the Samsung UE46C8000 (albeit, meanly, via a separately purchased dongle rather than built-in) not only means you can share all of you own videos, music and photos but have access to Samsung’s own Internet channel that provides everything from YouTube to its own app store. We can’t say they’re all utterly compelling, but it’s always nice to have the option.

The silvery smooth remote for the Samsung UE46C8000 matches the TV and it’s a breeze to glide through the menus and endlessly tinker with picture colour and quality thanks to the Wide Colour Enhancer Plus technology. Colour accuracy is consequently remarkably accurate, although there is a noticeable dimming when you try too hard for perfect blacks.

The star feature, though, is the 3D quality which is set to blow your socks off. Depending upon which retail outlet you buy the Samsung UE46C8000 from, you should demand at least one pair of active 3D glasses. The quickest way to get into 3D mode is via the remote and then scrolling across the various options, which include Line by Line, Side by Side, Vertical Strip and Checker Board.

The remote lets you choose 3D mode

3D Blu-ray movies are thin on the ground at the moment, so you’ll spend most of your time using the 2D-to-3D setting on the Samsung UE46C8000 which fully utilizes the TV’s native LED brightness, 1920 x 1080 resolution and Samsung’s 3D HyperReal engine to create a superb sense of depth. An added bonus is the Motion Plus feature that lets you individually limit the amount of blur and judder created when playing fast acting FPS games or watching Bruce Willis movies.

Fancy watching Avatar to see if those flying sequences were just as breathtaking as you remember? You’ll soon be yee-haaing with the best of them. There’s even a Depth setting which will adjust the focus in the frame as well as a Smart LED function to automatically adjust the degree of backlight for each scene. There are times when the 3D is affected by ghosting or weaker quality at wider viewing angles but if the Samsung UE46C8000 is your first introduction to 3D TV, then, seriously, what are you still waiting for?

Not all Freeview HD PVRs are alike. Free to air HD is still in relative infancy, and the quality of set-top boxes offering it shows its immaturity. We’ve seen boxes that struggle with HD playback at speed. Those with awkward interfaces, and some that’re just plain noisy. It’s refreshing then to see TVonics, a small British firm, leading the way with a dynamite 500GB Freeview HD recorder in the TVonics DTR-HD500, jam packed with smart features and clad in a wonderfully eye-catching design.

This set top box is beautifully designed

Prize the TVonics DTR-HD500 from its packaging and it’ll draw ooohs and aaahs from all around. The audience of our first trial run described it variously as a “manta ray” a “curvier PS3” and “just bloody lovely.”

The rakish angle of the DTR-HD500 means there’s plenty of room for connections around the back, a neatly presented display up front, and an overall impression that the whole shebang is slimmer than it is. The curved transparent top looks outright gorgeous, and although there are no buttons on the DTR-HD500 itself, it just screams to be stroked. This is possibly the best looking set-top box we’ve ever seen.

Spin the TVonics DTR-HD500 around, and the surprises continue to usher in grins. On its rear there are the standard Scart and HDMI outputs, a USB socket and a connection for the power adapter. There are two extra HDMI sockets though, capable of sucking up pictures from two other bits of HD kit, such as a games console or Blu-ray player.

The option for extra HDMI inputs is extremley thoughtful

Those extra sockets mean the TVonics DTR-HD500 can act as a HDMI switch, multiplying the capacity of your TV’s HDMI socket by three. On our two-HDMI test TV, that was most welcome, and switching between inputs is as easy as tapping a button on the TVonics remote.

So far, so brilliant. But there’s a nasty surprise in store when the TVonics DTR-HD500 is finally switched on. Sure, it’s absolutely silent operation is a welcome change from humming set-top companions, but lime green menus, yellow highlights and high-contrast blacks mean it’s an ugly operator. For all the beauty of the TVonics DTR-HD500 exterior, its menus turn our stomach and strain our eyes.

Picture in picture. Yes, we were watching Jeremy Kyle.

That’s not to say TVonics hasn’t put thought into its menus. They’re simplistic, to the point, and actually very well designed. We love the subtle fade-in and fade-out effects. There’s no clutter, they’re efficient, and zip you around the functions of the DTR-HD500 in double quick time. There’s even an impressive picture in picture mode, so you could theoretically keep an eye on two football matches airing on two different channels at the same time. It’s just the colouring that leaves us wanting for preferences to change those hues. Would it really have been so hard to offer different colour schemes?

In operation, once your eyes adjust to the garish menus, the TVonics DTR-HD500 is wonderful. HD playback is smooth and speedy. Even zipping through time-shifted or recorded HD is judder-free, with almost zero lag between hitting play and seeing video on-screen.

TVonics’ remote is a triumph too. At first glance, it’s the same button box we’re used to, but there are handy shortcuts everywhere. Dedicated buttons switch between those extra HDMI inputs, and it’s programmable to control your TV too.

The TVonics remote is easy to use

A single ‘clock’ button means you can glance at the time without diving into the full EPG or calling up a half-screen information pane, and a simple picture-in-picture button lets you watch a second channel in miniature, perfect for keeping an eye on breaking news, or live sport, while also catching up on soaps.

Best of all, dual power buttons let you switch off the TVonics DTR-HD500 and TV from the same remote, completely eliminating the need for our TV’s controller.

Later this month, the TVonics DTR-HD500 will also become capable of Dolby Surround Sound with a software update delivered by USB. That’s a major upgrade, and one it’s great to see being offered, even after customers have splashed a not inconsiderable £250.

As Freeview HD recorders go, the TVonics DTR-HD500 might not be the cheapest, but it is the best looking, quietest and, assuming you can stomach those eye-jabbing visuals, the best Freeview HD PVR we’ve seen to date.

Asus really isn’t helping itself sticking punctuation marks in the middle of wo$rds as it has with the Asus O!Play HD2, but if you can overlook the Engrish branding, it’s actually an extremely competent media streamer for the price you pay, whose only real failing is a lack of IPTV content.

It's surprisingly light - until you install a hard drive, of course

To the design first. Unfortunately, Asus is one of those companies that think people who buy gaming laptops look for bright red paintjobs and go faster fins, and it obviously thinks the media streaming crowd are equally impressionable. The Asus O!Play HD2 is surprisingly light for its size, but it’s also shockingly ugly, with smeary black plastic, and asymmetrical design that Asus must think screams EDGY amongst the youth of Taipei, plus a bizarre circular button-that’s-not-actually-a-button on the front.

Still, you’ll learn to live with it for its functionality, and it’s quiet and subtle enough to ignore. Those with terabyte hard drives already filled with HD video (We won’t ask you where it came from, but Asus has put a hilarious warning in the manual in a futile attempt to ward off torrent addicts) will love all the ports Asus has managed to fit into the Asus O!Play HD2.

Ports aplenty

On the back you’ll find two component sockets, coaxial, Ethernet (it’s DLNA certified and plays media off network attached storage), a USB 3.0 slot, optical audio, plus HDMI for lashing up to your HTDV. Asus has wisely placed the slots most consumers are likely to wear down on the front: CF/MS and SD card holes, one USB 3.0 port and an ESATA hole to give you the option of plugging in yet another drive.

Asus has covered off just about every base with the Asus O!Play HD2 – in fact, just about the only thing missing is Wi-Fi, which is a bit of a bummer, but since you can install your own hard drive, for hoarders, one big file transfer now and again might make up for this.

Format support is comprehensive

We really can’t complain about file format support with the Asus O!Play HD2: it really covers the spectrum of popular audio (MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, Dolby Digital AC3), image and video types, and you can play them from wherever. We certainly had no troubles setting up. Perhaps a bit more bothersome is the UI of the software it’s running however: it’s rather slow and ugly, and certainly a world away from the slick LowTide design of the Apple TV, new and old. It does get the job done though, and we rather like the thumbnail live previews of videos as you scroll down.

We tested numerous video files, and overall we found that at least with AVI clips, picture quality wasn’t quite as bright or crisp as when played through a Sony PlayStation 3. But it was still reasonable, with smooth fast forwarding and rewinding. And more to the point, we were able to play file types – like creamy smooth high definition MKV files – that the Apple TV or any games console simply won’t open. Closed captions also worked, and can be turned on and selected through the remote.

Stocks? Where the hell is iPlayer?

What won’t play with the Asus O!Play HD2 however, is any form of IPTV. Apple TV has iTunes, and the upcoming Boxee Box seems to have everything including 4oD and the kitchen sink. The Asus O!Play HD2 has internet radio, weather, stocks and Flickr and Picasa. You might like the last two, but seriously, who looks at stocks on their TV? Not people who actually make any money out of trading stocks, we’d venture. At any rate, the lack of even YouTube, let alone BBC iPlayer or any way to buy movies on demand, might be a downer for you.

In truth, the Asus O!Play HD2 caters for a niche audience. While we’re pleased by the sheer variety of ports, the lack of on demand content will probably put off family photo enthusiasts looking for a way to slap their shots on a TV slideshow. If you’ve already got a vast digital video library though, there’s very little on the market for the same price that will play it back with as little fuss.

We certainly can’t fault Apple in its bid to simplify set up with the new Apple TV. It really is child’s play, and the Apple TV packaging is as sparse as you’d expect from Cupertino’s designers. Inside, you’ll find just a few instructions underneath the hockey puck style device. There’s no HDMI cable, though these cost just a few quid online, and the power lead is now longer than with the older model, which is helpful.

Apple's remote is tiny, but actually not the ideal way to control the new Apple TV

You also get Apple’s swish new remote – complete with its unnecessary extra play button in the middle, for reasons unknown, since the central button performs exactly the same function.

It you own an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad however, you’ll rarely reach for the remote. Unless you like typing by scrolling through letters on screen, the best way to control the new Apple TV is with the iPhone/iPod touch app.

When it comes to hardware, the new Apple TV lives up to almost all the expectations Jobs and Co set themselves over the last few years. It’s smaller, cooler, quicker and more gorgeous-er. Take a look at the photos and you’ll see that it comfortably sits in the palm of a hand, it’s that small. And the price? Yes, £99 is more than the $99 Apple TV costs in the US, but for the tech you get, it’s still impressive.

It would be close to impossible for the new Apple TV to be any smaller

Although a more graphite shade, the new Apple TV still sports that subtle, sexy unibody-metallic look of the latest MacBooks and the Mac Mini, and is barely big enough to house just the ports you need on the back: power, HDMI, micro USB for firmware updates, optical audio, and Ethernet – there’s N-standard Wi-Fi built in too, and the whole thing is silent as a mouse that’s, well, dead. Unlike the scorching old Apple TV, this new model is cool to the touch, too.

So long as you’ve got the latest version of iTunes up and running on your PC or Mac, the new Apple TV really is very nearly a plug and play system. Log in once, enter your details and you’re on your home network in seconds. We had a few problems since we already had Home Sharing set up on our Mac, but we resolved these by switching it off and setting it up again. In all, we were up and running in less than five minutes.

So long as you don't have Home Sharing already up and running set up is a simple process

As always, Apple design beautifully and while the new Apple TV is mind-bendingly small the experience is not about the box, but the screen it works its magic on. This isn’t about the hardware, it’s about the software. Since iOS is inside, the possibilities here are endless.

There’s no denying Apple’s software strategy worked a dream with iOS on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but this is where the problems come in with the new Apple TV. For once, Apple has crippled its new product with the software it runs – or rather, doesn’t.

The new Apple TV’s software looks almost identical to the older model (though it’s running iOS at its core now), but one of the problems we have – and it’s a UK specific one – is that there are actually fewer options. We figured that US movie streaming service Netflix wouldn’t be supported here, but the lack of TV shows to rent is a real blow.

Our disappointment was compounded when we put the new Apple TV head to head with the old version: since you can buy TV shows on the older Apple TV in the UK, seeing the space on the new model’s menu screen is all the more irritating. We’re sure Apple’s working on UK TV rentals, but at the moment, there’s been no official word, and we’re left with an inferior experience.

The UK version lacks TV shows, which the older model let you download and keep

That Internet tab is disappointing too: there’s no browser to be had, so you’re stuck with YouTube and Flickr as your only visual entertainment. As always, our problem with these sites on TV is that usually we’d rather just have the TV off than use them, and unless you’re into a particular hobby with hordes of related videos and pictures, the chances are you won’t use them much either.

With only movies available to rent in the UK, we’re left with streaming from a PC or Mac as our only option for on-screen entertainment. It should come as no surprise by now that Apple is sticking to its guns on format support with the Apple TV, and if you’re planning on sending telly shows or your favourite films its way, they’ll need to fit Apple’s bill.

That may or may not be an issue for you, and while Apple TV will accept 1080p videos, it’ll downscale them to 720p for output. We can’t honestly say that we’re too fussed about the 720p resolution cap on videos it plays (They do look fantastic), and seem to stream well over Wi-Fi, but as ever, Apple TV will only play MPEG-4 and H.264 video in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov containers (as well as motion JPEG), so all those DivX AVI files sitting on your PC might as well stay there.

Likewise, Apple’s audio support is broad enough (AAC, MP3, Apple Lolssless, AIFF, WAV) but still likely to annoy purists after a way to play their lossless FLAC files. As always, every file accessed through Apple TV must first be fed into iTunes on a PC or Mac: again, this could be a sticking point for some.

Play music off your laptop, on your telly and through its speakers

But these issues we’ve come to expect, and it should be clear by now that if you don’t like to play within Apple’s walled garden, you should look elsewhere. Apple caters to those tied into the Mac / iOS / iTunes eco system, and it does it simply. The new Apple TV will also support AirPlay streaming from iOS devices with a future update, but we were only able to test this feature out with a MacBook for the time being.

The new Apple TV is immediately listed as an AirPlay Speaker for music within iTunes, which is nice, but you could do that with the older Apple TV anyway, just under a different name – AirTunes.

Our real problem with the new Apple TV comes with Apple’s streaming only model. It has some huge drawbacks, with the first being the lack of sizeable internal storage for media. Because Apple TV doesn’t support network attached storage (NAS) devices, your Mac or PC needs to be left on to play media you already own, and you’ll notice the delays if you start skipping through tracks in an album while it buffers.

We much preferred keeping music on the older Apple TV’s hard drive, for playing whenever we liked, absolutely instantly – especially since it would automatically sync with our computer’s hard drive anyway.

The new Apple TV’s lack of storage also means that you can’t buy movies and songs to keep. Where the old Apple TV downloaded like a trooper, and synced them to your computer the next time it switched on, the new version will only rent titles, and has no way to grab new music at all. Now, don’t get us wrong, it’s nice that you can stream movies close to instantly over iTunes to the Apple TV, it’s just that we’d like the option to both buy and stream… and not have a laptop or desktop computer left humming away uselessly, acting as an overblown hard drive elsewhere in the house.

It’s not all bad news though. Some internet-based entertainment is handled well by Apple TV. Podcasts support on the new Apple TV works surprisingly well considering there’s no storage: you can add favourites, and you’ll get iOS style number alerts next to shows with new episodes you’ve yet to watch or listen to.

We're sorry to say, but we'd still go for the older, bigger model

In spite of the new Apple TV’s beauty though, it is ultimately a misfire. Had Apple sorted its TV rentals out first, offered a music streaming service to avoid leaving a computer switched on, or even opened Apple TV up to apps from the outset, we’d be looking at a very difference machine. But should you be considering Apple’s TV companion, you should weigh it up based on the things it can do today, not in the hope that future features will be added later on.

As it stands, the new Apple TV is a lame duck. A great looking one, granted, but one with half the features of its American cousin, and still not enough to make us trade in our more flexible PS3 or Xbox 360 movie services.

It’s incredibly rare that an old Apple product out-classes its successor, but the old Apple TV was vastly superior in operation, if not in the heat or size stakes. Until Apple remedies the situation, that adage of the experience being down to software rather than hardware rings true, and in this case, the experience sucks.

Visually, you’d be hard pressed to spot the difference between the Slingbox Pro-HD and its predecessors, and indeed the premise is still the same as ever: you hook up your set top boxes to it, and you’re able to stream and control their content over other laptops, TVs and smartphones (Just about the only platform that doesn’t support SlingPlayer is Windows Phone 7). The twist here is that the Slingbox Pro-HD can output 1080i HD video, rather than the VGA image older Sling boxes output. By and large, this is a nice improvement, but it’s a pity Sling hasn’t used the 700 or so days since its last launch to fix some of its other glaring flaws.

To the good points first: the Slingbox Pro-HD does put out improved picture. Of course, this is going to vary based on the quality of the cable, whether you’re on a home network with the Slingbox Pro-HD or connected remotely, and the input channel or set top box. But in general, it looks impressive: watching a HD channel seemed about as pleasant as watching a HD YouTube video, and when you’re out and about, that’s more than enough. There are two HD component connections on the back, and two standard def, which should have most people covered.

Of course, current smartphones aren’t capable of outputting 1080i so the HD option is only really beneficial if you use a laptop to hop on and connect to your Slingbox Pro-HD, and we weren’t sure we could see much difference using a BlackBerry.

Now to the bad points: it’s not really Sling’s fault, but the nature of connecting up various boxes, sticking connectors in front of infra red receivers and hoping support is included for your exact model means set up is still not for the fainthearted. This is not an Apple TV plug and play scenario: you really need to know what you’re doing to get Slingbox Pro-HD working with your Sky box and DVD player, especially if it’s from a lesser known brand. We’d really love to abolish IR control of gadgets at this point, but there’s no changing your AV set up retrospectively to solve this problem.

But Sling could make things simpler still. We’d just like to have a moan at this point about Sling Media’s continued resistance to several mainstream forms of connectivity at this point. The last time Sling outed new hardware for the UK (2008), we moaned about the lack of WiFi. Here was are in 2010, and it’s still left the flipping WiFi out. It sounds like a minor issue, but if you don’t live in a flat, it’s entirely possible you don’t have your router by your TV. In fact, let us illustrate how annoying it can be – here’s how we had to set it up in our home:

Yes, on a stool. Sling: charging £60 extra for a SlingLink is not an acceptable solution, especially when the Slingbox Pro-HD is massive anyway (You could fit a good three or four new Apple TVs into it). We appreciate there’s no getting around the fiddle of IR blasters to control other set top boxes, so why add to the convoluted set up process? Bad, bad, bad.

It could also admittedly be easy to complain about Sling’s lack of HDMI on the Slingbox Pro-HD – it being pretty much the standard connector for transferring HD video and all. It’s also an easy way to introduce copyright protection on programmes being broadcast, which can prevent gadgets like Slingbox Pro-HD from working, so we can appreciate that the company doesn’t want to harm its user experience when a certain primetime show can’t be streamed, leaving an irritated customer. But we’d still like to see the option there just in case: can’t you credit your customers with a little more common sense Sling?

Finally, a quick mention about the new streaming option on Slingbox.com. We weren’t able to test it on a PC, but on a Mac it wasn’t quite as simple as “Open it in a browser and watch”. It proved impossible to login in on Firefox, and Safari required some serious settings fiddling before we were up and running.

But none of this will likely perturb you if you know Slingbox already works with your setup, and you’ve got some high-def channels and video to watch – and don’t let it.

If you’re a Slingbox user already, we can’t really see any use for the Slingbox Pro-HD if you rely primarily on the SlingPlayer Mobile app, and the same applies if you don’t have a set top box capable of connecting to stacks of HD content – namely, a Sky HD box. We suggest you try TVCatchup instead – it’s good!

But if you find yourself away from home on hotel WiFi regularly, and really would rather watch streaming Champions League than a movie you can buy on iTunes, it’s certainly a tempting option still. Just be prepared to trade it in if it doesn’t play nice with your AV setup.