ReplayTVBlog

As I wrote last week, VeohTV is being called a possible DVR for Internet Video. Currently in beta testing and available by invitation only, I applied for the beta and received my invitation about a week later. While I haven’t spent much time with VeohTV (yet), here are some of my first impressions of the current beta version.

The download and installation of VeohTV was simple and error free. Basically, all you have to do is download the setup file, run it and choose where to install the program. One nice touch that I really liked was that the setup program asked where to store downloaded videos. You have the choice of installing the program on one drive and storing any downloaded videos on another drive. Too many programs I’ve installed lately automatically store their data in “My Documents” — not necessarily where I want to store tons of video. Since I have a nice big Seagate external hard drive, I chose to store my downloaded videos there.

The first time you run VeohTV it asks you to sign in to your Veoh.com account. If you don’t already have one, you can create an account very easily from within VeohTV by just entering your email address, username and password. After logging in, you are presented with the VeohTV home screen:

As you can see from the screenshot, the interface was definitely designed for use on a TV with a remote, but it’s also very usable on a computer with the mouse. Clean and attractive, it presents you with your main activities within VeohTV.

The first place I went was channels. Channels are supposed to be similar to TV Channels but for Internet Video.

As you can see from the screenshot, VeohTV channels are organized basically by the provider of the video content — ABC, NBC, YouTube, etc. Usually this is the website where the video came from originally. By clicking on one of these “Channels”, you can access the videos available from that channel. If I click on NBC, I see the following listing of videos.

This is the exciting part of VeohTV — being able to watch and record (download) network TV shows in full screen on your computer. Well, so far this is partially true. As you can see, some of the major networks are there (CBS, NBC, and Fox) but not all of their shows are there. And for the shows that are there, it’s usually only the last two or three episodes. This would all be ok except for two big problems. The video quality and the missing download option.

The video quality is hit or miss. For most of the channels, watching the video in full screen is somewhat blocky but acceptable. The one notable exception is Fox. The quality on the Fox videos is exceptional. Watching American Dad through VeohTV was like watching it on my TV — clear, not blocky, and always in sync.

But the real problem is not being able to download the network TV shows. When you go in to view a network TV show, the option to download it to your computer is not available. There are other channels (IFCTV for one) that allow you to download the videos, but not the major networks. For a software program that bills itself as a “DVR for the Internet” this seems like it would be a must have feature. Without this feature, VeohTV is basically just another video player for the videos you can watch on the major networks websites.

But this is still beta software and hopefully this is something that will get worked out before the full release of VeohTV. Overall, I’m very interested in the potential of VeohTV. I actually enjoyed watching some of the Fox shows with VeohTV. It’s definitely worth installing and trying out, even in beta. And if you haven’t gotten an invitation yet, I have three VeohTV beta activation codes for anyone who’d like to try it out. If you’re interested, post a comment here with you’re email address and I’ll send the activation code and link to the first three people who post.

Technorati Tags: VeohTV, DVR, Video, NBC, Fox

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