{"id":2520,"date":"2008-02-03T12:18:56","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T12:18:56","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-12-27T11:38:01","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T11:38:01","slug":"tvcatchup-your-pvr-in-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/new-products\/tvcatchup-your-pvr-in-the-cloud.html","title":{"rendered":"TVCatchUp &#8211; Your PVR in the Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"TVCatchup\" alt=\"TVCatchup\" src=\"\/images\/news\/tvcatchup.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"310\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Home automators love personal video recorders. A lot of us employ several of them around the home and use IP to stream recordings for different users to different rooms.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"sj-gblock\">\n<script language=\"javascript\">\n<!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5598479065369258\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 300; \ngoogle_ad_height = 250; \ngoogle_ad_format = \"300x250_as\"; \ngoogle_ad_channel = \"7058025304\"; \ngoogle_ad_type = \"text_image\"; \ngoogle_color_border = \"FFFFFF\"; \ngoogle_color_bg = \"FFFFFF\"; \ngoogle_color_link = \"52a79f\"; \ngoogle_color_url = \"CFFFDF\"; \ngoogle_color_text = \"000000\"; \n\/\/--> \n<\/script>\n<script language=\"javascript\"  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><\/script>\n<\/div>Already office apps (like Google Docs) are moving on-line so I suppose it shouldn&#8217;t come as any great surprise that now the PVR is moving up to the cloud as well.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvcatchup.com\" target=\"_blank\">TVCatchUp<\/a> is a free service recording from the UKs FreeView channels and storing the programs online so you can stream them to any PC with web access.<\/p>\n<p>Each user is currently given 10Gb of storage.\u00a0 Of course there&#8217;s no reason why you couldn&#8217;t have multiple accounts, in fact setting up an account per family member seems like a great way to let everyone manage their own recordings, with their own space.<\/p>\n<p>As you&#8217;d expect in this complicated world of regions and rights, you need a UK IP address to setup an account on TVCatchup.\u00a0 However we have heard about a little experiment where an account was setup here in the UK, then the details were passed on to a user in the USA who was then able to login and use the service!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"TVCatchup\" alt=\"TVCatchup\" src=\"\/images\/news\/tvcatchup1.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"354\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The TV schedule can be viewed in the usual EPG format.\u00a0 Mouse over gives program details and you can setup a recording with a couple of clicks.\u00a0 It&#8217;s also trivial to add a season-pass \/ series link to catch all episodes of your favourite shows.\u00a0 Programs already scheduled for recording appear purple in the EPG.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"TVCatchup\" alt=\"TVCatchup\" src=\"\/images\/news\/tvcatchup2.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Perhaps one of the most useful features of the system is the ability to watch shows that you didn&#8217;t actually record yourself.\u00a0 In reality this is a little convoluted as you have to &#8220;request&#8221; the recording from another user.\u00a0 Once someone agrees (usually within a few minutes) you have &#8220;borrowed&#8221; their copy for 24 hours.\u00a0 It seems while the recording is loaned to you, its owner does not have access to it.\u00a0 We assume all this is to show the recordings are\u00a0 for single, personal use and to appease &#8220;the Man&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"TVCatchup\" alt=\"TVCatchup\" src=\"\/images\/news\/tvcatchup3.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">The service is funded through advertising.\u00a0 Banners appear on the site and player but aren&#8217;t especially intrusive.\u00a0 On the subject of ads, commercial breaks are recorded too, but it&#8217;s easy to grab the play head and move past them.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s currently a <a href=\"http:\/\/forum.xbmc.org\/showthread.php?tid=30390\" target=\"_blank\">request for support<\/a> on the XBMC forums, which would allow users to stream recordings from the service straight onto their TVs, now that would be nice!<\/p>\n<p>Recordings appear to be kept for around 60 days.\u00a0 It may be possible to rip the FLV files to your local machine, although we&#8217;ve not tried this, nor do we know if there would be any DRM implications.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve read of plans for a mobile version of the site planned for Q2 this year.<\/p>\n<p>TVCatchup is a great product and one we can see ourselves using, perhaps in conjunction with our own real-world systems.\u00a0 It would be great for use in the office or on the road.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a competitor to SlingBox if you don&#8217;t have a requirement to stream live TV, and hey, at the price it can&#8217;t be beaten (the BBC, ITV and Channel4&#8217;s video on demand collaboration <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/media\/2007\/nov\/27\/bbc.itv\" target=\"_blank\">Project Kangaro<\/a> is due later this year.)<\/p>\n<p>But now for the bad news. It looks like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/media\/2007\/dec\/17\/television.digitalmedia\" target=\"_blank\">legality of the service may be challenged<\/a>.\u00a0 So, are the suits going to spoil the fun?\u00a0 Don&#8217;t get too comfy on the sofa with your laptop just yet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvcatchup.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.TVCatchup.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home automators love personal video recorders. A lot of us employ several of them around the home and use IP to stream recordings for different&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-products"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2520"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11426,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions\/11426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}