My friend Ken Schaffer's startup, TV2Me, is starting to really push the envelope on video streaming. Their box enables you to stream your own cable, satellite or terrestrial TV signal to your laptop or cell phone or PC, no matter where you are, with incredible fidelity. You hook up their component to your cable box at home and then you can login to your signal over the Net from anywhere. On the receiving end (for example on your laptop) you just install the TV2Me signal processing plugin for your browser and you can start watching full-screen live TV, streamed from your house, with the ability to change channels instantly, etc -- as if you were operating your TV from your home remote. It's possibly one of the best streaming technologies I've seen. I've used their private demo and it's amazing to watch live TV from cities all around the world on my laptop, even over a wireless router when on the road. We're not talking postage stamp sized streaming here, folks -- this is full screen and very crisp. And the buffer time is incredibly short as well -- it starts up almost immediately.
From what I can see their technology is way more advanced than the Slingbox. Not only that but the TV2Me box has the potential to be miniaturized and made even cheaper than the Slingbox. All in all this is a hot technology to watch. I could see this being built-into every cable box in the future as an additional service that cable box providers could sell to their customers. But there are many other uses of this as well -- for example keeping up with home news and sports when on the road, or for always catching those crucial HBO series episodes you just can't stand to miss. So many people spend so much time on the road for work -- TV2Me is a nice way to bring a little bit of your home with you wherever you go.
Here's their latest press release:
Amber Daily
[email protected]The World's Longest TV Show?
It wasn’t quite the level of Lucky Lindy's 1927 flight from Roosevelt Field to Le Bourget, but it was another trans-Atlantic first: On Sunday,
16 October, on El Al flight 01, non-stop from Tel Aviv to New York, private passenger Avner Teller, acting on his own initiative, watched live hometown Tel Aviv TV all the way to Kennedy.Television reception from Tel Aviv was made possible by TV2Me®, an extraordinary system that allows viewers to "space shift" any city's full range of cable or satellite television stations anywhere on — or off — the earth.
Mr. Teller, 20, used El Al’s in-flight broadband (satellite) Internet connection to connect to a TV2Me Personal Video Server attached to the cable in his Tel Aviv home, and the shows went on.
Scores of users around the world use TV2Me to bring live television from their homes to wherever they travel. El Al flight 01 on October 16 was the first time personal broadband TV was viewable on an aircraft.
Upon arrival in New York, Mr. Teller connected to his hotel's Internet service and continued to enjoy live TV from Israel on his suite’s 42”
plasma screen. He was also able to watch the live TV of several other countries."I know people who won't fly on days their teams are playing," said Ken Schaffer, who invented TV2Me and is the president of K2B Inc in New York, which manufactures and distributes the system.
Schaffer expects every national airline to follow El Al in making broadband Internet available, enabling TV2Me owners to take their viewing with them. But that’s not all. The airlines themselves will be able to use "home-based" TV2Me systems to show their country’s programs through their on-board video systems, for the viewing pleasure of all passengers.
Said Schaffer, "We're thrilled by this flight. If we thought in such terms, we'd have arranged for 100 paparazzi to meet the flight at Kennedy -- it is, after all, something like a 21st Century Lindbergh!”
“One day,” Schaffer added, “everyone will have every right to expect their local stations to be available aloft, no matter where in the world their flight takes them.”
TV2Me, launched in 2003, is in routine use around the world by diplomats, rock stars, educators, expatriates, émigrés and sports fans
-- who use the system to "space shift" their cable or satellite subscriptions to wherever they journey.Unlike any other video delivery system, TV2Me produces smooth, high resolution, full screen video on any screen, from a laptop to a full-size plasma monitor.
TV2Me's website is www.TV2Me.com.
Journalists are invited to request demonstrations of TV2Me Personal and Commercial systems on their own PC s on minutes’ notice.
([email protected])
Flight Photos: http://TV2Me.com/aloft/TV2Me_aloft.zip
Reprint (PDF): http://TV2Me.com/aloft/TV2Me_aloft.pdf
