TV over the web

Within a year I think I will be watching TV on my TV through the internet not the sky plus box that I do at the moment. I'm really happy with the TV that I get through my G1 phone but the size of the screen and all that goes with it does limit what you can do with it. It's not like you can sit around your phone with your wife and watch transformers is it.

I've been looking at this for a while with interest but the main limitation with every service I've found is the need for flash. My G1 doesn't support flash yet so I can still only watch inernet TV through my laptop which isn't the most comfortable experience. I just want to kick back and not have the sound of the fan in the background.

My initial research turned up some interesting results:

Online TV

• Sport
• http://www.australianopentv.com/page/Home/0,,12594,00.html
  
• http://www.omnisport.tv/page/LiveSchedule : Didn't have the australian open
  
• general
• Zattoo (www.zattoo.com)
  
• Suymmary of common options : http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/iptv.html
• media extenders
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-DMA2200-Dual-Band-Wireless-N-Extender/dp/B000YL5NAC/ref=pe_15511_14687331_as_txt_6/

I'm a tennis fan. The tennis specific stuff I found with a few comments added is:

Watch sport at http://www.getsport.tv/

also buy slingbox and media streamer to view it on gphone or moxi digital or aubox(android set top box only in japan)

http://www.webbrowsertv.com/

• http://watchtennisonline.net/: tried and it's windows media player and £21 a year
• http://www.watchlivetennis.org/: site doesn't explain the system requirements. emailed to check
• http://www.sopcast.com/ recommended by http://www.ehow.com/how_2117447_watch-tennis-online.html
• http://www.bet365.com/home/?lng=1: click on live streaming at the top. Suggested by http://www.tennisguru.net/watch-tennis-online/. Not surewhat tennis is actually available. Has free registration. Uses flash.
• http://www.ustream.tv/channel/watch-tennis-online-tv1-live-for-free: uses flash

All this is research from the last few months. Just today I came across a post on free internet tv which gave a link to VEOH and another post lnking to http://tv.blinkx.com/. The first thing that's obvious is the need to fill out lots of ad based promotions before you watch. That's annoying. I expect ads to be included but would prefer them to be like google ads and around, or even intersprsed with, the content. NOt something I actually have to fill out. I just couldn't be bothered. Also because I feel this is circumventing copyright rather than paying for licensed content I wonder what else these sites are doing. It's not far from this to find a virus or other unwanted application downloaded to your machine so I'm a bit wary about these sites.

Anyway. This area is quickly evolving. I don't think it will be long before the model becomes clearer and clean simple ways of providing tv over the web will be provided. I'm impressed how much is possible right now. I get the impression that it's about a year or two away before I can genuinely watch most tv I want to watch through a web browser linked to my tv. 

Lets see if we can find that answer sooner.