The online television market is growing daily, and new companies are entering the fray regularly, some of which are copycats, and some of which are more original and innovative.

Back in November I wrote about a service that at the time, I thought was set to redefine the way consumers purchase television shows over the Internet.

SyncTV President John Gildred explained:

“[SyncTV allows users to] download any episode of any show on that channel any time you want,”

“You will have a whole catalog of all the shows under that channel for a really small price of just a couple of dollars per month.”

This week, after receiving an invite into the private beta, I have been checking out the SyncTV player, which is a required download to access the service. 

Easy To Navigate

The SyncTV player has a neat and easy-to-navigate interface, with large buttons in the lower portion providing easy access to your library, the SyncTV content menu, and current downloads. 

The search feature is also an added bonus if your library gets to large to scroll through. Within the Preference menu there is a useful parental control feature, which allows users to block or password protect the playback of downloaded content based upon its TV rating. 

I was somewhat disappointed to see a lack of any additional options other than setting a simple device name. Also, since it comes with a black skin, why not allow users to create and share more looks for the player.

Bread Crumb Buttons

A welcome addition is the use of “bread crumb” buttons located just under the menu bar at the top of the player. 

These make it easy to keep track of where you have been by showing the category and sub-categories that you have gone through to get to your current screen (such as within the episodes for the show 6teen in the screenshot above). 

Clicking on any of these buttons will take you directly back to that category.

Content & Video Quality

After taking a look around the player, I got down to what really matters which is the content and video quality. This is where it seems like the service is lacking and needs more attention. 

There are only six channels available for users to select programming from. Among these, Showtime is perhaps the only recognizable name with Dexter and Brotherhood being the only shows available there. 

Much of the rest of the content currently available seems geared towards children, which helps to explain why some parents might praise the parental control feature. 

Pricing & Download Speeds

As far as pricing, many shows have have free single episodes, with entire season downloads as low as $4.99. The premium Showtime content runs $1.99 for single episodes and $24 for an entire season.

The download speeds were quite impressive, and videos can even start being watched before the download is finished. After having downloaded shows completely however, I ran into excessive skipping and choppy playback, which seems odd if the video was downloaded to my PC’s hard drive. 

It looked as if the videos were streaming online. After downloading 3 different videos, this problem occured with all 3, and ultimately, I was unable to actually sit back, watch, and enjoy a show.

Conclusions

SyncTV is still in an early private beta form, so hopefully the amount of content available will increase and all of the playback issues will be addressed. Right now, it’s probably better to stick with Apple iTunes and Amazon Unbox episodes, where you have more choices.

This article is based on a Profy post written by Michael Garrett.

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