#1 in a planned series of “this is how we do” posts. This is how we do it – iOS TV.

Television – what an outdated model those dinosaurs use. Sky TV here in NZ knew about what was coming way back in 2001, I know this for a fact ‘cos it was me who was invited to speak to the board about this new Internet thing. It was also me who two (now patently obvious) fools on the board chose to laugh at when I told them that “the Internet is the future of all communications, including television”. Myopic dickheads, both of them. (ex All Black coach, I’m looking @ you.)

Anyway, moving on – (Sky have hardly moved on, barely shifting their business model, seeming to prefer to pillage & plunder as much cash as possible from today’s market without considering future loyalty & future business) As I predicted, (it was a safe prediction, even though 90+% of us were on dial-up still) the Internet has become the carrying medium for nearly all communications. Radio, Telephone, Mail, they’re all ‘net-centric now. Music went ‘net years ago as did Movies – iTunes/YouTube anyone? eBooks are rapidly consuming the paperback market too. Wikipedia is the acknowledged central repository for the world’s knowledge – Encyclopedia Brittanica is a curiosity consigned to history.

& Television? All anyone talks about is how cool their Netflix/Hulu subscription is. While the dinosaur Skyasaurus is protesting how they’ve purchased the NZ rights to this show or that show (that they don’t even screen!) so this pre-emptive action of theirs means that we can’t view wha we want to. Say what?!! Get fucked. I didn’t ask them to buy rights on my behalf, I’m quite capable of making that decision myself, thanks very much.

Does anyone speak in glowing terms about Free-To-Air Television shows? @ all? Ever? Nah, not even. We’re sick and tired of being told what to watch and when to watch it, of being force-fed yet another reality show that we’re told is definitely not pre-scripted yet always, always, always has the “winner” fit within a narrow set of parameters. Oh, and we’re shit-sick of ads taking up nearly half our viewing time. Because of the requirement for the broadcaster to return a commercially-acceptable profit margin, it’s now the case that the programs are merely the bits in between the (revenue-generating) advertisements. Old-school business methodology, not one we’ll look back upon fondly either.

So, by now we’re all aware of the torrent downloading protocol, right? Load-shared & balanced encrypted downloading that ensures you get an unadulterated copy of the original upload. Used by yet also hated by movie studios & computer game studios (Steam uses torrent to distribute Ubisoft’s massive game & update files), loved (and used daily) by millions of downloaders worldwide, fetching content both legal and illegal.

Let’s push the boundary of your current perception of torrent, move things around a bit. If you restructure your search terms a little & then alter the random order of file download, you can build an app that displays solely video content – then split that into Movies, Music Videos & TV shows before refining into various categories like year/genre/rating. Then, instead of waiting for the download to complete before watching, because we’ve altered the random download function to an ordered method, you can stream your selection, view it as the file arrives. See where I’m going with this?

Movie Box – this is how we does tv!
Maybe Movie Box isn’t fully “legal” by US copyright holders’ standards. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Moving right along. Movie Box works just as I described above. The amount of available content is breathtaking – movie upon movie upon movie, dating from yesterday’s fresh theatre releases back through history. TV shows – not just the episode that played last night, but the entire season so far & every season that preceded the current one too. This for every show available. More TV content than you could ever justify watching. Add in music videos, pick an artist, any artist, and here comes a barrage of their video tracks.

Each offering is available in low, medium or high definition – you’ll choose dependent upon your playback medium & Internet connection speed. The only thing missing is live content – typically sport. But there’s other ways to get that.

So here’s what you end up with: All the movies & TV shows ever produced (not quite but not far off either), available on demand – as wanted, when wanted. There’s no point whatsoever in downloading movies, why bother when Movie Box has way more content than you could ever store, and it’s available whenever you want – connect, search, watch. Like that.

Now the sticky bit – Movie Box is an iOS app. &, due to the questionable legality of the content it delivers (& that it’s in direct competition with Apple’s own (overpriced) iTunes movie rental service) you wont find it on the official App Store. Nope, not even. So you need a jailbroken iDevice – iPad is best, simply because of the screen size. Combined with an Apple TV and using the AirPlay feature, you can sit on the couch, flick the large thumbnails until you select your favoured movie/show, click just a couple more times before your big screen telly fills with the moving pictures you want to watch. When you want to watch. Without ads, none, no ads at all. Pause when you need to, resume when you’re ready. If you don’t like your selection, ditch it without cost or the bother of requesting a refund.

How do you get a jailbreaked iPad? Or get your iPad jailbreaked and Movie Box installed? Heh. You should know this answer already – talk to Megabyte @ 1024kb by filling the form out here or give us a ring – press to call>. The process can be completed in around 2 hours, so it’s usually a same-day in/out job.

PS: You’d think that someone might extend the concept huh? Like for music, calling it Music Box? Yeah, you can have that too. Like Spotify/Pandora without the ads.