The award for the second coolest technology I saw today at CES is a late entry, but a good one. Avermedia today showed off their beta SnugTV service, which allows groups of friends (who naturally own Avermedia TV tuners) to stream each others LiveTV feed over the Internet. Internationally.
Brits? Frustrated that you won’t see the new season of Chuck for months (and even then it’ll go to a niche cable channel)? Forget Usenet. Who needs Bittorrent? Simply find a mate in the US with an Avermedia TV Tuner, both sign up for the free Snug TV service and you can watch it live over the web in Blighty as NBC broadcast it in the USA.
The service transcodes Live TV into lower resolution video and streams it to a personal network of friends you allow to access the feed. Got an Avermedia dual tuner? Your friends can watch one channel on the Snug TV portal whilst you watch another at home.
Avermedia walked me through the service using test streams they have set up for the beta – there were live TV feeds from China, Taiwan and France all available in the portal. This is Jacques Chirac brought to you live from France, in Las Vegas. On French TV.
Whilst the regular Snug TV service is free, streaming is limited to a resolution of 320 x 240 and 5 hours of TV. $10 a month boosts this to 640 x 480, full DVR recording capabilities on your PC and unlimited time allowance, but you may want to consider the Platinum deal at $15 which adds a hosted relay service, reducing connection issues, a 7 day EPG of the remote channels and best of all, support for Windows Mobile and Android (available now), with iPhone following in February. I don’t know whether the TV networks will like it, but I sure do.
More Info: SnugTV
