Review: TVBlob Blob box
There can be few more hotly contested areas in tech than the one that surrounds your humble TV.
On the one hand you have consumer tech giants like Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba all trying to persuade us to buy Blu-ray players, PVRs and, of course, new TVs.
On the other you have the PC fraternity, which for years have been desperate to escape the confines of the bedroom / study and invade the living room. It’s not been pretty.
From Microsoft’s Web TV to Apple TV, PC makers have tried, failed, tried again and then failed again to make any real impact on the mass market. DVD it ain’t.
CONNECTIONS: sockets include an Ethernet connection and two USB, but no Wi-Fi, strangely.
Entering this unpromising arena is TVBlob – a tech startup from Italy that reckons it has the magic formula that will finally persuade people to take PC-TV seriously:
“Our global TV platform approach means that any standard TV in the market can be turned into a communications terminal, able to interact with any other ‘terminal’ in the world. We aim to build a network of TV communities – be they special interest groups, businesses or towns – that address local needs, while connecting with other communities and individuals across the world.”
Exciting stuff.
SIZE: The BlobBox is quite a bit smaller than a Sky+ PVR – but it’s also heavier too.
The reality is a little more prosaic: TVBlob’s BlobBox is essentially a black box entertainment PC type running Linux, with a simplified interface that enables you use to use a remote instead of having to balance a mouse and keyboard on your knees. Oh, and it does broadband. So far, so ho-hum.
REMOTE: The control is virtually the same as the one you get with a Sky+ box, only less easy to read, or to use.
What makes the BlobBox more likely succeed than previous efforts is that a) we’re increasingly used to the idea of watching TV online and b) it’s managed to wrap up some of the most popular aspects of web entertainment – YouTube, social networking, internet TV, podcasting, games – into an interface you can access from the comfort of your armchhair.
Plus it also includes more conventional TV goodies like a digital TV tuner and personal video recorder, plus all the sockets you’d expect like twin Scarts and HDMI, digital and analogue audio outputs, two USB sockets and an Ethernet port. It’s your Sky+ box on steroids, basically.
BlobBox setup
Getting the whole thing up and running is fairly straightforward: you simply hook up the necessary cables and then enter the Setup menu (press Set on the Sky+ style remote) and then auto-tune the receivable TV stations and setup your network connection – the BlobBox uses DHCP so that’s fairly easy, although the lack of built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi is disappointing. However you can easily a USB Wi-Fi module if you wish.
INTERFACE: TVBlob’s main screen belies the contents within – navigation is fairly straightforward, however.
One of the first things you’ll need to do is also update the BlobBox’s software/firmware… which can take a while, so it’s off for a cup of TV or five, while it does the necessary.
Once the BlobBox restarts you can begin to use it in earnest – the first thing you notice every time you fire it up is that it’s definitely more PC than CE device – you’re essentially presented with a PC start up screen, while you wait to gain the interface proper, complete with system status messages telling you what the BlobBox is loading. Mmm. Is this what you want to see when parked in front of your TV?
BlobBox functions
The main TVBlob UI is pleasing enough though – you’re presented with five icons on a black background for TV, Podcast, Games, Archive and Internet, which gives you access to the main functions.
INTERNET: Access can access your favourite YouTube Videos, Picasa photos and much more
Plus you’ll also notice red, green, yellow and blue blobs along the bottom whose functions change depending on context, and which also correspond with the same coloured keys on the BlobBox remote.
Select any of the main function icons using the 4-way cursor keys and OK button on the remote and you’re spun off to a series of sub-menus giving you further options:
• The TV icon enables you to watch digital TV, Web TV or call up any recordings you’re made
• Podcast enables you to listen to any podcasts – including video versions – you’ve subscribed to by entering the URL or via Miro
• Games presents you with some very basic TV games like poker, puzzles and so on
• Archive gives also gives you access to stuff you’re stored – which could be anything from downloads to videos and photos.
• Internet – we’ll come back to this one in a minute.
Of the five different functions, TV will be the one you use the most. If you’re watching digital terrestrial you can choose your channel using the pop-up menu with Now and Next information also appearing on screen.
Making TV recordings couldn’t be easier – you simply press the Rec button on the remote, although finding it can be tricky since the remote’s grey and black buttons all tend to look alike.
Crucially the Rec and other function buttons aren’t even picked out in a different colour (c/f Sky+ box) and in some cases don’t even have white painted text / icons, making then hard to read.
Select the Web TV option and the BlobBox brings up all kinds of exotic-sounding programmes (Ninja Babes From Space or French Maid TV, anyone?) but overall the quality of entertainment on offer is poor.
WEBTV: This option offers all kinds of televisual treats – including our favourite: Ninja Babes From Space.
You won’t fare much better either using VCast, which you can confusingly find in the Internet section – there is a wide selection of channels to choose from, but most seemed to be aimed at or Italian or mainland European audiences.
The chief English-language channels seem to be BBC World and Bloomberg.
FREEVIEW: The BlobBox also offers more conventional thrills, thanks to its built-in digital TV tuner.
Sound and video quality is as good as you’d expect from a standard definition digital TV broadcast, although the video quality of Web TV stuff is variable – even two HD channels available appear to show SD-quality content, while the quality of the signal you receive, of course, will vary depending on how fast / reliable your broadband is. Today it was raining, and it’s the summer hols, so our experience wasn’t so hot.
Internet on your TV
But the BlobBox’s ace in the hole is the Internet option, which enables you to do stuff like watch YouTube videos, catch up with your pals using social networks, laugh at the latest Wikipedia entries and surf on over to websites like TechRadar.com.
Some elements of this are obviously a lot more polished than others – the YouTube UI is slick and easy to use, but try as we might we couldn’t get regular web pages to display properly (even after tweaking the display options in the Setup menu).
UPDATE: TVBlob plans to offer updates and improvements to the BlobBox’s user interface and content. It certainly needs to.
The lack of a keyboard and mouse also brings up one of the BlobBox’s major shortcomings – typing URLs, user names and passwords using a TV remote control.
If you’re a texting whizz you’ll no doubt be used to this, but frankly it drove us nuts. Likewise scrolling around webpages isn’t much fun either – 4-way cursor keys and an OK button do not a pleasant navigation experience make: at least you can plug a proper USB mouse and keyboard in.
So has TVBlob succeeded where the collective wit and wisdom of Microsoft, Apple, etc have failed? Hardly.
The BlobBox has some neat features, but it’s still just an entertainment PC at the end of the day – no matter how the company tries to dress it up. That means the interface can be frustratingly slow at times: click on an icon and you’ll have to wait for its application to be ‘built’ before it pops up, for example – and there’s a lot here that feels half finished:
The digital TV tuner menu openly declares its Beta status, and there are all kinds of layout problems, typos and other anomalies that make it very clear you’re not dealing with a slick Sony / Philips / Apple user experience here.
The BlobBox certainly has potential, but until the content, UI and usability improve, we reckon its for Linux geeks and early adopters only. Your girlfriend / parents / gran will hate it.
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