The Vivendi-owned French satellite TV service Canal+ will bypass cable and phone pay-TV operators by launching two models of TV sets called MyWish, which allows viewers direct access via the internet to its CanalPlay VoD platform, which has 3,500 films. Who needs an Apple TV, a Roku, a Windows Media Center PC or any other digital media adapter?
The sets, built by China’s TCL (formerly Thomson Multimedia), connect to the Net over the user’s broadband modem via built-in wi-fi. Plug-and-play – no PC needed.
MyWish TVs let users download movies directly to 4GB of built-in memory. They have an SD card reader that can be used to download and store multiple movies for later playback.
MyWish also allows the user to display photos, videos or music that are on memory cards plus access Internet radio stations and podcasts.
It shows TNT (T’l’vision Num’rique Terrestre), the French equivalent of Freeview, in HD (Haute D’finition).
MyWish sets go on sale this month at €750 ($1,110) for the 32-inch model and €900 ($1,335) for the 40-inch LCD TV.
Canal+ has become very Internet active. It recently launched a 12-part Web-only series called ‘Kali.’ It will be shown on Mondays and Tuesdays in six episodes before the whole thing is shown on traditional linear TV in December.
We expect that some Internet-connectable TV sets will come with HomePlug networking instead of or in addition to wi-fi by January.