Conventional TV broadcasting, whether over the air or by cable or satellite, sends out multiple channels all at once, and it's up to the viewer to tune in a particular one at a set time to watch or record a show. Akimbo is promising the next step: speedy interactive delivery of video directly from the Internet to a hard drive connected to your TV. If all goes as promised, this sleek silver and black box could bring into question the very need for conventional broadcasting.

Fast Facts DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 17 x 3 x 11 inches PRICE $230 for player, including 3 months of service; $10 a month, or $199 for lifetime service, for “free for all” programs; pay programs and premium subscriptions extra MANUFACTURER Akimbo Systems, akimbo.com, 650-292-3330 Key Features • Requires broadband (cable modem or DSL) Internet connection • Select programs from TV or remote computer • Player stores 200 hours of video on 80-gigabyte hard drive • outputs composite and S-video; stereo analog and optical digital audio; Ethernet and 2 USB ports

While cable companies are already offering services that let us start and pause programs at will, selections are limited compared with what you can find in a video store. By early 2005, Akimbo was offering more than 500 programs, ranging from 1-minute trailers to feature-length films. Most can be downloaded “free” as part of a $10 basic monthly subscription. Some movies cost as much as $3.99 to download and are automatically deleted after 7 or 30 days whether you watch them or not.

The Akimbo service is organized into channels such as Turner Classic Movies, the BBC, the Luxury Channel, Green Cine, and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Programs are also sorted into categories like Music, Movies, Kids, and Foreign Language. If you choose certain premium subscriptions, Akimbo will automatically download selected programs for you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Premium subscriptions will include Latelelatina (Spanish-language arts, culture, and news for $1.99 a month), GolfSpan (golf instructions for $2.99 a month), and Studio 4 Networks (educational programs for very young children, $1.99 a month).

SETUP AND BASIC OPERATION The Akimbo player comes with a composite-video/stereo cable — you can use your own S-video and optical digital audio cables — and a remote control that can stand upright. I connected my own Ethernet cable between the player and my home network router, adjacent to my TV. If your router is in another room and you have a wireless network, you can buy a Wi-Fi adapter such as the Linksys Wireless-B ($70 from Akimbo).

Powering up the player for the first time, I was prompted to go to any Internet-connected computer to activate the service. This is the only time you need a computer to use Akimbo. Back at the TV, the player's Home screen offered me a list of programs available from the service (Guide). I chose the iFilm channel, which listed 46 films, including trailers, ranging from 1 to 14 minutes in length.

You won't find a power button on the Akimbo player or remote because the player stays on. It polls the service every 5 minutes to check for new program listings, downloading instructions from a computer, or — if you have a premium subscription — new content that the service is ready to push your way. The Akimbo handset offers minimal controls. You can jump back 9 seconds and fast forward or reverse at one speed. An Info button pauses the video image and overlays a short description.

PERFORMANCE Since you can watch a program only after it's fully downloaded, Internet congestion can't degrade playback quality. In fact, it's impossible to tell that a program from the Akimbo player was delivered via a broadband connection rather than a conventional cable feed or over the air. The picture and sound quality are as good as anything you'd expect on an analog TV.

The major difference from conventional broadcasting is that you can't simply tune to an Akimbo channel to start watching a show. It must be downloaded first, so unless you have a premium subscription doing that for you automatically, you'll need to queue up your selections ahead of time.

According to Akimbo, all programs are encoded as Windows Media Video (WMV) files with an average bit rate of 1.1 megabits per second, though some content may be as low as 700 kilobits per second. Using a cable modem in my home that delivers about 1.4 megabits per second, I found that downloading a program from the Akimbo service was always faster than actually playing it. For example, it took 40 minutes to transfer Sore Losers (“Hot-rod juvenile delinquents and Amazons from outer space come to Memphis to kill hippies”); the movie was 81 minutes.

PLUS Easy to set up and use. Convenient pause and replay. Quality as good as standard TV. MINUS Limited programming. No slow-motion or multiple scan speeds. Can't watch until download is done.

Navigating through a movie isn't as flexible as you'd expect from using any other hard-drive recorder or a DVD player. Also, fast-forward and reverse scan consists of rapid-fire stills sampled at 5-second intervals or so. Lacking smooth scanning, multiple scan speeds, slow motion, quick skip, scene access, or elapsed-time access, most users will feel control-deprived.

BOTTOM LINE The Akimbo system has great potential if you believe that on-demand viewing is the future of TV. It's far simpler to operate than a computer and, given its home theater perch, much more comfortable to use. As download speeds continue to increase, transfer time will become less of an issue. The real question, though, is whether there's enough compelling content on the Akimbo service to make it worth your while.

Today, most people will probably say no. Still, I did download an action film, Silver Hawk starring Michelle Yeoh, that wasn't out on DVD yet. And I did find a bunch of entertaining shorts to watch. But having set up the system on a Friday, by Sunday night I'd already seen everything I might enjoy.

Akimbo may appeal to some foreign-language or golf-playing audiences. But until the service signs up more mainstream content providers (which it has started to do), offers open access to the multitude of videos available on the Internet, or becomes accessible from a general-purpose TV recorder like a TiVo, Akimbo is more promise than delivery.