Ok, lots of focus group (family) data to report.

First off, while it feels like TV... It feels different. My wife says it feels like surfing the web. I think she means that you're exploring, but not with a clear sense of where your going. Some of that is just that many of the channels are not brands we're familiar with. But also, there does feel like there is some exploration - which is both exciting and a bit daunting.

The other night, my younger son and my wife were watching... And then I heard a big loud laugh from both of them. It's been a long time since anything on TV made them laugh out loud. It was a short movie posted on Ifilm.

Then my older son came out - ended up watching Green Day and a Blondie video. Said "this is great, now I can watch music videos again" -he complains that MTV doesn't play them.

And then a bunch of folks in the family discovered some old Arthur C. Clarke shows from Channel 4, and some yoga videos.

All in all -felt good to find things that seemed worthwhile and educational.

Operationally - there are some missing features. There is no progress bar, and it isn't clear WHEN the box calls out to get content. Why can't the box go and get me a 1minute short when I ask for it -rather than just putting it in the que to download, with no clear indication of when it's going to come in. It's a bit disconnected.

Also - the channel paradigm that they've adopted feels old - and hard to navigate. If Akimbo is selling access to IPTV, which we all believe is gaining to be a huge offering in the next few years, where in their architecture is a plan to help ME manage the content ocean? If they're answer is that they (the brand Akimbo) is a filter for quality, well - they've all already lost that argument in my family. To much old stuff, some good some bad.

So - they've won the battle of convincing me that IPTV can look like real tv. Now the question is - how much of a shift will there be in HOW I get new tv (filter/trusted partners/key words/collaborative filter) and that may be the harder problem to solve in the long run.