Do you watch a lot of network television? Do you ever miss an episode and have to search the Internet trying to find where you can watch it for free?  If so, you should take a look at Zinc.

Zinc is a free Internet video browser designed to help you watch practically any content available online.  Zinc integrates with Netflix, Hulu, and just about every major television network to provide unlimited video on demand.  Zinc can also play your local content, which is helpful if you use Torrent Episode Downloader very often.

Here are the downloads:

• Windows – Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2+
• Mac – Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Intel only)
• Sorry no Linux installer
• Zinc can also be used as a Firefox extension.

Setup

Install instructions, as well as the system requirements are listed on the respective download pages.  Installing Zinc is very trivial; just click next, agree to the terms, and choose where you want Zinc shortcuts placed, that’s it!

At the end of the installation, a hardware test is performed to ensure your system it is capable of running Zinc.  Don’t worry though, there aren’t many system requirements for Zinc.  Basically if your system can run Firefox and Adobe Flash, which you would need to view most online content anyway, it can run Zinc.  This test should only take a few seconds and when it is complete you should see a dialog box confirming that your hardware is compatible.  If your hardware is not compatible don’t worry just yet, you might be able to fix the problem.  Try following the troubleshooting guide found in the Zinc forums.

Once Zinc is installed, open the application and you will be greeted by a quick video clip that shows you the new features of Zinc Beta 4.

Zv Presents

The main screen of Zinc, Zv Presents, displays the online sites where you can watch videos.  Some of the notables here are Netflix, Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central, and YouTube.  You can also follow more networks by clicking on the “More Content” icon in the bottom right corner.

From this screen, you can also search for Movies/TV shows you want to watch; however, I found the search to be a little temperamental.  For example, when searching for “How I Met Your Mother” I get an error saying the results could not be retrieved from the server.

But, if I search for “Mother”, How I Met Your Mother is 90% of the search results.  I am not sure why this is, but the search does work well once you find the right keyword.  You can also search for content on Hulu, YouTube, and Google videos by clicking on the respective tabs, but those sites only appear after the search results are initially retrieved and only if there wasn’t an error.

Netflix

The next major feature is the Netflix integration.  Before using Netflix, you will need to install Microsoft Silverlight, which can be found here.  Once you have Silverlight, click on the Netflix icon and you will be asked to login to Netflix with your username and password.

After logging into Netflix, you should see a list of movies you can watch instantly.  From this screen, you can also view your Watch Instantly queue, recommended movies, newly added movies, and you can also browse by genre.

Once you find a movie you want to watch, simply click on its icon and it should begin to stream the movie just as if you were logged into the Netflix website.

Now, when you want to go back to the main Netflix screen, simply deactivate the full screen mode of the Netflix player (if it was in full screen mode) by pressing ‘ESC’ and then moving your mouse to the top of the screen.  Moving your mouse to the top of the screen will cause the URL toolbar to appear.  You can now use the Back and Forward buttons to navigate, as well as the Return to Zv Presents button, located to the right of the Google search.

As you can see, the Zinc interface is basically a custom version of Firefox running in full screen mode.  Therefore, using normal Firefox shortcuts also works when running Zinc.  Of course just about any remote control will work as well.

At any time, you can add content to your favorites menu.  To do so, click the content’s banner located above the video results.  You can add TV networks, individual shows, categories (useful for netflix), websites, and more to your favorites.

ESPN360

Speaking of viewing websites, I have some good news for sports fans; you can add ESPN360 to your favorites menu in Zinc.  Of course, just like with Netflix, you need a special plugin to view ESPN360.com.  The plugin is called the Move Media Player and it can be downloaded from the move network website.

After install the plugin, navigate to ESPN360 and you may need to login to using the username and password registered with your ISP, in order to stream this content.  Next, click on ‘Watch Now’ and the URL of the window that opened is the one we want to add to our Zinc favorites:

http://espn.go.com/broadband/espn360/player?gameId=&sportCode=&league=

Copy and paste the above URL into the address bar in Zinc.  Then click the ‘Add to Zinc favorites’ button located to the left of the address bar and specify a name for the new favorite.

As you can see, Zinc differentiates between website bookmarks and video favorites.  You can remove content from favorites by highlighting it and then pressing delete.

Local Content

As I mentioned before, Zinc can play your local videos.  To do this, first go to the Zinc settings and and click on ‘Media Folders’.

Here, you can add the folders where your local videos are stored.

After adding the folders, Zinc will begin to scan those folders for the video content.

Now, all of the videos located in those folders can be found under the Local Content section of Zinc.  In this section you can either view all of the content, or you can browse by folder as if you were navigating through Windows Explorer.

Applications

The last feature I want to mention is the ability to launch other applications from within Zinc.  To do this, click on Settings, and then Applications.  Now, click Add Application and navigate to the location of the application you want to add.  For example, the following is the location of the QuickTime Player:

C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QuickTimePlayer.exe

Now, QuickTime will be available under the Applications menu.

Zinc includes a few applications by default, such as iTunes, Miro, Windows Media Center, and Windows Media Player.  If you don’t have those applications installed it will simply take you to the application’s website.

This feature is great for HTPCs, since you may want to use another program to play specific content.  For example, you could launch iTunes and listen to music, or browse the music store.  Then, when you are finished simply close iTunes and you will be returned to Zinc.  This also adds the ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between different HTPC applications such as Zinc, XBMC, Boxee, GBPVR, MediaPortal and others.

Final Thoughts

+ The installation was very straight forward.
+ How to/tutorial videos listed under the favorites were very helpful, and were not too long.
+ Instant access to a large amount of online videos.
+ Integration with Netflix and Hulu.
+ Overall performance was very good even on old hardware (AMD Athlon 2800+, 768MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440).
+ Been using Zinc a lot over the past week and it hasn’t crashed once.
+ Being able to launch applications from within Zinc is very handy.
- Often get errors when searching for Movies/TV Shows, mostly when the search strings are more than 2 or 3 words.
- After adding content to Favorites, it does not always show up.  This can normally be fixed by removing and re-adding to favorites.

Would like to see the local content recognized by filename/metadata like in Boxee.  Also, adding online picture and music functionality would be nice.  Possibly sites like Flickr, Pandora, Last.fm, etc.  As an avid Linux user, I would love to see future versions support Linux.  Lastly, an iPhone/iPod/Android remote application would be great to use for those who don’t have a normal remote.

Extras

• Here is a short video introduction to Zinc, which covers most of the information from this post.
• Zinc FAQ
• Zinc Help
• Integrating Zinc into Windows Media Center – theHTPC.net
• Boxee vs. Zinc vs. Hulu – DeviceGuru.com

A new version of Zinc should be released soon and I cannot wait to see what progress has been made in the past few months.  Once the new version is available, I will write an updated post discussing the changes/new features, so check back then.

If you use Zinc, we want to hear what you like and don’t like.  If you don’t use it, tell us why!

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Written by Eric

 

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