By Kierra Sondereker, For The Miami Student
Later this month, all on-campus Miami students will have access to Philo, a TV platform that allows students to stream and record live cable TV.
Two Harvard students, Nicholas Kras and Tuan Ho, came up with the idea for Philo. With a strong desire to watch TV without cable on campus, these students used tinfoil to pick up TV channels coming in over the air. They then streamed these channels to their laptops.
Philo has evolved since then, gaining more funding and recognition with big names in the media industry such as HBO. Philo is now being offered to universities across the nation, including the University of Alabama, Brown, Harvard, Ohio State and Clemson.
According to assistant vice president of IT Services, Troy Travis, the cable that Miami currently uses isn't going anywhere.
"Philo is an evolution of the traditional cable. It adds capabilities. We're not dropping our cable TV, we're just using a new distribution method," said Travis. "The residential students can now launch cable to multiple places on multiple devices, such as their laptops, phones and TVs."
Philo has a variety of options for viewers, including TV shows, live news and sports. It also has up to 20 hours of DVR capability, giving it the feel of streaming networks such as Hulu or Netflix and making it convenient for always-on-the-go college students.
"So if you're over in Armstrong in between classes and you miss 'The Walking Dead' on Sunday night," said assistant director for the Office of Residence Life Kyleen Ammerman. "You can pull it up on your recordings and watch, which is what I think is the exciting part."
Philo also comes at no additional cost to students because it's a part of the already existing cable services at the university.
Two months ago, a test run of Philo was initiated. Because this new TV platform affects residential students, the test run was made available to resident assistants, members of the Residence Hall Association (RHA), Community Leadership Teams (CLT) and professional staff.
"There were ten channels that we wanted you to play around with," said Ammerman. "Students were able to test it out and if they had issues they would contact Philo and we would see how quick Philo was to respond to us and see how the streaming worked. After that, they had to do an assessment."
The initial assessments brought in overwhelmingly positive results, prompting voting delegates of RHA to unanimously vote in favor of Philo. The university then took the next steps to provide Philo for all on-campus students.
Access to Philo is obtained through the use of Miami login credentials and can be used anywhere on the campus network - Wi-Fi or wired. However, due to FCC regulations, Philo is only available on the Oxford campus network. Since it extends the campus residential cable TV to the campus network, it's only available to students who live on campus.
"This new service is for our on-campus residential students," said Travis. "We want to be really clear. Our off-campus students won't have access to it, as they don't have access to the campus cable TV service."
An initial launch of Philo will begin on April 27 and subsequently be made available for all on-campus students for the remainder of the semester. Philo will officially become a part of Miami network services the following fall 2016 semester.
"Next year is a hybrid year, and it's a really exciting year," said Ammerman. "North Quad, except for McFarland, will be exclusively Philo. Everyone else will have the opportunity to engage with Philo while still having access to the traditional cable."
With this new TV platform, streaming will be made easier and faster, a must for busy college students.
"It moves with you," said Ammerman. "We're just catching up to your schedule."