A Guide to Watching TV on the Internet

For the first time, I can honestly say that I am pleased with the state of internet television.

Imagine that.  

Back in March 2008 when Plentitube began, I wrote a post about how ridiculous it is that cable is so expensive, especially on the eve of an obvious new broadcasting format.

I subsequently cancelled my cable.  My thought was that if I wanted to improve the experience of consuming entertainment online, I should be subjugated to watching nothing but that which my computer would provide.

That, and I didn’t want to be a total hypocrite, arguing for the rapid development of internet-based broadcasting to benefit everyone, while secretly sneaking home afterwards and watching “Dexter” on demand.

As fate would have it, I picked the exact right moment to gamble on internet TV being ready for me.

Streaming technologies have advanced so rapidly that they’ve caught up and surpassed SD-quality television.

Networks have been busy compressing and archiving episodes of popular shows and film, both current and classic.

If I had to guess, I’d say I find exactly what I’d like to watch – in high quality no less – about 85% of the time.  And that’s without hitting the torrents.

Here’s where to go:

The Portals:

Hulu
We’re all familiar with Hulu, the over-publicized NBC/FOX joint venture.  If they can keep up their very high standards of video quality and user interface, Hulu could easily become the defacto portal for TV on the web.

Go there for: new episodes of “Fringe” “Sarah Connor Chronicles” (if that’s your thing), FX shows like “Sons of Anarchy,” or the entire “Arrested Development” catalog.

Fancast
Comcast’s Internet TV portal flies much farther under the radar than Hulu, yet it’s gaining in viewership and the quantity of content.  Fancast houses a huge archive of feature films straight from Comcast’s on demand service, and the site has a great focus on cross-pollination between internet and TV.  Half of Fancast is based around TV listings, so in most cases searching for content that’s not available streaming directly from Fancast still pulls up results that are useful in locating the content.

Go there for: new episodes of “Dexter” and “Californication.”  Thanks Showtime!

The Networks:

ABC
ABC took a bold stance in persisting that viewers of their shows must come directly to abc.com. The downside: portals have already aggregated viewership. The upside: streaming HD. ‘Nuff said.

Go there for: “Lost” in HD. No personal judgments if you actually watch anything else on ABC.

CBS
Ahh CBS. What can we say? If you just can’t make it through the workday without your police procedural dramas or “Big Brother,” then you’ve gotta head over to CBS.com. Because that stuff isn’t going to be anywhere else. I’ve got to give CBS a lot of credit — they were the first to pioneer advanced flash players back in 2006 with the “Innertube,” but today unfortunately the CBS.com player doesn’t compare with the quality of ABC or Hulu.

Go there for: “The Amazing Race” episodes segmented into 20-separate 2-minute clips. Why? Who knows.

ESPN
Sure, so it’s been righteously annoying that the ESPN.com video player starts screaming at you about Gatorade when you load the page. They secretly want your boss to know when you’re getting paid to check your fantasy football team. But click that ‘launch player’ button and suddenly you’ve got a fully-programmable ESPN schedule to play with. Wait, you mean that I can skip all the topics on “Pardon The Interruption” that are a waste of time? That’s exactly what I’m saying.

Go there for: “Sportscenter” that you can control.

~ by plentitube on October 1, 2008.