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Actually all the episodes of Heroes from the first season were streamed for free from the NBC web site. There were some limitations; they forced you to sit through maybe 2 minutes of ads throughout the episode, and I suspect it only worked on Windows, but hey, it was free.

They could offer cheap, protected, legal access to their content, but instead they're daring users to circumvent the law.

I thought Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC were the (mostly) White Family Channels.

The Black Family Channel just happens to reveal their target demographic in their name.

Cue flashlight under the face...

In the year 2000:

Computers will cost half as much as they did in 1990, but will act twice as slow.

damn, I was gonna post that. 10 second sitcoms - It was brilliant.

Here's a link to the episode and the whole season of minishows -"Makin it Happen"

30 rock is amazing. I bought a bunch of 30 rock episodes on itunes and watch the episodes again and again - that's the only time I've ever bought TV except for season 1 of the sopranos on dvd.

so, to keep this on topic, yes it's a stupid idea. even tv people mock it.

damn, I was gonna post that. 10 second sitcoms - It was brilliant.

Here's a link to the episode and the whole season of minishows -"Makin it Happen"

30 rock is amazing. I bought a bunch of 30 rock episodes on itunes and watch the episodes again and again - that's the only time I've ever bought TV except for season 1 of the sopranos on dvd.

so, to keep this on topic, yes it's a stupid idea. even tv people mock it.

Video at

http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/v ideo/index.shtml#mea=55682

Check out this "IPhone commercial" parody from "Late Night with Conan O Brian" :

http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/v ideo/index.shtml#mea=55682

Don't worry, even if we can't figure it out, Micah will.

Live TV is not dead. It just requires a live event to make you want to watch: sports, concerts, debates, fights, etc.

Communications is an eyes & ears business... Some media moguls understand this -- buying up or getting exclusive deals with sports teams & venues ensures revenue stream from eyeballs no matter how it happens.

Appointment TV is also not dead, it's just a bit different. For 12 million people, the season finale of Heroes is appointment-worthy. In an on-demand world, viewings just might be spread out across 2-3 days instead of a single hour.

I hope it is better than NBC's Video Rewind site which lets you view previous episodes of their shows. It is so glitchy that it is probably easier for an end-user to install BitTorrent, find a site, and download it. They use Flash video, so you get postage-stamp size video. They divide it into 6 sections and run short commercials in-between -- shorter than network TV commercials, which would be nice... except that half the time it gets stuck and doesn't move on to the next section. Then if you try to seek it displays another commercial. And it plays the video before it is buffered so you have to pause/play it manually and guesstimate when it is safe. Then of course, if you mis-click, or the playback glitches, you seek and get an ad and have to start over. It took me 2 hours to watch a 1 hour episodeof Lost.

To top it off, it crashed when I exit the browser (Safari) which is sad since I can spent hours watching videos on YouTube without it crashing.

Why can't they just stream an .MP4 file? It's a standard, cross-platform format that every OS has a player for. Sheesh.

This cop and his wife seem to be doing fine.

So, why not make the pilot or the first episode of the season free to hook people on shows.

Why stop there? Why not provide the latest episode online for free in case you missed it or prioritized something else (or two something elses if you have a dual-tuner PVR, or three something elses if you recorded two shows and watched a third already-recorded show)? That's what NBC does with Heroes. But why not go even further? NBC provides all episodes of the current season of Friday Night Lights online for free. CBS has done the same thing with Jericho. There are probably other such shows out there provided online for free by the parent company that I just haven't stumbled across (I watch and enjoy Heroes and Jericho, and though I haven't watched it yet I ran across Friday Night Lights by accident).

Yes, these videos are streaming-online-only. Yes, it sucks to have to watch them in a browser rather than on your big screen TV. However this does bring up an interesting question -- if time-shifting is legal, as the courts have held up, and if time-shifting could imply a necessary format-shifting (from broadcast format to tape or disk, for example), might not this new behavior by CBS and NBC actually allow you to time-shift and format-shift not by watching the videos online but by downloading them in a more big screen-friendly format (say, DivX, playable on any HTPC) from a bittorrent tracker somewhere? Seems like a gray area to me. Obviously it would only apply to shows where the full episodes are available for free from the parent company, so shows like Battlestar Galactica or 24 are out. But for the shows I mentioned and others like them, it's definitely an interesting question, unfortunately probably only answerable by a court somewhere.

It does make you wonder how CBS can justify selling Jericho on Xbox Live Video Marketplace for $2/episode when they provide the exact same content online free of charge. Just food for thought ...

So, why not make the pilot or the first episode of the season free to hook people on shows.

Why stop there? Why not provide the latest episode online for free in case you missed it or prioritized something else (or two something elses if you have a dual-tuner PVR, or three something elses if you recorded two shows and watched a third already-recorded show)? That's what NBC does with Heroes. But why not go even further? NBC provides all episodes of the current season of Friday Night Lights online for free. CBS has done the same thing with Jericho. There are probably other such shows out there provided online for free by the parent company that I just haven't stumbled across (I watch and enjoy Heroes and Jericho, and though I haven't watched it yet I ran across Friday Night Lights by accident).

Yes, these videos are streaming-online-only. Yes, it sucks to have to watch them in a browser rather than on your big screen TV. However this does bring up an interesting question -- if time-shifting is legal, as the courts have held up, and if time-shifting could imply a necessary format-shifting (from broadcast format to tape or disk, for example), might not this new behavior by CBS and NBC actually allow you to time-shift and format-shift not by watching the videos online but by downloading them in a more big screen-friendly format (say, DivX, playable on any HTPC) from a bittorrent tracker somewhere? Seems like a gray area to me. Obviously it would only apply to shows where the full episodes are available for free from the parent company, so shows like Battlestar Galactica or 24 are out. But for the shows I mentioned and others like them, it's definitely an interesting question, unfortunately probably only answerable by a court somewhere.

It does make you wonder how CBS can justify selling Jericho on Xbox Live Video Marketplace for $2/episode when they provide the exact same content online free of charge. Just food for thought ...

This reminds me of Fear Factor, the TV show that does so many inhumane things to their contestants (like put them among poisonous snakes, thousands of bees, tarantulas, make them eat infectious things that aren't food, and so on). I can't believe so many people in the world go through so much pain for the money. Either (1) you are rich and don't need the money and shouldn't be doing that to your body OR (2) you are poor, in which case it's such a horrible thing that TV shows put such people through so much torture with a money reward. It's like saying if you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting shot, and a 9 in 10 chance of winning a million dollars, would you do it? I'm sure some of the sadly half-dead people in Darfur would happily take on that challenge. But at the same time it's inhumane to not just give them $100k each instead of putting them through torture. Bottom line, I think the radio station is at fault for even having such a competition. Among all the other crappy things this country regulates, why can't it regulate TV and radio shows first, at least to the point where contestants should NEVER be even asked to do anything harmful to their bodies?

Just watch them online. :) OK, it has advertisements but it's free beside that.

Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = CRAZY DELICIOUS
http://www.nbc.com/Video/videos/snl_1432_narnia.sh tml

NBC has already put up all eleven episodes of Heroes in full.

I'm hoping this catches on with long-story-arc TV shows.

Comedian and Tonight Show host Jay Leno videotapes not just his business life but his private life 24/7.

He does this for legal reasons. At least that's his story.

i've never paid for cable or satellite. the service has just never seemed to offer me any value: while there's some decent content, it's overwhelmed by noise, and i'm not willing to schedule my life around the box. today, i watch several programs regularly, however.

take, for example, Lost, Jericho, and Heroes. three different networks, prime-time big-money shows, and each of their networks distributes the latest episode online for free. sure, it's in some stupid flash player, which diminishes the experience (prevents portability, inhibits replay, and - particularly the ABC player - can be buggy), but that's a huge shift in outlook on the part of the major networks from even two years ago. the official distributions contain commercials, but that's a trade-off well worth it (ABC's model is particularly nice: watch 'em once, then scroll around however you want, including watching the whole show straight through without interruption). i have no idea what the user population of these sorts of services are today, but i strongly believe they'll continue to grow.

then there's DVD series. i've watched far more "television" shows via DVD in the past year than i have off broadcast+cable+satellite in the past five (like i said, i don't have "television" in the normal sense). there's some unanswered questions about this as an model in itself - how do you know which shows to watch? where's the up-front production money come from? - but, again, that model seriously diminishes the "need" for "traditional" television. and i'm certainly not alone on this front: this is a very big market already.

and this is just the officially sanctioned means. if i remember correctly, ABC lets you watch back episodes through their player, NBC not; bittorrent to the rescue. eztv even specializes in exactly this sort of television content shifting.

then there's iTunes. their pricing model is informative. personally, i think it's too high: i've bought some short movies, but wouldn't pay that much for a television show/season. however, when you look at what people actually pay for cable/satallite - which can easily top $100/month - it's actually not a bad deal, by the numbers. if the quality was higher, i might be inclined to get, say, Lost and Battlestar Galactica this way; alternately, if the current product was available for, say, $20-25/season.

the "slow erosion of traditional television broadcasting" is already upon us, and is only going to accelerate with increased broadband adoption and data rates. and good riddance.

You can watch the first episode on here: http://video.nbc.com/player.html?dlid=32956

The entire episode is on NBC's site for free. You will have to put up with a pretty bad Flash video interface and ads everywhere. I had a problem with it in Firefox, but there was no problem in IE. Yeah... one of those sites :(

The show itself looks to have potential for essentially an x-men knockoff. I mean, it ain't written by Sorkin (all hail jesus) so I'll give it a few more episodes to decide if all the angst is gonna kill me or not.

Dude the show is available online @ NBC's site.
You can even download it if you have the intel processor they require.

Check this NBC page http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/

No, the video didn't remind me of Lazy Sunday at all. Not one bit.

But Mr. Pibb and Red Vines are crazy delicious.

Slot machines have an inherent advantage. The "eye in the sky" sees you messing with it. Several rather large fellows then "escort" you to the security "conference room". You hope that what happens next is getting arrested. At least the police are required to put you on trial and are forbidden to employ cruel and unusual punishment. The folks who run slot machines have a reputation for ignoring such details, even flaunting their bad guy image on network TV. Don't mess with "the gaming industry"!

Well, I've already given one. Mr. Swann is known as the 'most tested guinea pig in parapsychology', or something like that.

Allison Dubois (inspiration for NBC's Medium) was tested by Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona.

There are plenty more, but you don't really care. You're just chest-pounding on the superiority of your belief system vs. those who allow for something more.

The low-tech solution for the one with clothes in the dryer is this

Scrubs did this too, except while the show was on air. They released the commentary of a repeat and then you were meant to listen to the commentary while it was on NBC. It was a cool idea but I could never quite get it to sync up perfectly. The mp3's are still online too.

What else would you expect, given that most people access reality through a computer or TV screen? Why ask a person when you can ask a computer? Why deal with ordinary people in your neighborhood when you can risklessly gape at people who are much more beautiful or who lead more exciting or important lives, or perhaps take comfort in the fact that you can always find abundant reinforcement for your choices online?

And here I am, typing this, while my kids are playing in the other room, inventing a much more exciting world, which I am welcome to join. Gotta go!

Harvard, doing its very best to ensure the guys running the Republicans have enough nonsense issues to keep control indefinitely.

Are they cloning Natalie Portman? Because that might be worth it.

Thank you! That's the first thing I thought of. It even has something called iDisk, since the year 2000. (It helps if you say that last part like they do on Conan O'Brien)

"I was able to find out quite a bit about him and his immediate family.
Even dug up a picture that might be of him, she wasn't pleased when I said that as she had never been sent a picture. Seems they weren't that cozy after all."

Wow. Im sure thats why she dumped you, not becuase she found you secretly investigating her friends. So you did all the 133t h4xxing of looking at facesofwow.com congrats. Amazing. Its simply amazing how people can convince themselves they arent a shady stalker and the girl in question is actually the one that made the mistake.

A relationship is built on trust, not driving by her house every day at 11 at night to make sure shes home. Oh and you might be interested to know that i did a little digging as well. I found your personal blog as well as a current photo.

"I was able to find out quite a bit about him and his immediate family.
Even dug up a picture that might be of him, she wasn't pleased when I said that as she had never been sent a picture. Seems they weren't that cozy after all."

Wow. Im sure thats why she dumped you, not becuase she found you secretly investigating her friends. So you did all the 133t h4xxing of looking at facesofwow.com congrats. Amazing. Its simply amazing how people can convince themselves they arent a shady stalker and the girl in question is actually the one that made the mistake.

A relationship is built on trust, not driving by her house every day at 11 at night to make sure shes home. Oh and you might be interested to know that i did a little digging as well. I found your personal blog as well as a current photo.

What do you think of that TV show, Biggest Loser? I'm amazed that so many varied people could lose 100+ pounds in such a short amount of time. Do you think it's rigged in any manner?

we all know what is going to happen ...

People in the UK exchange their fat for goods and services based on how much they weigh? Weird.

That's nothing, in the States they can even make money and star in their own television shows!

Sounds like a waste of time to me. NBC has already shown us what's down there ... large lizard monsters swimming in lava!
http://www.nbc.com/Surface/

Here's a link to some of the photos taken on board with some of our tourists: zero-g.smugmug.com

Here's a link to a recent local news video covering our very first flights from KSC: www.wesh.com/spacenews/5267185/detail.html

And, for those of you who watched American TV last night, you would have seen us on NBC's Three Wishes and if you're really a couch potato, you've seen us on The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser, and The Rebel Millionare

I live in a rural area of Virginia and don't even have access to cable, so I use dish network http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/hdtv/i ndex.shtml. The problem: One of my TVs is HD ready, the other two aren't. That would mean I would have to have two different receivers, as well as two different dishes mounted to my house. It's a couple hundred in equipment and installation, plus extra monthly charges (not to mention the extra eyesore on the house). We considered it, but decided that we really didn't need to watch "Joey" http://www.nbc.com/Footer/HDTV/ in high definition.

I didn't look at the Conan stuff yet, but the Leno stuff that's available is just small portions of the show. I'm not paying $2 for the headlines (Which are available for free on NBC's web site), or the Jay Walking skit. I might pay $2 for a whole episode, if it included the interviews and band, and I wanted to see one of those, but no way am I paying $2 for something I can get free on their web site.

This confirms what had been suspected from an image taken last January. And seems to point to these cryo-volcanoes as being the primary source of Saturn's E-ring.

I always thought those Defense Department guys were out of this world. I never thought they were from an outer planet.

Jesus and Moses wouldn't be on the cover of GQ these days...but you gotta admit Mr. Raymond has a slight My Name is Earl style goin' on...

"Spam is worse than junk mail. With junk mail, it's the companies who have to pay for the paper, envelope, and postage. The more letters they send, the more money they have to pay. Plus they all clearly identify who sent it. The usps also is able to oversee the entire system (in the usa at least). With spam, there is no material cost or postage. It costs just as much to send 100 emails as 1,000,000. there is anonymity; spoofed addresses, spam zombies, and open relays make covering one's tracks child's play. In addition, there's nobody you can complain to.

I agree with you that spam is worse than junk mail because of the costs involved, but it's still in the same category. Yes, they are partially anonymous, as you can't tell who sent you what. But there is an easy, although more involved, way to find out who is sending the e-mails. The spam is advertising products and providing a link to a website to purchase said crap. You can't sell things anonymously very easily. You identify the seller of the crap, err.. goods. You make it illegal for them to support spammers with legislation or prosecute them for obstruction of justice should they refuse to identify who they paid to send out the spam. These people did not transfer money by slipping someone a wad of cash in a showbar. There's a trail of transactions to follow. If these sellers are using illegal means to transfer money to the spammers, then it's just more weight to use against them to make them cooperate. You don't have to threaten them with jail time, just fine them so hard that it is, financially, a poor business choice.

Anyone seen the newest cop show on TV, Wanted? It's a great show, but I predict the next new cop show will be all about hunting down spammers. Maybe I can sell that idea to Dick Wolf.

Indeed - this is close to slashdotter's hearts, but probably hasn't even registered at the patent office.

Think about how Josh Lyman would react to the news. Not everyone is aware of the intricate socio-political issues surrounding web interface application software. They've got other things to worry about such as patenting things.

I like the idea of IPTV, but not in the way that it is being used in this article. I'd really like the concepts of networks and channels to pretty much go away, leaving only studios and ISPs.

As it stands now, studios have to beg and plead networks to carry their programming, and a lot of times, they have to compromise their artistic creativity to pander to the networks' need to sell advertising to sponsors and meet stupid FCC anti-obscenity standards. Consumers have to pick through hundreds of hours of worthless drivel to find a very few priceless gems.

With IPTV, we could completely cut out the middlemen. We watch and pay for exactly what we want to watch and pay for, tv studios get to make exactly what they want to make, and everyone's happy. Well, everyone except the former network executives, who are used to telling us what we're supposed to like to watch and screwing creative people for the sake of petty power.

Just thought you guys would like this..

Conan O'Brien featured Ms. Pac-Man on his show tonight. She appeared as "Bulimic Ms. Pac-Man" in the reoccuring "New Characters" sketch. It was basically a clip of the gameplay in reverse...

HILARIOUS! It's cool to see the writers at Conan doing this kind of geek stuff.

General audiences are oversaturated with Star Trek, and have been Since Voyager's early days.