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2008 - The Year Internet TV Became Mainstream?
revilo78 writes "Will 2008 be the year we can finally drop our expensive cable bills? It's sure looking like it with Joost constantly adding content, ABC announcing it will stream shows in HD, and media boxes such as the Apple TV becoming popular. Television networks finally seem willing and ready to distribute their shows on the web, and hardware manufactures are finally making easy-to-use media boxes that will bring the web to the living room. Do you think we're finally there, the internet-based TV-on-demand we've all been wanting?"
In many countries, it's already the case.
Even in France, you get unlimited 24Mb broadband connexion, with phone service free of charge even for international calls in many countries, and free HD TV, for about 30 bucks a month (crappy 1Mb upload though). And it seems that in northern countries (Sweden, Norway), connectivity is even better and cheaper.
I live in Europe, but I like The Colbert Report. With Internet-TV this seems to be no problem at all, because the Internet has no barriers. Perhaps I could watch the show on my cellular phone? Think again.
You can watch the Colbert report for example via iTunes. This means: You can watch the show only if you live in the United states. In Europe there is no Colbert Report in the Itunes Store. They don't want my money.
OK, but there is this fabulous new service 'Joost'. They have a deal with Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central. But the Comedy Central shows are not available for European Joost costumers.
But there is MotherLoad, the streaming platform of comedy central. For now I can watch the Colbert Report via Motherload. Quite a TV experience. They cut the show in 5 peaces. I can put several parts of the show on the playlist, but after the first party it won't start the second part until I choose it manually. The advertising is working. While you can't understand Steven Colbert without pumping up the volume - the advertisement is really loud. You can't skip this part and it is always the same.
Every time someone brings it up, it's like this is some sort of frigging secret. Usenet has been around longer than the World Wide Web, and has been sued many times with little to no success. And in case there was any doubt, in february last year:
"Lawsuits were filed Thursday against: BinNews.com, Torrentspy.com, IsoHunt, BTHub.com, TorrentBox.com, NiteShadow.com, Ed2k-It.com, NZB-Zone.com, and DVDRs.net. The suits mark the first time the MPAA has gone after Usenet related services, which have largely been spared in the crackdown on illicit file sharing."
Note that they're going after nzb-sites, not after the Usenet servers themselves. They know they would lose, and badly. Scientologists and many others have tried before, and the Usenet servers themselves were protected before the DMCA, and in addition stand under DMCA liability protection.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sanctuary is trying the Internet-only approach to TV distribution. It stars Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1) and some other familiar faces. You can buy DRM-free 480p and 720p downloads or watch the Youtube video for free (Sanctuary Fans has a link to that).
It's a very cool show and could easily be picked up by broadcast TV if they wanted to deal with the nuisance involved. I'm hoping they're successful.