Will the Web Replace TV?

dratcw writes "With the continuing writers' strike cutting way back on the number of new and original TV shows available, many media Web sites are providing alternatives to TV that can be found on the Web. A number of sites are offering features describing broadcast/cable TV alternatives while you wait for that next episode of 'Chuck'. 'What better time than during the writers' strike to (re)discover Internet TV and video? The quantity, quality, and diversity of online video grows by the day; and though it's far from perfect, it is at least interesting enough to make you forget that you're watching it on a PC monitor.'" Any web-based favorites you'd like to point out for fellow commenters?

Comments

LoadingReadyRun

[bipbop]

I've been watching them weekly since their hilarious "Rejected Wiiplay Games" movie. They're also the Desert Bus For Hope people. Anyway, they're somewhat hit-or-miss, but mostly hit IMO: http://loadingreadyrun.com/

Re:LoadingReadyRun

[pilgrim23]

In the 1980s I spent a while working a night shift job and this weaned me from the televison habit; The only TV available in my off hours was daytime TV. Thus, I read books instead.
    Facinating thing reading; you use your mind to generate the special effects and in spite of no ability to run the film fast, change hue and color depth to things never found in reality, and above all: not need to leave a cliff hanger for a general apeal for brighter teeth, or some poorly built automobile.

A few years back I found a device that allowed me to connect my computer directly to a TV and thereby play avi and mpgs. well then. that is more like it! Since my tastes run far more to the documentary, my machines now have terrabytes of storage devoted to how to build a Michelson-Morely interferometer and what it means to the "Ether", how bosons become bozos in Bose-Einstein condensation, or the French perspective on the Lousiana Purchase. Somehow, the drug addictions of Hollyweirdos has no effect on my TV viewing these days... let the strike continue...

Already has.

[Hatta]

With various torrent sites, an rss feed, and XBMC the internet has already supplanted over the air television for me. It's going to be awfully hard for anyone to improve on that setup.

Already has replaced it for the past five years

[Pausanias]

TV? I don't watch a television device anymore, haven't for five years. The whole idea of attaching myself to a video broadcast at home seems so incredibly impossible to me. For the past five years, my chief source of entertainment has been reading and interacting with my favorite websites, posting comments, with the occasional game on the side. This to me is far more entertaining than the idea of gluing my eyes to a video broadcast. If there is a well-done TV show, I'll just download it off the bittorrent and watch it on the bus on the way to and from work.

Re:Already has replaced it for the past five years

[garcia]

I read, more than your average American and trying to read more daily, and I find that there is plenty of utter shit out there in book form. I spend entirely too much time trying to find things to read that don't suck as much as what appears in serial form on TV and the big screen. Take for example my post from December of 2003 where I talk about The Last Goodbye being the worst book I read in 2003 or the fact that I just read The Catcher in the Rye and found it to be a terrible example of literature that shouldn't be read by anyone -- especially those currently attending secondary schooling. On the other hand, I have read some decent books recently including Plenty and Animal Vegetable Miracle both of which have changed my life for the better.

I have watched some terrible TV shows such as Breaking Bad which held my attention for exactly 3 minutes during the opening sequence and dropped it when the main character was getting a hand job from his pregnant wife. I have also watched some great TV such as Arrested Development and Rescue Me.

I have listened to some pretty terrible music and then also gotten into some other really great stuff like Feist and The New Pornographers both of which are happy to allow you to distribute their live shows and which makes me support them all the more.

So while surfing the web, reading books and entertaining yourself in other ways is great for you, I do like to expand my horizons in many directions while not assuming that everything that appears on the TV is a pile of shit. Personally, I find people that are disconnected from TV an absolute bore as they have very little to talk about in the ways of popular culture that allows them to have something in common with the majority of Americans around them. People who don't watch TV are especially annoying when they continually let you know that they don't know Foo because they don't own or watch a TV.

I'm thrilled that they have made the personal choice to avert their senses from something they feel has no worth but for them to assume that the rest of us are mildly retarded for having a well rounded media experience is just ridiculous. Use TV as a part of your overall experience rather than the majority and you'll find yourself enjoying it a little more than you realize.

Re:instead....

[MBGMorden]

I can agree. I already find it more convenient to subscribe to TV shows via iTunes than to watch them broadcasted. There are no commercials to get in the way, I always have a copy that I can watch as much as I want, I don't have to worry about timeslots or scheduling conflictions. If I want to do something else during the time it comes on, I'm free to.

Also, I've really started to love the whole idea of podcasts. Find a topic that you're interested in, subscribe to the podcast, and it's waiting there for you to watch each day. Having the newest one always available, stored, etc, is just an amazing use of technology.

At the same time, providers are going to need to ease up on bandwidth caps for this to work. Thankfully, my provider (Spirit Telecom) does no filtering nor bandwidth capping, but if they did I'd be SOL. Just my podcasts that I download each day run several GB, and iTunes video content runs about 10-15GB per month. Throw in online gaming, web surfing, patch and software downloads, other legal online video etc, and I'd bet I'm hitting close to 50gb per month in totally legal bandwidth usage. That's before even figuring in P2P usage (which I do use a bit, but very moderately - probably 8-10GB per month or so).

Movies and shows out of copyright...

[CFBMoo1]

.. and in the public domain are just as entertaining today as they were in the old days. Google is great for that stuff.