After weeks of debating over Cable vs. DirecTV and Dish, I have come to the conclusion that the current methods of distributing television content all stink. I know a lot of people don’t like the “channel packages” that they offer, and it’s true, those choices are bad. You should be able to pay a low monthly service fee, and then add the channels of your choice.

But my complaints go beyond that. Forget the idea of “channel packages,” I don’t like the idea of “channels.” I should be able to watch the show of my choice at the time of my choosing. I know DVR can help accomplish this, but it doesn’t go far enough because you’re limited to the programs that you have scheduled to record.

I should be able to sit down at a television and enter in a search query. For example, I’ll search for “Windows Vista,” and up comes a list of all the show episodes that mentioned “Windows Vista.” I just pick the show episode that I want to watch… and watch it.

You would never need to be at the television at a certain time unless the show was live or just airing for the first time. But even then, you could watch a rerun of it whenever you wanted.

We are already seeing the beginnings of these ideas on the Internet with sites like YouTube. But that content is amateur, low-quality, and not really serious television. However, one company that really seems to be on the right track is Revision3. They release different web-based shows over the Internet weekly, and the shows are even in HD. You could even add the RSS feeds of their shows into some media center software like SageTV. I tried that, and it worked pretty nice.

I just hope that over a number of years from now television will move closer to the idea that I have in mind of being show-based rather than channel-based. Maybe this will happen as IPTV starts to take off.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion I'll never buy cable/satellite once I get off my ass and move out. With the internet and torrents, I have no need for it.

Have you heard of FTA (Free To Air)? ..and the underground that goes with it? lol I'm using a captive works box with a bell dish. I can pick up bell and dishnet if I want on the same dish with 2 LNBs...

Fta-Newbies and FtaBins. Got my box from FTA Home for 120 shipped...

Joost is gaining momentum now too. it's been public since about May-ish and now they're adding certain syndications (old and some current). but it's a bandwidth and resource pig.

huh, interesting. I haven't really looked at that one. Another site that looks interesting is Hulu. Right now it's in a private beta, but it's going to have shows from NBC and FOX.

Yeah, I was going to suggest Hulu Chug as I was recently selected for the private beta and the content looks promising.

It's been awhile since I tried Joost though, so I'll have to check it out again.

Wow! Here's a boxxx that delivers true IPTV straight to your television! This is really close to what I had in mind. Well... Except for the content that it offers!



http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/fyretv

on my comp I use Veoh to watch a lot of stuff for tv episodes, like Monty Python's Flying Circus (search for mpfc on Veoh if you want to find the full episodes) or I go to quicksilverscreen.com to watch a movie or a tv show, about 95% its stage6 quality...and from what I know its legal to watch as long as you don't download shit.

I also have a shit-load of DVDs that I own that I watch a lot too, over a hundred (all legal dvds btw lol).

I'm upset as well with tv. We got a letter from Comcast telling us that at the end of 2008 we will have to get their box in order to watch tv, because its switching over to complete Digital...and we have 5 tvs. And from what I see, they still don't have shit to watch and the packages are shitty as well.

I swear that in a about 20 years TV will be gone and everything will be on the internet. Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS are a few companies that are starting to show their episodes on their websites with limited commercials.

As for Joost, last time I tried (which was recently like last month) I'm on a waiting list in order to use the damn thing. I've heard good things and bad things about it...but everything has their down points anyways so what does it matter.

Oh btw Veoh has a program that I use to watch stuff and they also have channels on there for stuff like comedy, cartoon network, fox etc.

I miss TV when it was awesome...now its just gone to shit in my opinion. What also annoys me is how a lot of channels/episodes/shows have gone over to HD. Which at first you think its pretty cool, except if you have a "regular" tv like I do, so...two problems I've seen with that:

1) its not really in HD quality
2) on a "regular" tv the view of the show is cut off, because you need a widescreen hdtv in order to see the show in its complete viewing.

oh and I would like to go on the record and say that BET is the worst fucking channel I've ever seen in my entire life!

heh, I'm pissed we don't have everything in HD. I know HD channels are either 720p or 1080i, which is not as good as 1080p, but it's still a hell of a lot better than SD. After you've seen a HD show, then SD television is just disgusting. And if you're watching SD on an HD television, then either the show is stretched, or you have black borders along the side. However, I have seen some SD news shows try to "cheat." They would have their SD video broadcasting in the center of the screen, and along the sides they would have some high-quality animated background.

In the perfect world, everything would be in 1080p.

**bump**

I just wanted to point out that hulu is no longer in private beta and is now open to the public, so come one, come all and enjoy!

I've been using it to catch up on the current season of "The Office" now that I've seen all the re-runs on TBS.

"Firefly" is on there too for those who have never seen it. Great show! To bad it was cancelled.

Hulu looks promising... until i tried to watch anything. It's not available in my country (I'm in Canada)...

Nevermind... proxy server fixes all.

Thank goodness for proxies, eh Scott?

Hey, thanks for the update! I haven't checked Hulu in a while. I didn't realize they were going to be streaming movies also. Neat! And check out their selection of HD trailers. It will be nice once they offer full HD content. Then all we will need is a set-top box that can stream content from websites like these to the television.

About the movies, I didn't either Chug, so that was a pleasant surprise.