Jake Allen’s Ockhamist.com

The updated page is on the site navigation header.  This is the original post. 

Being unemployed currently, I easily fill my time.  I’ve had some recent conversations where I assert that our society is entering a goldern age of television. This is not my idea, but I think that the reason has to do with streams of revenue. Movies (the Hollywood-theater variety) are entering a stage of decline. It’s not as bad as some people say, but movies are getting worse, and fewer people are watching them at their local cinemaplex.  Blame cheap DVDs at Wal-Mart, blame Netflix, blame expensive popcorn, blame Internet pirates, or even that the movies aren’t worth watching. Whatever.  Movies have few new revenue streams, such as iTunes-style Internet purchasing, and one big shrinking revenue stream: the cinema.  Television, however, is increasing its revenue streams. The popularity of DVD collections have made lots of new money from shows thought to have died.  Networks and studios now know that this nostalgia will keep their current shows alive in the catalogue long after the actors have died, and are therefore willing to invest more money into television.  Further, television viewing converts more easily to the Internet than movies.  Television does not have the same visual or audio quality expectations of cinema.  Also, the serial nature of television shows translate well to online usage habits.  And the Internet allows viewers to experience the whole season, like a DVD collection, without missing a show during the week on TV.  Movies do not share this advantage.

 I wanted to make a guide to TV viewing online. I did this instead.  You can pretty much see any show you want online.  It’s called bittorrent.  Without online file-sharing, however, there are many promising choices. Many of those, however, have adult content attached.  What’s left is what I am about to share with you.

Network Freebies

Networks give away their own shows online. Really. It’s not only completely legal, but encouraged.  They want you to watch their shows for free online, either with commercials or without.

NBC

nbc.com NBC has a lot of content available for a price on iTunes, but most of its free contect is available on it’s homepage.  It offers a lot of free stuff with a pop-up Media Player window, but also with a strange downloadable media manager.  Both have ads. Show for free will change, of course, but many series have multiple episodes available. Currently there are ones for Heros, Friday Night Lights, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Kidnapped, My Name is Earl, Deal or No Deal, Las Vegas and more.  The Office, Late Night w/Leno, ER, Today, Nightly News w/Brian Williams, Today, Sunday Night Football, and more have parts or whole shows available.

CBS

www.cbs.com/innertube CBS is using the Innertube player (Flash), which is slow-loading but pretty good overall.  The commercials are easily tolerated, I think.  It has full episodes for The Class, CSI (Las Vegas, Miami, NY), How I Met Your Mother, Jerico, NCIS, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Numb3rs, Shark, Smith, Survivor, and The Unit. Of the four big networks, CBS has the best content-delivery.  It has made real decisions and is following through with them.  It has clips of other shows available too.  The full episodes are available a day after they air, and until the next episode airs.  That system makes sense and is intuitive.

ABC

abc.go.com Has a “million hit countdown” where it gives away shows for free on iTunes. It also has its own flash player where it will show episodes of seven series weekly.  They are Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Six Degrees, the Nine, and the Knights of Prosperity. The player is good, and the system is a similar version of CBS, or vice-versa.  I will watch Lost this way, as I did last season.  I downloaded a free episode of Grey’s Anatomy from iTunes to test the system, and it worked pretty well.

FOX

www.fox.com/streaming/  Fox has been very disappointing. It offers ‘Til Death, Happy Hour, and Justice (recently removed). It used to offer Prison Break through video.google.com, but no longer.  The streams of ‘Til Death and Happy Hour have been fast, though. Update: Fox does not have any streaming video right now.  It’s like they want us to use bittorrent or something! Madness!

PBS

www.pbs.org/ Lots of liberal madness, and lots of their TV is online.  Excuse me, our TV, supported by our taxes. Madness!

Flash-based TV Shows

This stuff is not exactly legal. But you won’t get in trouble either.  Worst case scenario is that the links will stop working.

http://dailyepisodes.com/ Most or all episodes of Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, South Park, and American Dad.  Hosted by the french version of youtube, dailymotion.com. (Caution: Dailymotion is French, and has all of the evil)UPDATE: recently killed by Fox, see site for details. Less desirable alternative here.

http://peekvid.com/  Many episodes from many different series (>50). Links are sometimes broken. Uses youtube and dailymotion.  Also has standup comedy and some Australian and Anime stuff.

Huge List of Cartoons on youtube (via digg)

You can use a tool to keep flash videos for later, if you care.

Streaming TV Online

Viidoo This is weird, but works. Most streaming TV has lots of broken links, poor quality, and adult content.  This is pretty-good quality, and no adult stuff. Live, streaming TV from ABC, CBS, Disney, NBC, Fox, HBO, ESPN, ESPN 2, USA, Comedy Central, CNN, CNBC, TV Land, and a few more.  You have to install their software to use it, which is partially P2P.  If it asks you for an invite, just download the old version here, then go to their site and it will let you upgrade.  The quality is surprising.  All the other streaming TV sites have too much garbage for me to link to.  The Viidoo website has listings, too.  Who would have thought that Jake Allen would give you free HBO?

Well, that’s a lot of free TV to get you started. There are more, of course, such as iTunes and Guba that give away free content, but I focused on the stuff you might want to see.  The network freebies should be a good start for you. The advantage over bittorrent (beyond the legality) is that you can see them anywhere, anytime, without waiting for the download.

Madness!