Did you miss the season premiere of Lost last night? What if your DVR fails to record it? What if you don’t have a DVR? What are you supposed to do? I’m going to show you three free websites to catch up on missed TV shows (and it’s even free and legal!)
So, you couldn’t watch Jack Bauer save the world again. Well, I think that’s a shame. Here are 3 ways to catch up on your favorite TV shows:
Hulu – This is my favorite site and one we have talked about before here on Student Nerds. It is very well designed and doesn’t really bug you too bad with ads. It was started as a joint collaboration with NBC and FOX, so you won’t find any ABC shows on here. 
Fancast – This is a website started by Comcast. Fancast is an aggregator that pulls in shows from many networks. 
Joost – Joost started out as a standalone application, but now has dumped that idea to focus solely on it’s web interface. It is very well designed and even integrates with Facebook so you don’t have to create your own account. It also allows you to share what you’re watching with your friends. There is a lot of potential with this. (See Boxee)
Must be something wrong with my computer. You run XP at work?
ReplyDeleteIt looks awesome, I'd like to get it.
Ya, I'm running XP at work. You should post your problems on the Boxee
ReplyDeleteforums to help them out.
So here's a follow up question, do you think Boxee will stick with their current app-based model or switch to a "set-top box" kinda like that in-house Netflix solution?
ReplyDeleteBoxee actually has an interesting poll up about this at their blog
Http://blog.boxee.tv
On-line TV is awesome, especially if you travel a lot but have access to broadband. I'd be really curious to know how Hulu or the others do financially...
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you need to finish your though re:Boxee but is currently just for Linux and Mac and it's getting rave reviews (i.e. none other than Fred Wilson called it "the firefox of media center software," he's an investor)
I Just signed up for the Boxee Alpha for Windows, it seems buggy, as in I can't get it to run at all.
I actually just got approved for for the Boxee Windows Alpha this morning. Just tried it out on my work computer and it was able to play the media fine. I've only really messed with it for a few mintues, but it is a very impressive product.
ReplyDeleteuntil about 2 months ago i used to torrent any show i missed. they'd show up on eztv/mininova around 2 hours after the show had ended. since then i pretty much abandoned torrenting in favor of streamin online, but those episodes still dont show up quite as fast as they do on te torrent sites. the other advantage of the torrent sites is bein able to convert video to ipod/blackkberry-friendly formats prior to travelling. which is how i'm watching damages on my bus ride to STL right now.
ReplyDeleteArjun, I completely agree that sometimes it's just nicer to have a file that you can deal with. I'm currently watching some episodes of The Universe (History channel show) that I converted to play on my iPhone. Can't really do that easily with streaming video.
ReplyDeleteI used to think everything would be streamed if they could get the quality where it needed to be. But now I see that people collect the tv shows as if they were collecting music albums, half the time its impossible to watch all the tv shows, but nice to have the actual files. However with the legal issues surrounding this, as if its any more illegal than DVRing for later use, I think we will see the masses move to streaming to avoid the complications
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting about digital content, streaming or download is that people are going to find a way to get and distribute this stuff for for free, somehow. The competiton now from Content producers isn't over advertisers but over consumer eyeballs. Sites like Hulu, fancast or joost have to earn Arjun's eyeballs with something more than just content, because he will always find a way to get it for free if he wants.
ReplyDeleteThe key will be for these sites, and their corporate (content-producing) partners to add value via the site, whether it be through community building (or community bandwagoning like FBConnect) or web-only content or whatever. What's exciting is that no longer are consumers seen only as an inconvenient hassel on the way to ad $, but now they are the true driving force behind content and distribution.
Good for everyone but studio execs i think.
I actually hope they do both along with license their software to other companies. They should probably cut the XBMC group in on it too because Boxee's code is based off of their hard work. xbmc.org
ReplyDeleteInstalled Boxee over the weekend on the Netbook. Dangerously cool.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very cool program for viewing media from the internet.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I'm having problems with it importing my movie and music
collection. I wish they would just use the code from XBMC (
http://www.xbmc.org ). It's much better for network shares of media.