Thing 43: Online TV and Video

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This was certainly "easy to love!" I've been watching shows online for a little while know. I watch the Craig Ferguson Show, because I can't stay up so late! And between the first would-be conversion date for digital TV and the recent actual conversion, we couldn't get Channel 5. I'm a big fan of the George Stephanopolous show, which is on Channel 5, so I've been watching it from the network website. It was a real treat t be able to continue to watch it when my normal access method didn't work.

When I explored Joost (I'd been using Hulu before) I watched the pilot for "Nurse Jackie," Showtime's new show starring Edie Falco. Again, this was great, since we don't have cable! When I was watching "The Sopranos," I had to wait a year for the DVD's to come out.

Despite these opportunities, though, I don't watch too much TV on the computer because usually when I watch TV, I'm going through e-mail, Facebook, Reader, etc., and I don't have the processing power to do both at the same time! Or the screen space.

We do use the laptop for TV and videos in social situations, though, both in the context of our family, when we all sit down together to watch a movie, and when friends visit and want to show us a TV show or video they like. We can hook up the TV and laptop and watch on the bigger TV screen. We still have Netflix, and we also get movies out of the video store about once a month or less (but when we do, Jarrett takes out the maximum amount.)

Free on-demand access to TV and movies has changed our viewing habits. I often wonder how often our local video store will survive. And I wonder how the entertainment industry will replace those revenue streams. It seems unsustainable. I was going to write, "There will always be an audience for cable TV," but I checked myself -- is that true in the CEE, the current economic environment?

One effect we see already is the popularity of reality TV. Since it's cheaper to produce, it's fortunate for the TV industry that people seem to love it so much. I have a limited taste for seeing people humiliated, so I don't watch much. In fact, I don't usually watch American Idol, but I got caught up with Susan Boyle's story and followed "Britain's Got Talent" online. For a while I was checking in every night! I really enjoyed it. I think it's the pop diva "warble" of false emotion that turns me off to American Idol.

A "Cloud computing" aside: I usually use my litle netbook to work on the Things, but I'm borrowing my son's laptop tonight to use the full-size keyboard. I can access my blog, and the Things list, and most everything I do, but I use Firefox on the netbook and I'm using Safari on the Mac. On Firefox I use the nifty "Zemanta" extension, which provides additional blog fodder in the form of pictures and articles related to the blog text. I bet Zemanta would have an article for me about the financial future of the entertainment industry. Let me check.

OK, Hulu has ads. I forgot about that. So some money is being made.

I didn't want to monkey around importing Firefox to Evan's computer, so I saved and closed the post, then re-opened it on the netbook with Firefox and used Zemanta to look for articles.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nurse Jackie: Pilot (Series Premiere) (tvsquad.com)
• Edie Falco: from mobster wife to pill-popping nurse (nationalpost.com)
• You can Almost get rid of Cable (tek-works.com)