If you would like to learn why popular TV shows and movies are being made available legally on the Internet for free and how we can get them to our televisions, this interview is for you.
During my last lecture tour in the Northeastern US, I stayed with University of Illinois PhD student Daniel Araya in Urbana-Champaign.
Daniel has a xbox that is connected to Netflix and he has access to thousands of free movies and TV shows, many streamed over simple internet broadband in High Definition, and all this … legally for free. I was suitably impressed and enjoyed watching the first year of Heroes, which I missed (as I do many things) living in Thailand.
The following interview with Will Richmond of VideoNuze, explains the underlying reasons why broadcasters and producers are starting to share their content this way.
From the introduction by interviewer:
“As noted in earlier podcasts, a number promising websites are emerging that host, or index, advertising-supported Internet Video of popular TV shows and movies. Examples include Hulu, Fancast, Veoh, TVGuide.com, and AOL Video. They’re great for consumers because they are free to the viewer and completely legal.
In our analysis the emergence of such websites could prove to represent the “tipping point” at which consumers push hard enough to find ways to get Internet Video streams to display on their televisions. ABC, NBC, and CBS have all made popular shows available online. There are also hundreds of popular, or once popular, movies from major Hollywood studios available at the websites noted above.
As users get increasingly accustomed to sites like Hulu, they find that they like the convenience of on-demand viewing, personalization of selections, viral sharing of program recommendations, community commentary, email notifications of show postings, and the abundance of interesting programming. Intense users are even avoiding CATV or satellite service. For example, Will’s research concludes that most subscribers will cut CATV service before they cut ISP (Internet Service Provider) service. This is particularly relevant given the current economic downturn.”
(via Bill St. Arnaud)