Fox and NBC Universal little video site Hulu.com is up and running. It’s been in beta for about 4 months and went live this week. If you haven’t signed up yet what are you waiting for? It’s pretty great. I’ve spent the last couple of nights catching up on shows I’ve missed.
The site has both TV shows and movies that are free to watch. I found the TV show database to be pretty good so far and according to Jason Kilar the sites CEO it is just going to grow. It’s got everything from some great new shows like The Office and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Some old classics like Doogie Howser M.D and my favorite The A Team. Even some great cartoons like Exosquad. It’s all paid for by ads so you will have to sit through 3 commercials for a 22 minute show, which is less then a real TV show unless of course you use Tivo. The quality is really good and except for a couple of buffering incidents it runs great.
Right now there are some shows that don’t have their entire catalog up yet hopefully they will soon. The movie side of it isn’t as extensive yet but still no bad at all. Although I haven’t done it yet you can cut parts out of any show or movie and share it anywhere. If this little Hulu thing works out it could put quite dent in the DVD sales of classic TV shows.
With nothing good on actual TV right now it’s the perfect time to try Hulu and catch up on episodes you may have missed.
Check out the video after the break
If you haven’t been keeping track, there’s this writer’s strike crap that’s currently ruining television. It’s been going on way too long. The thing is that it’s not just effecting the studios and the writers, but all the other people involved in creating and running all these television shows. So, rather than continuing to screw all these innocent non-writers, some shows have decided that the show must go on, even without the writers.
Every late show has returned, with writers (David Letterman and Craig Ferguson) or without writers (Conan and Leno. Notice I don’t include Carson Dailey, and Jimmy Kimmel). Since David Letterman owns his own production, ie Worldwide Pants, he has made deals with his and Craig Ferguson’s writers. However, Conan and Leno aren’t able to make any deals, only their studios can do that. Both Letterman and Consie (that’s Conan O’Brien) are sporting “writer’s strike” beards, you know in support or something.
All these people keep on saying how they support the writers, well I guess I’m one of the few that doesn’t. I mean it’s January and I’ve got no 24. Thank a lot writers. I’ve been watching Conan since he’s back and I think the show is just as good, if not better, without the writers. Jay Leno is still doing his monologue and it’s still just as funny and sucky (that’s not a word) without writers. As for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, well, they sucked before the writer’s strike (especially Ferguson), so they still suck but now they’re paying the writers more money.
What all this says to me is that the only thing we really need writers for are shows like 24 and Heroes. Shows with plots and stories need writers. Jokes are a dime a dozen, and if you have a great host like Conan, or John Stewart for example, they pretty much are the show. And as I write this article about how useless writers are, I can’t help but think about the irony. Also, Fox, I’m available for scabbing if you need some writers to get 24 back on the air.
Beards!
Here it is. Not that it’s really anything you haven’t already seen from season 3 clips. Though, I did see a cow in the trailer. Don’t know what that’s all about. Hope season 4 is better than the last.
Crash!
It’s a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR, not like you really need a picture of the exact car, you could just look at a Mustang. But don’t think that’s all. The car, I’m sorry, KITT, can be operated remotely, by remote, from a remote location of up to a mile away. Seriously though, this car is remote-controlled. In real life, not in the movie. There are a total of three cars, all Ford Mustang Shelby’s. The first is the Remote version, the second is the everyday car called the KITT Hero, and the third is the KITT Attack (sounds dangerous right?), this one is for the high speed chases and action scenes and is driven be a stunt driver.
This is the new Knight Rider. Really? What 80’s B-Movie did they dig him up from?
The new Knight Rider is a 2 hour television movie and airs on Sunday February 17th at 9 p.m. eastern time on NBC. The voice of KITT (that’s the car) is Will Arnett (you know, Michael’s brother George the magician from Arrested Development). The lead goes to Cold Case actor Justin Bruening. The others really aren’t worth mentioning so I’ll just link to the original story at TVSquad.com. Oh, and for all those purists out there, David Hasselhoff will be making a cameo in the movie.
Hoff!
According to an article from Rueters, AT&T, a reseller of DirecTV, will be discontinuing it’s offering of DirecTV’s satellite tv service in the first quarter of 2008. It seems they may prefer to sell EchoStar. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett speculates that “DirecTV’s dependency on AT&T is above 10 percent and that it would likely see a drop-off in subscriber growth as a result of the AT&T move.”
There is also some reason to believe that AT&T may actually continue selling DirecTV service and another service together. Seeing as how AT&T has said they want to expand their U-verse video network to 30 million homes by 2010, up from the 17 million target for the end of 2008.
Boom!
The writer’s strike is going on two months now and there’s no end in sight. Thanks a lot Writer’s Strike of America, you’re ruining television. So what can you do to pass the time? SuperLame has the answer with some great online alternatives to tv’s upcoming reality onslaught.
Joost - 19,000+ TV shows, 390+ Channels. They’ve got shows you’ve probably heard of, like MTV’s Punk’d, Ren & Stimpy, and CBS’s hit drama CSI. Then there’s a slew of older, lesser known, and obscure shows you may not be familiar with. All of it comes in a nifty little program you download and run all for free. They do have ads, but it’s not that bad, usually one short ad before a show.
YouTube - Now here’s a little site you may not have heard of. Okay, so we all know about YouTube. It has everything on it. From original content, to commercial stuff people upload, there’s something for everyone. The best thing is, they have so many users the content is constantly being updated.
Chime.tv - This isn’t a video content site so to speak, it’s more of a aggregate for video content. They pull video from all the biggies on the net. Places like YouTube, Veoh, MySpace Video, and more. They also put it in a very pretty and easy to use Web 2.0 package. It’s one of my favorites. And somehow the videos seem like they actually load faster than on the site they originate from.
Channel 101 - You may have seen the short lived sketch comedy show Acceptable.tv on VH1 last year. Well, the show was canceled and the guys behind that have returned to their original project Channel 101. It’s great for off the wall sketch comedy and crazy web shorts.
Podcasts - Okay, so “podcasts” is not a site, but it is a great new format where you can find a ton of news, entertainment, and anything you can think of. Apple’s iTunes is a great place to start if you aren’t very familiar with podcasts. iTunes gives you a simple, great way to find podcasts in whatever category you’re looking for. There’s also a lot of online podcast directories, like Odeo, Podcast Alley, and Blubrry, just to name a few.
You know what, Mashable wrote a great article on 33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online. Don’t just take our word for it, check it out for yourself
Strike!
Well, I finally got into the Hulu.com beta. I haven’t been using it very long, but as far as tv on the internet is concerned, it ain’t bad. For one, the site and player actually work on browsers that aren’t Internet Explorer. Like Firefox and Opera. They’ve also allowed the movies and videos to be embed in your personal site or blog (see the clip from Family Guy above). One of the coolest things about embeding a clip is you can actually choose the time when you want it to start and end. That way you can use just a small clip of exactly what you want to share.
Okay, so it’s ad supported, how’s that? Well, I’m pretty sure the entire internet is ad supported and it seems to be working so far. As for Hulu, sometimes a show or movie will have a short ad before it plays to say “brought to you by such and such product for limited commercial interuption”. That’s fine with me, less commercials is always a good thing. What ’s funny is that most of the videos you watch actually have less commercials than when they aired on tv in the first place, far less.
So, when Hulu finally goes live for the public, I think it’s worth a look. They not only have plenty of great programing, like Heroes, Family Guy, The Simpsons, The Office, etc. And as long as they don’t go changing the current formula of ad to video ratio, or start making us pay for it, than it should be pretty successful.
Oh, and if you’ve never seen 24, they have the entire 1st and 6th seasons. I highly suggest watching the first season. You’ll be hooked.
Boom!
Reporting from Moviehole.net, they posted some supposed spoilers for the new x-files movie. It was supposedly the first 30 minutes of the movie and some new characters in the movie. But wait a minute……. the spoilers are FAKE! Evidently XF producer Chris Carter is actually leaking old plot lines from the TV show. It was discovered and Moviehole corrected the story. But what I thought was funny was this from cinematical.com. Not only did the people call out it was fake but they also knew the episodes that they were from. WOW I liked X-Files but its been so long that I would never remember that. Take note Chris Carter you better make a great movie.
OMG it’s another talk-to-the-camera comedy show. I love these! Clark Duke and Michael Cera are creators and stars of “Clark and Michael.” New episodes posted Wednesdays on www.Clarkandmichael.com. Clark also plays Dale on ABC’s “Greek” airing Fridays and Michael stars in “Superbad.” You may also remember Michael from one of the best canceled shows in the past few years, “Arrested Development”.
One of my favorite parts of “Clark and Michael” was episode 7 when they drop all the golf balls and just walk away. “711 would have been easier…” that was awesome, or the part when Michael was like…”I just wanna try it on!” These guys are so strange but they remind me of some of my minions so maybe that’s why I like it so much. N E Ways check them out and let me know what you think.
Veda
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