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Must-See Net TV

Most major networks and producers make some recent and archival TV shows available through their own Web sites, as well as on iTunes, AOL's In2TV, Google Video, and others. Each site may offer only a few shows from one or two studios.

For example, CinemaNow carries just two series, one season each of Babylon 5 and The Dukes of Hazzard. iTunes carries about 150 series from Disney/ABC, NBC, and MTV, including current shows like Law & Order and The Office. Network shows typically cost $2 to $4 per episode.

A growing body of content is viewable for free, with the revenue coming from commercials. As a trial, ABC released free downloads of a few popular shows such as Desperate Housewives and Lost the day after they aired, with ads. Google Video, too, is experimenting a bit with ad-supported video. AOL's ad-supported In2TV presents many old Warner Brothers shows, such as Max Headroom and The People's Court, with new ads.

Increasingly, you see well-produced, original Web content, as well. For example, both CBS's Innertube and MTV Overdrive offer clips from broadcast shows along with online-only reality, talk, and magazine shows.

ABCnews.com, NBC, and others present free nightly newscasts along with single-story videos. Some local stations have good content, too: Check out southwest Florida's Studio 55, which has a high-quality, daily news video podcast.

However, most free programs play as Flash Video (.flv) files on the provider's site--no easy downloads for offline viewing. And you can't subscribe to or watch content from all sites with one viewer. Although Blinkx.tv and Yahoo both offer improving Web-wide video search, no one has the equivalent of a comprehensive program guide that makes both commercial and sharing sites searchable in one place. Also, with today's broadband, high-def video takes too long to download, and content is scarce. (If you want to try HD, CinemaNow does have 80 titles.)

Moreover, unless your PC is connected to your TV, you have few ways to easily bring Web content to your living room. TiVo's TiVoCast and Akimbo offer two of the few alternatives: Each service downloads videos from partner sites to its set-top box for TV viewing. TiVoCast has launched with ten partners, such as iVillage and the New York Times, while Akimbo has 100 partners, with video ranging from A&E's biography and history shows to short movies from iFilm to clips from the Karaoke Channel.

Most commercial content providers currently avoid distributing their libraries via RSS feeds and peer-to-peer, presumably due to concerns about file trading. However, Warner Brothers' agreement with P-to-P developer BitTorrent to use its technology to sell and distribute movies and shows suggests that Hollywood's hesitancy may be lessening.

Commercial Video Sources: iTunes Stands Out

iTunes' selection, video quality, and ease of use distinguish it from the rest of the pack, though it lacks feature films.