Downloadable Online Tv Series options

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TechChurch gives a round-up of customers option about downloadable Online TV Series. Online Television series has been become very common from last year. For me, i prefer viewing online tv series compare to download TV series.

File Trading network like Bittorrent has been popular source for downloading TV series but this may illegal or take times to downloading the TV series files (depend on health of the seed). meanwhile, Digital Video Recording still not popular on my regions and TV Company lost a lot of adverstisment revenue while the DVR user skipping the commercial adverstiment.

List of Online TV Series Channel desccribe on TechCrunch:-

iTunes.

iTunes initially offered a selection of several thousand music videos and five TV shows, including most notably ABC’s Lost and Desperate Housewives, as well as the collection from past seasons. New shows are available 24 hours after the initial broadcast. Since that time, the collection has expanded with NBC Universal, USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel shows, and Viacom, in addition to further Disney-owned networks’ shows. iTunes also gives the ability to view Apple’s large collection of movie trailers. Format for purchased Videos is 128 kbit/s Protected MPEG-4 video.

By January 2006, iTunes offered over 40 television shows for download, including, most recently, additions from Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV with episodes of such shows as the Daily Show, Spongebob Squarepants, South Park, and Punk’d. Showtime added some content in February.

The networks, though, are hoping that iTunes will not be the only way people watch TV on their computers. CBS, Fox and ABC are all experimenting with their own direct downloads or streaming.

ABC

ABC is offering streaming versions of a number of its hit shows to viewers within the U.S. for no charge: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias, and Commander in Chief. The shows are viewable in 400×700 Flash format. On the plus side, ABC’s offering is browser and platform agnostic, and are free. On the minus side, and these are big ones, you must be online to view the show. You can’t take these with you on a laptop or other device and watch them while on a plane, or otherwise offline. Also, There are a number of short commercials that cannot be skipped. So in the end, ABC is offering a nice way for me to watch time-shifted shows on my PC-enabled living room television,

CBS

CBS is going with downloads, through their CBS On Demand project. You must be in the U.S. to use the service. Quality is 640×480 pixels. Shows cost $.99 and must be watched within 24 hours of downloading (again, not a very good option for travelers). You must have a Windows PC to view the shows. They cannot be burned to dvd. Frankly, with all of these limitations I’m surprised they even let you watch the show, period. It’s like they’re begging to fail so that they can say “hey, see, we tried, people don’t want this.” Note that CBS is also experimenting with shows on Google Video.

NBC

NBC is offering a number of shows through iTunes, but has no direct to consumer offering. They offer thirteen shows on iTunes, including The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Saturday Night Live, The Apprentice, Law and Order, Scrubs and The Office, as well as a number of vintage shows.

FOX

Fox is shaking things up a bit. In April they announced a six year deal with their affiliates to allow them to show back catalog shows on the internet. They are also starting to roll out downloads of the show “24? through their Myspace property, but I am unable to find much information on it yet.