Recently Australia has started to see a kind of evolution of the way we are presented with television. By this I mean networks putting more effort (and money) into allowing us to see programs soon after they are aired in the US. Of course the marketing speak like “streamed direct from the US” sometimes makes you wonder how they can consider a week later to be “direct” but this is easy to forgive.
I think the reason for this was rather obvious: Australians represented a disproportionate number of the people who regularly download TV shows from torrent sites and other sources. Obviously having to wait a year ore more to find what happens in your favourite show when you could find out inside a day is not something a lot of people are going to put up with. Personally I’m one of the people who downloads quite a number of TV shows from various other countries (mostly Japan and the US) but if I have the option of watching a HD broadcast while not eating up my bandwidth I will definitely take it. I have so many shows I enjoy watching that I don’t mind waiting that extra week.
Not every show gets this kind of treatment of course but the ones that do are usually advertised heavily. From the ones I watch there are: House, Life, My Name Is Earl and Heroes. Less popular shows like Smallville and Numb3rs are not so lucky. Still, I think this is definitely a step in the right direction. The only problems I can see are that scripted TV shows are a dying breed and that television itself is a dying medium that in the near future will be superseded by high-speed internet connection with streaming video, such as the increasing available IPTV.
Have any readers made the switch back to actual TV or do the delays and need to stick to a scheduled time still make you prefer downloads?
You ask a question which not so long ago I would have answered very differently. I used to watch a lot of TV. Now many people say they watch a lot of TV, but by ‘a lot’ I mean about 3/4 of my life was in front of the TV.
So when this whole Internet TV stuff came out, my initial reaction was rather negative. To me, unless it was on TV (that is on one of the TV channels) it did not happen. So getting stuff over the Internet was evil, since you would break continuity and therefore one could break casuality and hence break space-time itself.
Now that I have got a lot busier and spend 3/4 of my life starring at my laptop, I find it hard not to get the episodes from the Internet. I simply don’t have the luxury to watch a TV show at a time that is not of my own choosing.
Those paying attention would suggest simply using a VCR (or similar technology), however there is an additional benefit in downloading the shows of the net - no advertising! As I get older and busier I get a lot more impatient, hence I can’t really deal with the ads wasting my time.
You will notice that the quality of transmission is not really a major concern to me. Yes I do like a clear picture, but I am not at all fussed with the quality of a 300MB avi or similar per episode.
Finally, I only watch one of the shows that is ‘directly from the US’ at the moment. Therefore in practical terms I still have to download everything else or wait a year and check TV guides regularly.