Underground Media: Reloaded

I remember the early days of Hulu when all it had was the Daily Show, Family Guy, and a bunch of anime.  I was an early cheerleader and vocal supporter because the promise of on-demand streaming TV anywhere  was and is so important to the cord-cutting movement.  Hulu has come a long way since then. It's library is huge, it now boasts some impressive movie titles, and it's now possible to subscribe and watch media on your TV, tablet or phone.  And this is ultimately what is so frustrating about Hulu.  Despite all that the streaming service has achieved, it fails to deliver consistently on its promises. So what do I mean by all this?  Let's say you want to watch an episode of The Outer Limits (90's version).  Hulu has every single episode ready to stream.  In fact, they are the ONLY ones with the streaming rights to this series.  You can't even *buy* an unedited DVD for anything past Season 1. Usenet and bittorrent also come up empty. ...

Steve Jobs serves up a pile of steaming crap to his fans, and guess what they do? Get in line for seconds. Apple TV has apparently jumped on the streaming movie rental bandwagon. Except that "Once you’ve started watching a movie, you have 24 hours to finish it or it self-destructs. And it does the same if you don’t watch it within 30 days." As I was reading this article to my wife she laughed and said, "What are they scared will happen?!" Indeed. What ARE they scared of? I can rent a movie from Blockbuster, rip it, and burn copies whenever I want. Ripping the poorer quality streamed copy from the "sealed white box" Apple TV gives me more hurdles to traverse for a less than desirable outcome. From a pirate perspective, that is. And yet, I'm sure loyal Apple fanboys and girls will stay up all night with glasses of champagne in hand, waiting for their Apple TV firmware to update so they can pay $5 for a movie they've got 24 hours to watch. ...

I'm a Netflix cheater. No point in denying it. Either watch the movie or send it back. Whether we've watched it together or not is irrelevant. The queue is huge and it must be appeased. Period. However, my indiscretions are minor compared to my wife's. She CONSPIRES to watch things without me, claiming that she didn't think I would be interested, or it was boring anyway. She's the BIG Netflix cheater! Hilarious article over at the Washington Post : "Adam Cuthbert, confessed Netflix cheater, blames his infidelities on his and his girlfriend's disparate Netflix drives: "She lacks stamina," he says. "I'm trying to work down the queue. She has no respect for that." Women. They never get it when we're on a mission...

We're getting closer and closer. Bandwidth and servers are still major bottlenecks. Unless you're Google, you don't have server farms able to handle the traffic, and residential ISP's still don't offer much above 3MB/sec. But, content providers are banking that this will change, and a few of them are staying ahead of the curve. First up is Netflix . I was DEFINITELY an early adopter with this company. I remember walking into Blockbuster a few years ago trying to find some movie or another, and realizing that my efforts were futile. Blockbuster's focus was new releases, most of which it couldn't keep in stock. Any other movies were purely hit and miss. But then I discovered Netflix, and I was introduced to the Long Tail of the Market . Obscure movies or TV shows, Netflix had 'em. New releases, Netflix had 'em (albeit with some waiting involved). Indie movies, you guessed it! And over the years, Netflix has grown monstrously, cutting deeply...