CrunchGear » hulu

Boxee + Clicker = so close, yet so far

Scott Merrill — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:01:20 +0000

I don’t watch a lot of television programming, and I’m not particularly patient with the way “Big Media” treats me, the consumer. I really wanted to like Flash Forward, but it’s pretty clear that the show is more interested in hitting that 100 episodes mark to earn syndication than it is in delivering an interesting, gripping story. So I gave up on that, and on a lark decided to try Fringe, to kill some time. Unfortunately, Hulu doesn’t have the beginning of the series, let alone the beginning of the current season. I’m not excited about jumping into the show midstream. I’m also not interested in navigating the various network websites to find their hosted copies of the shows I might watch. Isn’t that what Hulu was supposed to do for me?

Enter Clicker.com. “Clicker aims to become the complete programming guide to Internet television.” Indeed, they have an impressive catalog of more than 400,000 television episodes from 7,000 different shows, not to mention movies and original web content. They’ve been around for awhile, but today they’re unveiling their new Boxee app, allowing you to access their impressive catalog of content from within Boxee.

From the Clicker blog post:

Clicker’s Boxee app gives you the opportunity to experience our service in a brand new way — on your actual television. You can search for your favorite shows, movies and videos, or you can browse through hundreds of categories. All this while sitting 10 feet away with a (real) clicker in your hand.

Now we’re getting somewhere! I have Boxee installed on the Mac Mini attached to my television, though I don’t often use it. I’ve found it easier (for me) to simply use the Finder to navigate folders of media, and to play said media in VLC. That’s great for the movies I’ve ripped, but not so great for television programming I might like to watch. A unified interface to watch my movies and television would be great.

I eagerly installed the Boxee Clicker.com app, and tried it out. It’s a great idea, and shows a lot of promise, but there’s still a long way to go. To be fair, I recognize that this is a first release of the Clicker app, so there’s no way they’re going to have a fully functional release on their first try. Although I set up an account at Clicker.com, there’s currently no way for me to access that account from within the Boxee app. I’m told that’s coming very soon. Perhaps most aggravating, to me, is that the listing of available content within the Clicker.com app shows a lot of stuff to which I don’t actually have access. I foolishly clicked Ghostbusters from the “Popular Movies” column, which is sourced from Netflix. Nothing happened. Even if something did happen, I wouldn’t have been able to watch it anyway, since I don’t have a Netflix subscription. Oh Clicker, you tease me so.

I’ve spoken with the crew at Clicker and shared some of my frustration with this user experience. There are a number of challenging constraints with what they’re trying to do. From the Clicker website itself, clicking on a Netflix-sourced movie will take me to Netflix where I can sign in. From the Clicker app, selecting a Netflix-sourced movie should transfer the connection over to the Netflix app, assuming you’ve authenticated it. I uncovered a bug: when you don’t have the Boxee Netflix app activated, nothing happens. The Clicker team told me that they’d get to work on fixing this in a future version.

I can watch Ghostbusters for free at Crackle.com, and I can see that at the Clicker.com website. But the Clicker Boxee app doesn’t contain everything that their website indexes. From the Clicker app announcement:

Not all the programming you can discover on Clicker.com is available on Boxee yet, so our Boxee app explicitly features only shows or movies that are currently available through Boxee. That includes over 180,000 episodes from over 3,000 TV and Web shows, as well as 5,000 movies. We’re working with Boxee to add more content and many more sources in the future.

It’s true. There’s a lot of content displayed inside the Clicker.com app. Navigating all that content can be a little time consuming. Searching that content, right now, feels like a waste of time. Here’s a screenshot of me trying to search for Fringe:

Okay, so Fringe isn’t available through Clicker on Boxee — I can dig that. But the search results provided make no sense to me. I have no idea how a search for “fri” would produce that set of results.

Speaking with the Clicker crew, and using the Clicker website a bit more, clarified the situation: I was expecting a straight match of my search term against the raw show titles. Clicker, however, is being a lot more helpful. They don’t have Fringe to show me, but they are showing me other media that is related to Fringe in a number of ways. Maybe an actor from Fringe was a guest on Jay Leno’s show; or some behind-the-scenes piece about Fringe appears on another program. That’s what the search results are in the screenshot above. This is made much more obvious when you search the Clicker website: the results clearly indicate the connection to the search term. Again, it looks like I uncovered a bug, and the team is going to brainstorm ways to improve the search result listing to disambiguate why that set of results was returned.

There’s a lot of other little things that show that the Clicker.com app, while a great start, still has quite a ways to go. After speaking with the team, I’m actually quite enthusiastic about the future of the Clicker app on Boxee. The Clicker team says they’re listening to user feedback, and my experiences so far support that, so start tweeting and, uh, Facebooking your suggestions to make the Clicker app better.

Yikes: Hulu flirts with, yes, having you pay to watch it.

Nicholas Deleon — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:00:02 +0000

Hey, remember Hulu.com? It was a Web site that sort of came out of nowhere, and offered streaming TV shows from NBC and other networks. It was ad-supported, and free. People liked it. And then, one day, in October, 2009, a completely bonkers TV executive all but killed it with one sentence: “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online.”

Those are the words of News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey, uttered at some sort of broadcasters pow wow.

The idea that News Corp. (and the other broadcast execs) expects to be paid for something that travels through the air 100 percent freely, and has for decades is, that’s right, ludicrous. And I’m referring only to broadcast content here. Shows like The Office and The Simpsons, and not Curb Your Enthusiasm or Weeds. Ads pay for the broadcast shows, and that anyone expects us to pay for those shows again! Ha!

It’s like this: Hulu already runs ads. I’m not gonna pay for access to the site when there’s already ads on there.

Never mind the fact that people only put up with the ads because the site is a convenience. “Sure, I’ll put up with a few ads so long as I can watch 30 Rock in between CrunchGear posts.” Otherwise, yeah, I’ll head right back to alt.binaries.multimedia and start downloading away. No ads there, and in 720p!

I mean, was I stealing all those Seinfeld reruns or 24 (aka the Jack Bauer Power Hour) when I had an HDTV antenna hooked up to my TV? I don’t recall paying to watch those shows; that’s what the ads were for!

In essence, charging for Hulu is a one-way to Irrelevant Town. I don’t care either way, seeing as thought I really haven’t watched TV for several years now (outside of live sports).

Dear Hollywood: Wanna stop BitTorrent piracy of your TV shows? Make them available overseas in a timely manner!

Nicholas Deleon — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:00:32 +0000

What’s wrong with sites like Hulu? Well nothing, per se, except for the fact that they can’t be used anywhere outside of the Unites States. As if other countries don’t want to watch… um, really great shows like “Extreme Makeover” and “The [American] Office”! Perhaps that’s why, then, BitTorrent site EZTV has seen traffic double, mainly from non-American IPs, in the past year? For whatever reason, people want to watch these shows, but since there’s no legal outlet to do so, well, it’s not exactly hard to configure uTorrent or Transmission, now is it?

The problem goes back to a time before the Internet ruined Hollywood’s business model. Back in the day (and still today, actually) people in other countries had to wait months, if not years, for “American TV Show” to show up on their local TV networks. That wasn’t much of a problem before the Internet, because how could you get jealous in London that a new season of The Simpsons started when all you had access to was whatever the hell Sky put on the air? You can’t want to see something if you don’t know it exists.

With apologies to alt.tv.simpsons, where I used to hang out for a minute.

But now you can’t visit Digg or Facebook without seeing your online, American buddies chatting about “30 Rock” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm. These shows won’t show up on your local TV stations for months, but that’s why there’s BitTorrent!

It’s like this: would you rather wait months and months to see “Whatever” when you can download it in seconds from EZTV? That’s what I did when I was in Barcelona and wanted to see “Generation Kill.” I downloaded the episodes a few minutes after they made their way to whatever site I was using at the time.

Is that piracy though? I mean, I guess it is, but what are you gonna do? Wait around like a jerk for Local TV Station to pick up the shows?

What the studios should do, but probably never will, is either A) eliminate staggered release schedules or B) set up international versions of sites like Hulu. I mean, why do they do that staggered release nonsense anyway? To protect the local market from imports or some nonsense? One World, baby, so treat it as such.

And why can’t a Web site be set up where my BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER MOTHER~! can stream “Family Guy” from the comfort of their home in Vienna, Melbourne, or Rio? It’s a stupid, Old World restriction that no longer make sense in this environment.

And yes, I know you can merely use a U.S. proxy, but that’s not the point, now is it?

Media companies freaking out because they don’t know how measure TV ratings anymore

Nicholas Deleon — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:30:48 +0000

So I read late last night that pretty much every TV show this summer has crashed and burned. You can attribute that any number of things. One, it’s summer and no one watches TV then. Two, the shows were absolutely terrible. Three, maybe people were watching, but the proliferation of the likes of Hulu have totally messed with Hollywood’s ability to actually count how many people watch its shows.

My belief is that the shows stunk on ice, but then you look at the actual hits (“More to Love” and “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” did well) and you half-wish a meteor would smash into the planet, so disappointed you are with your fellow citizens. By that third issue, how to accurately count how many people actually watch TV, is what concerns us right now.

Several big media companies, including Time Warner, NBC Universal, and News Corp, have formed a consortium to better figure out how to measure ratings. Nielsen, which has been in charge of figuring out media ratings since the dawn of man—I filled out a radio ratings book for the company last winter—,isn’t doing a good enough job, apparently. So, with advertisers freaking out, the media companies have stepped in.

The idea isn’t to outright replace Nielsen, but to figure out how to better count today’s viewers. People still watch TV live, sure, but then there’s time-shifted viewings (DVR), Internet sites (like Hulu), and Lord knows what else. The days of polling an 18,000-strong sample size to determine what America watches and doesn’t watch appears to be over. That’s what the big media companies would say.

Nielsen does have some sort of “panel” that also asks people to keep track of their online views, too, but it won’t be fully operational till 2011.

I don’t know, maybe now’s the time to pitch my idea of a TV sitcom about a rogue New York City subway river that stop wherever he damn well pleases.

Uh oh: Hulu not working on PS3

Nicholas Deleon — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:30:06 +0000

Quite a polemic we’re dealing with, friends. It seems that, suddenly, the PS3 is no longer able to play Hulu content. I just tried to play the Power Rangers movie on my brother’s PS3, and up pops the message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

I don’t know why this is happening all of a sudden, but I’m not a Hulu user so, frankly!

Neither Sony nor Hulu have said what’s up. My favorite reason that I’ve seen so far: Microsoft paid Hulu a bunch of money to prevent it from working on the PS3. Perhaps Bilderberg

TV Everywhere is Comcast and Time Warner’s answer to free Internet video

Matt Burns — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:35:33 +0000

Cable providers Comcast and Time Warner might be late to the Internet video party, but that doesn’t mean they are going to let us enjoy content for free that they pay for. Oh no, the TV Everywhere Model is designed to give Comcast and Time Warner paying subscribers access to content and block-out everyone else. And this system might find its way into Hulu.

You can’t blame the cable operators for their plans. They have to pay good money for access to cable stations. Then they, of course, pass along the cost to subs via a monthly bill. The thought is that those people that pay for the content should be able to watch all of it on both their TVs and computers.

Of course the other side is that if you don’t pay for those services, then you’ll be shut out. This authentication system will be used initially on sites like Comcast’s video site, Fancast, but there is always the possibility that it could eventually make its way on to Hulu.

A lot of Hulu’s content comes from the major networks ABC, NBC, and Fox. (CBS doesn’t have any content on Hulu) This is not the programming that Comcast and Time Warner are bitching about. They are concerned about the cable channel’s programming like Comedy Central, FX, Sci-Fi and others. TV Everywhere tackles this problem by placing content from similar, and even more, stations behind the closed walls of an authentication system at Fancast.com.

Comcast’s own video site, Fancast.com, is similar to Hulu in many ways. It offers a lot of the same programming and a similar, albeit not as nice, look. This is because it actually uses a lot of content from Hulu, but is going to be the launch pad for TV Everywhere.

The trial will include 5,000 Comcast subscribes starting sometime this summer. The test will focus primarily on this so-called authentication technology that’s designed to keep the freeloaders out. Not that many people will really care that much as the only premium content that Fancast is going to feature initially is coming from TBS and TNT. The plan is to eventually give access to even more premium content including movies for no additional cost to current Comcast subscribers.

The average consumer is probably content with Hulu’s offering. Many people have left cable companies entirely and supplement their OTA TV with Hulu. It’s great that Comcast wants to offer its customers more Internet video, but I don’t see how it will generate revenue for Comcast and Time Warner unless its adapted by sites like Hulu, forcing people back to the cable companies for their content.

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Optimum Online Ultra, one month later: Hope you plan to P2P a lot

Nicholas Deleon — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:30:27 +0000

It’s been about a month since I subscribed to Optimum Online Ultra, the fastest Internet service in the country—sorry, Peter. Consider this a predictable, rubbish explanation of how my Internet habits—nay, my life!—have changed as a result of having a 101 megabits-down/15 megabits-up connection.

In so many words, nothing has changed all that much. My What.cd and HDBits ratios have improved, but that’s to be expected when you’re in BitTorrent swarms with lowly Comcast and Time Warner users. Having a 101 megabits at my disposal does make it easer to grab new releases quite speedily—I can’t wait till Entourage comes out, hello ratio boost!—but that’s about it.

So it’s safe to say Optimum Online Ultra is great for heavy BitTorrent users. Plus, no bandwidth caps!

Usenet becomes dangerous with Optimum Online Ultra. “Yeah, that movie sure would be nice to add to my collection.” Four minutes later, bam!

As far as legitimate uses go, ha! YouTube, used for watching reruns of Supermarket Sweep, is still a piece of garbage. Nothing loads any faster than it did when I had regular Optimum Online. (Of course, videos play while they load, so it’s not a huge deal.) Is that because Flash for Mac OS X is 100 percent dross, constantly causing Safari (and Firefox for that matter) to crash? Maybe; I’m not a scientist. The point is, I was expecting to click a YouTube link and have the video load instantly. That simply doesn’t happen. Same thing with Hulu: it’s still dog-slow, even though it plays as its loading. Like the Cablevision tech explained to me when he installed the service, my home connection is now faster than what what Web sites can provide. Until YouTube, Hulu and whomever else upgrade their infrastructure, I’ll be waiting for video to load just like everyone else.

So yeah, unless you’re a heavy P2P user, you really won’t see much of a difference between Optimum Online Ultra and the average broadband connection.

Such is my experience.

Video: Tom Brokaw reports on that thing called the “Internet” – circa 1994

Matt Burns — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:40:26 +0000

“What you can do with the new systems is go directly to the international network computers called *dramatic pause* the Internet.”

I wonder if he foresaw the Internet replacing him way back then? Watch this video. It’s a classic.

Hulu via DownloadSquad

Playboy says Roku is getting Hulu

Matt Burns — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:55:01 +0000

The latest issue of Playboy is stating that Hulu support is coming to Roku. Not that Playboy isn’t a reliable technology source, but we’re still a tad skeptical. Hopefully the support is coming though, not for Roku’s sake, but because that would mean TiVo and Moxi shouldn’t be that far behind.

Poll: Would you use Hulu on your Xbox 360?

Matt Burns — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:10:17 +0000

The latest rumor circling around the Intertubes is that there might be a Xbox 360 Hulu app coming soon similar to the upcoming Hulu Desktop app. Is that something you would use regularly? Serious. How often would you use a native Hulu app on your Xbox 360? I know I would use it more than the Netflix app which lost my attention after the second movie I watched, but how about you.

How often would you use an Xbox 360 app?

Control Freaks: Hulu now blocks anonymous proxies too

MG Siegler — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:55:47 +0000

There are few web services hotter than Hulu these days. It's about to surge into the number two web video position (behind only YouTube) and it just signed a deal with Disney to give it even more great content. It's all great -- if you live in the U.S. Outside of this country, if you've wanted to access Hulu, you've either been out of luck, or had to use a proxy server workaround. For several months, there were quite a few options that would work to trick Hulu into thinking you were trying to access it from within the U.S. even when you were not. But Hulu got smarter and started doing geo-checks at the streaming level. But still, a few virtual private network (VPN) creators like Hotspot Shield would get the job done by making your IP anonymous. Not anymore.

Research suggests Internet could run out of bandwidth in the coming years

Nicholas Deleon — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:00:30 +0000

Will the Internet run out of bandwidth? That’s the concern expressed by an upcoming study, and it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it. Uselessly slow Web sites (think: YouTube, Hulu), Internet “brownouts” (“please wait: processing request”), and general mayhem could be the norm in just a few years’ time. So let’s freak out about it.

The study, carried out by Nemertes Research, suggests that the proliferation of bandwidth-intensive Web sites (again, YouTube, Hulu, and iPlayer for you Brits) and services (BitTorrent) is wreaking havoc on the Internet’s fragile infrastructure. The implication is that, sure, the Internet can handle World Wide Web hyperlinks as the day is long, but once you have millions of people streaming and downloading video, the whole thing comes crashing down.

The recession has only made things worse. More people are home (not at work, then) either passing the time fiddling online or cruising craigslist looking for jobs.

Compare the Internet today to the Internet of only a few years ago. Did we have The Simpsons on demand in the year 2000? Nope. At best you could troll alt.tv.simpsons to find links to Web sites that had a weekly Real Media encode of that week’s episode (as I remember it). Or you could read the script on snpp.com. In fact, “The amount of traffic generated each month by YouTube is now equivalent to the amount of traffic generated across the entire internet in all of 2000.” Yikes.

(How great would it be if all this “cloud” nonsense takes off, and then you can’t access your data in a timely manner?)

In any event, call me a skeptic. I’ve read too many “the Internet is doomed!” articles to take ‘em seriously any more. Or, as they say on message boards, pics or it didn’t happen.

Have you tried out Plex’s App Store yet? It’s pretty neat

Nicholas Deleon — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:20:59 +0000

Have you guys used Plex lately? We’ve written about the application, which is a Mac-optimized fork of XBMC, in the past, but didn’t mention its latest update. It’s now known as Plex Media Server, and it’s really a great way to watch movies on your Mac. And now with the Media Server update, it can be outfitted with all sorts of plugins that greatly expand its functionality.

Now, I encourage all of you to read through every post on Plex’s site to fully appreciate how much time and effort these guys put into developing it, but I’ll just quickly go over the biggest addition, the App Store, which lets you download plugins for use within Plex. The biggest plugin right now, I would say, is for Hulu. Once installed, you can watch 30 Rock, The Office, etc. from within the multimedia application. There’s also plugins for NPR, Revision 3, Apple’s movie trailers, all sorts of photo blogs, etc.

This new feature lets you download plugins for use within Plex. The biggest plugin right now is for Hulu. Once installed, you can watch 30 Rock, The Office, etc. from within the multimedia application. There’s also plugins for NPR, Revision 3, Apple’s movie trailers, all sorts of photo blogs, etc. It’s useful in that, say I miss an episode of 30 Rock. Normally I’d just fire up Azureus and grab it from wherever I’m gonna grab it, in HD. But say you don’t want to waste ratio on Tina Fey’s latest wacky storyline. No problem, fire up Plex, navigate to the Hulu plugin, and watch the episode right then and there. (Plex, as you may already have guessed, is popular with HTPC (Mac Mini edition!) folks, who may see launching Firefox just to be able to watch a dumb TV episode as being “icky” or whatever.)

So yeah, I know whenever I’m watching, say, a Blu-ray rip of a move I’ve already legally purchased, wink-wink, I use Plex. But that’s just me.

Boxee adds Hulu support (kind-of). App Box, and auto update

Matt Burns — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:40:44 +0000

We’ve already shown you one dirty way of re-enabling Hulu on Boxee but now there is an official work around direct from Boxee via RSS. The latest build adds support for video RSS fees and so…all you need to do is add Hulu’s public RSS feed to the app’s reader. It’s surely not as sexy as the past application, but it’s better than nothing. Plus, App Box and auto update show how fast this alpha release is maturing.

App Box is the companies first take on 3rd party app support by offering users a single location to install and select add-ons. Auto update is just what it sounds like: an auto update feature to notify the user about new release and install them. Both are welcome additions to the already killer media platform. However, the company does offer some words of caution.

this is a bleeding-edge release. not for the faint of heart since it did not go through much testing. we are on track to release a more stable update on March 24th.

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Apple TV 2.3.1 updated totally borks the Boxee add-on

Matt Burns — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:15:22 +0000

It goes without saying that Apple really doesn’t want you messing with their APIs in non-approved ways. The latest update for the Apple TV doesn’t seem to do much more than remove third-party add-ons like Boxee. Hopefully this reaches you in time before the auto-update function kicks on so you can save your precious, non-Hulu supporting app.

Screw the man, get Hulu back on Boxee and XBMC

Matt Burns — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:45:18 +0000

Hulu didn’t make any friends this week when the NBC-owned site succumbed to the pressure of content owners and had the content pulled from Boxee. Alec Baldwin wasn’t kidding when he said the company was evil. Anyway, thanks to the hacking of some disgruntle geeks, you can now get access back on both Boxee and XBMC.

It seems like this is a dirty, backdoor hack that doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, but it’s better than nothing. Give her a go and let us know how it works.

XBMC & Boxee via Lifehacker

TV.com to get redesigned as a Hulu competitor

Matt Burns — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:00:59 +0000

Hulu overcame incredible initial criticism to become the golden child of revenue generating video sites. CBS has been eyeing the NBC success story and reportably has big plans for TV.com. CNET lauched said website back in ‘05, but CBS recently aquired the company, along with its websites, earlier this year. The report indicates CBS wants to add full length episodes, but keep the web community content that CNET created. Sounds like a plan. Hulu.com is a great site, but with the TV.com domain name in its pocket along with relative interactive features, CBS might have a shot this late in the game.

Sling opens Hulu competitor

Michael Arrington — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:00:34 +0000

Sling Media, the company behind the popular Slingbox TV-streaming hardware devices, has opened the gates to its video portal Sling.com. The site pits Sling directly against Joost and Hulu (though Hulu is a Sling partner), allowing users to stream a variety of television shows and movies for free through an intuitive Flash player.

Sling’s selection of media is pretty comprehensive, offering content from most of the major networks and studios including Warner, Sony, and MGM (Sling is licensing some of its content from Hulu). The site also offers movies from a number of smaller sources, like College Humor’s shorts. But there are a few notable exceptions: Comedy Central is nowhere to be found, which means The Daily Show and Colbert Report aren’t available (Hulu began offering both shows in June).

Why is Hulu more valued by advertisers than YouTube?

Nicholas Deleon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:45:55 +0000

Something’s wrong with YouTube, and it looks like Hulu stands to benefit. YouTube, as you’re all painfully aware, is primarily comprised of short videos of guys falling off their skateboards (embedded here), dudes playing video game songs on the piano and illegal Seinfeld clips. Those types of videos aren’t attractive to advertisers. That may explain why YouTube, which had 83 million unique hits in September, is only expected to generate $100 million for the year.

Compare that to Hulu, which primarily consists of professionally made NBC and Fox shows and clips—I just wasted quite a few minutes watching a few “popular” Simpsons clips, for example. That all of the content there is nice and legal makes it more appealing to advertisers, which explains why, even though with only 6 million hits in September, Hulu is expected to generate to $70m.

Both sites are expected to generate $180 million next year. Don’t think that’s because, overnight, Hulu increases its viewership 10-fold.

In other words, people (“analysts” and the like) are now wondering how, if ever, will Google will turn YouTube into a monetary success.

Don’t forget that Google paid $1.65 billion for the site two years ago—that’s a lot of skateboarding videos for which to sell ads.

WTF: Come on, Hulu/Netflix/ABC/NBC/Sling/whoever, let us watch American TV outside of the country

John Biggs — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:19:04 +0000

A quick rant. I’m in Geneva, the city where boredom goes to be bored, and wanted to watch a movie on Netflix Instant Play. I headed over and discovered, much to my chagrin, that the system was keyed to my current location and, as a result, I’m locked out. While I’m aware of IP masks and other tricks I could use to get to the content, I’m essentially browsing Usenet now simply because I don’t want to go through the trouble.

Seeding content internationally is a the magic of globalization. Just because someone is sending said content over a satellite doesn’t mean everyone in the free world has satellite TV. Show Heroes to people in Switzerland. While they probably won’t understand it – they’re very literal-minded – I’m sure they’ll enjoy the colors.

As a public service to others, go and download Hotspot Shield and restart your browser. That’s all you need to get video overseas. As for me, I’m stuck downloading and, interestingly enough I’ve found a wonderful German film called “Church of Fudge” which is starting out swimmingly with a priest and a nun discussing something in Deutsch. Oh. Oh my god. Oh no.