The Line Is Blurring

Technology has sure advanced over the past year, and for some it’s getting to the point already where some folks are saying, “who needs satellite.”

Now for many folks I don’t see a satellite revolt happening anytime, but for those folks who are looking to save money they are finding that they can watch most of their favorite shows and movies online for little to no cost. Even in this world of 200+ channels studies show that most people have a handful of channels they watch.

There are many online sites popping up online that lets viewers watch many of their current favorite shows plus enjoy shows from the past all with decent sound and picture quality. Of course this entertainment requires a broadband Internet connection but that is a lot cheaper then most cable and satellite packages.

A report (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/3_screens_4q08_final.pdf) came out yesterday from Neilson the television ratings company that reported that Americans are now watching 3 hours of video a month on their PC’s and 4 hours of watching mobile video on their mobile phones or other devices.

Sure I have played with Youtube, but have never used it as part of my regular viewing habits. But as of late I have been using Netflix a lot to watch movies and TV shows on my XBOX360. In addition I have discovered an amazing site called TidalTV (http://beta.titaltv.com) which gives me lots of great cable and broadcast fare online. If you’re a fan of HGTV, National Geographic Channel, The Weather Channel, DIY, Food Network, CBS, Discovery and many others you can find them online at TidalTV. In addition TidalTV offers a number of specialty channels such as my personal favorite, “This Old House” television, which is 24/7 This Old House shows.

Besides TidalTV there are other amazing video portals including the new Sling.COM website and HULU.COM.

If you’re a fan of High Definition then this online viewing is not for you and may become satellites main selling point as more and more programmers make their content available for viewing online. The bandwidth is not there yet to provide full HD content on the web. But with that said the website Hulu.COM is testing out some HD programs, however in my testing this HD has along way to go to be called true HD.

As time goes on I can see satellites role changing becoming a service to fill in what you can’t get online. Both satellite companies have started adapting internet viewing technology into their DVR’s, DirecTV has their DirecTV Video on Demand service which allows you to watch your favorite shows which are downloaded from the internet to your DVR and Dish also has internet based VOD but also is moving forward by building Sling technology in their future boxes.