TV Online: Web 2.0 Television
With the deadline for conversion to High Definition TV coming in February, consumers and savvy web 2.0 users are increasingly turning to the web to get their fix of shows and movies. Unlike cable with high monthly premiums, web 2.0 TV applications are free, available at all hours, and often offer fewer commercials than traditional TV.
This week we take a look at a few of these applications, evaluating them for their look, ease of use, and selection. For their popularity and attention to their interface we chose the applications Hulu, Joost, Veoh, and Fancast, which we’ll cover in detail in the upcoming posts.
All of these applications offer television and film content with the click of a mouse, each organized by media (film or TV), length, and type. They further organized the content into channels, genres, and “popular”, and each application adds some categories of its own. For users to become more engaged they added the ability to rate, comment, and share what they find, and some even have developed widgets to help you keep on top of your shows. All are required to play commercials for most content, often playing the ten seconds or less commercials in set intervals of fifteen minutes.
For a full TV experience users can pause, advance or rewind, expand to full screen, as well as control the volume inside the application. Fans of shows can see a synopsis of the show and discover new material by going to the popular category or searching. All shows are listed alphabetically, by media, and when opened will display related material. All shows can be accessed at any time, as often as viewers would like.
In order to show free media, all applications have to offer their shows for a set time, so shows will not be available indefinitely, but for viewers looking for online entertainment, web TV is a great choice. We’ll be looking at the applications in subsequent posts, but if you would like to find the applications right away, there is the Listio search: watch+TV.
Next in this series: Veoh: Online TV With Video Hosting
New to Listio? Our tag cloud search offers an easy way to narrow your hunt for the perfect web application or service. No more second guessing of search terms. Just click on one tag, then as many more as you'd like to narrow your search results. It's easy and ensures you get to the listing you want. Finding web 2.0 was never so easy.
Tags: media, TV, watch
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