With the writers strike going on and a subscription to basic cable, I've been poking around the web for some decent television content. I guess I am more of a TV watcher than I would really like to admit, but I was born in the '60's and grew up watching television. Although I do have hobbies like reading, playing guitar and cooking along with a wide variety of household chores I like to relax in front of the tube occasional or do some of those chores, such as, folding laundry while watching some television. Some of my recent favorite shows include Heroes, House, Journeyman, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galatica, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock, and Two and a Half Men.

Speaking of 30 Rock, I had not really watched the show which is hilarious until I watched it on OpenHulu.org. Hulu.com is the joint project between Fox and NBC and is still in private Beta. I just got my invite last night and checked it out. There are a ton a shows and a few movies on this site. It has a nice layout, it is easy to navigate and has a nice unobtrusive Flash video player. The commercials are short, 10 seconds instead of the 30 seconds you find on the main television network web sites. If you cannot get access to  Hulu, then check out OpenHulu.org which has much of the same content. Hulu allows you to embed video in your web site and that is what OpenHulu has done. Unfortunately, he has a lot of annoying banner ads, but you can enable full screen mode when playing back a video.

Joost
Another online television option is Joost, which unlike Hulu, is not a web site where you watch videos, but a peer-to-peer application that you download and can watch 20,000 shows across 400 channels. Unfortunately, it does not work on PowerPC Macs, but it will work on Intel based Macs and PC's. It has a very cool interface. Much of the interface is transparent and layered so that you can explore different channels wile watching a movie or show. There is even an API that allows developers to create widgets for the interface. For example, you can blog within the program while you are watching a video.

Another application you can use to download a wide variety of video content is Miro, which I have written about in the past. Miro, which was known as Democracy. Unlike Joost which has struck deals with CBS and other studios Miro is an open source program that acts as a guide and organizer for a wide variety of online video. You can subscribe to podcasts and have it automatically download your favorite shows, but set limits on how much space the videos can take up on your hard drive, because video files are huge.  It also can act as a bittorrent client for downloading large video files.