YouTube may be adding Full Length Video as well.

YouTube CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times recently that Google doesn't know how it will monetize the popular video sharing site they bought for $1.65 billion two years ago. One move they are considering, is to follow the leaders... while YouTube may seem like a leader of video sharing sites, it is not the leader in Internet TV. YouTube is planning to try what other online television networks and sites that broadcast these networks such as Hulu.com are doing. They will be allowing full length movies and television episodes to be uploaded to the site by independent directors/producers as well as the networks that own rights to these videos.

The main concern here is that advertisers are rather reluctant to advertise next to user generated videos for which they never know what types of content their ads will be placed next to. With the full length videos they know what the producers and networks are uploading, so not only will they feel safer placing ads, but this advertising model can or should allow for more targeted demographics.

We will have to wait and see just how this pans out for YouTube.

For more on this topic click here.

Full Length Disney Movies - Now Available Online

This week Disney.com announced that they will begin streaming their summer 2008 weekly film presentations of the popular Wonderful World Of Disney features we have all grown up watching. This summers titles will include Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Haunted Mansion and several other popular favorites.

They are partnering with ABC to bring the movies, in high quality formats, to the internet so that us viewers may watch them for free. In addition to the Wonderful World Of Disney, The Disney Channel will be streaming their Original Movie "Camp Rock", with interactive online activities like trivia, games and even chat, so that fans can communicate with each other during the film.

I for one will be sure to share this online experience with my 9 year old son. So I am sure you and your family will enjoy it as well.

Read the full story at BusinessWire.

InterWeb TV - Official launch set for July 4th

As some of you folks may have guessed, We have not officially launched InterWeb TV. We have been adding content and getting our site working properly. You may have noticed that at times I may go a couple days without a new post. This is because I am still researching the best sites and softwares used for watching TV on the web. I am also researching good SEO techniques to get my word out to a broader audience.

Some of the things to look out for before the official launch date...

A nicer theme with easier navigation, inluding categories. This will be a three column blog theme so I dont have to cram everything in the right sidebar. This may take some testing. So if you happen upon the InterWeb TV blog one day and it is all fucked up, don't fret, it will be fixed shortly after. It is just testing.

More posts. Once we launch you will start to see me posting more often as well as some guest posts from other folks who dig the internet TV scene. Some of the things we will be posting about is the quality and/or bugs we experience while viewing different internet TV rersources. Monthly reviews on what we watched and what we avoided watching and why. This will save you folks time in searching for the perfect viewing experience.

Additional tools and resources. I have a list of different television networks that I have yet to examine and post about. The list is long so it will take some time to visit each and every network. Also you may have noticed I added an RSS feed to the sidebar of Hulu.com recently added shows. There will be similar content added in the future as well.

So please hang in there and feel free to comment on what you would like to see added before the official launch of the InterWeb TV blog.

Testing... Testing one, two - TheWB.com beta - Accepted!

Well, I recieved my acceptance email today from TheWB.com beta that I signed up for just about two weeks ago. I was pretty certain that it was going to happen, but I never signed up to be a beta tester before. This means I will be watching TheWB a little bit more than the other networks for the next few weeks. I won't leave you folks hangin' in the wind though. I will keep you all posted on my experiences over there. Don't forget, you can see first hand also, you don't have to take my word for it. Go to TheWB.com and sign up too. Here is the email I recieved.

We want to build a site that reflects you and your interests so
input is crucial. We look forward to hearing from you (we really
do). Please feel free to play around the site, watch your
favorite shows, and send us your thoughts and comments using the
site's Talk Back feature. Welcome to TheWB.com.

Best,
Brent & TheWB.com Team

I actually recieved the email about 1am this morning so I decided to login right away and watch a couple episodes to see what they had going on over there. So far I can see about a dozen or so different shows offering full episodes of high quality video. They do offer embed codes and an option to add your videos to Facebook. The full screen was skippy with a low frame rate, but that may just be me and my damned graphics card I just won't shut up about. I am really not sure. One particular thing that gained my attention was a feature they call WBlender. It seems to be some kind of video mixer that WB fans can use to make a video collage of their favorite clips from episodes. I am not sure because it hasn't been launched yet, it still says "coming soon" so we will wait.

Here is some OC bitch!

Remember, I am going to let you all know what is on the inside, so subscribe to my RSS feed to stay updated.

Fixed the video Lost the sound - Vista Ultimate Upgrade

Since my last post, I found it rather important to get the video problem fixed. I thought for sure it was fine after the last format and the drivers that I found for XP, but after posting about my graphics being fixed, the next morning it started all over again... talk about wanting to rip out your hair. It really must have been some sort of SP3 incompatibility issues, as I upgraded back to Vista and the video has been working fine these last few days. This time I upgraded to the Vista Ultimate thanks to the University of Pittsburgh. As some of you may or may not know Vista Ultimate comes with Windows Media Center, yet another way to watch TV online. I will be testing that out a bit later, I really just want to get things on my machine back in order so I can continue bringing you the latest tests and tweaks with todays online television networks and the software that makes it all possible.

With reformatting comes reinstallation of all my common apps, as well as the various online television software you see me writing about here on this blog, like VeOh, Joost and Babelum. Amongst those I will be writing about a few others I have been using, like Vuze, TVUplayer, Graboid, and of course the new Adobe Media Player which you can view some interesting online channels from both independent and national networks, it also serves as a .flv player and library. More on that later as well.

Lets talk about Vista...
As I mentioned in my last post on the graphics issue, I had used Vista in the past and reverted back to XP because my graphics card drivers were not supported by Vista. That was around 6 months ago or so. I was offered the chance to obtain my very own licensed copy of Vista Ultimate from the University of Pittsburgh for use on this blog. I was reluctant, but didn't want to turn down free software, so I accepted. To my surprise, it turns out that nVidia finally released a driver for my card that was supported by Windows Driver Display Model (WDDM). Here is what they say over at Microsoft.com.

The Windows Vista desktop is being drawn in a completely different way from all previous versions. Every window will have its own, full window-sized surface to draw to. The desktop will be dynamically composed many times a second from the contents of each window. The goal for desktop composition is to enable compelling new visual effects for both the Windows user interface and for applications created by third-party developers, all shown on increasingly affordable, high-density displays.

To achieve this enhanced desktop experience, a new display driver model has been designed to radically advance functionality, stability, and reliability. Coupled with acceleration provided by current and future graphics hardware, this new graphics driver model enables Windows Vista to deliver a higher level of performance and quality, and a new desktop experience.

The Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) allows for the visual effects seen on a user's desktop to scale relative to the available graphics hardware. For example, the experience of viewing Windows Vista on hardware with capabilities equivalent to a high-end Microsoft DirectX 9-compliant graphics chip will be much richer than Windows Vista displayed on baseline legacy graphics hardware.

So I got the graphics drivers fixed and it hit me... I didn't downgrade back to XP solely because of the graphics drvers. Oh no... I also had troubles with my sound driver as well. And sure enough, all the searching and reading about others tragedies in trying to get their sound to work with Vista turned up no workable fix in my favor. Even those that found the solutions to their problems didn't seem to work for me.
Not only do I feel that both Audio and Video is important for this blog, but I also really love my surround sound while watching online television, as many of you already know.

I have the Realtek AC97 - with 6 channel surround so if you know of any drivers that fix this, please feel free to comment.

My current System Specifications - OS Platform, Graphics and RAM

Ok, so the last few days have been pretty hectic for me when it comes to watching my TV on the web. My graphics card was acting crazy, the screen was flashing at random times, and even freezing on occasion. I thought my GeForceFX 5200 was overheating or just about to croak or something. After some troubleshooting and ripping my computer apart a dozen times I decided to Google the situation. I had a hunch from the very beginning, turns out I may have been right... drivers.

Here are my current system specs:

• 3.0Ghz Intel Celeron D Chipset
• 1.5GB DDR RAM
• 256MB nVidia GeForceFX 5200 Graphics
• Realtek 6 channel surround sound
• Windows XP Home SP3

I know it's not very impressive in todays market, but hey, it works... sometimes.

It all started when I decided to build this blog. I figured I would give my system a full on cleaning, reformat, and reinstall Windows. I aquired a copy of the Windows XP Home SP3 and used the key that is glued to the side of my tower, worked like a charm. Sure beats the "system restore" that comes with premade systems containing all that bloatware. A fresh XP install with nothing else, JUST XP!

It is truly awesome.

The cool thing about me having XP Home, and a mediocre system (if you can call it that) is that I can experience and report on Internet TV sites and software using what my average readers may be watching on. Not some tweaked out techie box that cost upwards of $4k.

So back to the drivers...
I tried several drivers from nVidia to no avail. I tried using Windows XP Repair utilities, nothing. I took the card out, uninstalled all the old drivers and reinstalled everything, nada. So I said screw it, it has only been 2 weeks since I did my format, I haven't got everything reinstalled yet and my C:\ drive is still pretty clean, so I decided to do a whole new format and install Windows XP yet again. Afterwards I searched through some old nVidia drivers and got one that seems to work ok, but not great. I am still having problems watching ABC.com Full Episodes. I had the same problems when I was running Vista last year, in fact that is why I switched back to XP, because of crappy Vista driver support.

I am not sure if this is a driver issue with the new service pack or what, but I am getting frustrated. The flashing of the screen has stopped, so I can still watch and report on most internet TV sites and software, but I will be busy looking for a solution, or maybe it is time to upgrade from the GeForceFX 5200 to something better... but can my mediocre computer handle it?