Crowdsourced advertising platforms - some with Silicon Valley backing - are sprouting up to liberate untapped talent from around the world and remake television (and video) advertising. Companies such as Tongal, Zooppa, Poptent and others are tapping the crowd for talent and hoping to leverage social media's expanding reach and real-time impact to strengthen ties between products and people. 

Can you tell who made the Dannon yogurt commercial below starring John Stamos? It aired during last year's Super Bowl:

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In fact, the ad was created by Remy and Andrew Neymarc, a pair of twenty-something brothers raised in France and possessing no formal video training. Their concept was chosen amongst thousands via the crowdsource advertising platform Poptent.

The crowd is seizing control.

Talent is Everywhere

College students - think Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg - can launch highly disruptive multi-billion dollar businesses right from their dorm room. But can they direct? Can they create mega-popular, award-winning television advertisements for global brands? The answer is a resounding yes. Ideas can come from anywhere, and talent resides everywhere. 

The commercial below, for example, is the direct result of crowd participation. The original idea for the ad and then, later, the finished commercial, were selected from entries by creators - some professional, many amateur - around the world.

Crowdsourced participation in the traditional world of television advertising is a big deal. The global advertising market has an estimated value in excess of half a trillion dollars. In a world of tablets and "second screens," DVRs and YouTube, television still grabs the majority of this bounty.

This is in large part because viewers place a higher level of trust in television advertisements. Even in the second decade of the 21st century, television ads influence viewers far more than most other forms. Yes, this is also true for tech-savvy teens and young adults.

Television Advertising In A Multi-Screen World

Television may command a disproportionate share of trust and influence among advertising media, but each new advertising channel - your Twitter feed, or your smartphone screen, for example - has the potential to distract once faithful viewers.

It's also now much harder for brands to develop and distribute a consistent message across these multiple channels, screens and media platforms. What works on the television screen may do nothing for someone updating their Facebook page on their iPhone. Multiple ads with varying sensibilities are thus required even for a single brand or product. This has forced advertisers to seek out new talent and new avenues for promotion.

Kurt Lohse is marketing director for Poptent, a social media platform that links brands looking for advertising with freelancers from around the world. The 65,000 independent filmmakers registered with Poptent, he told me, "run the gamut from boutique ad agencies to film school students with basic training."

In a multi-screen world, well-made video content remains one of the most effective sales tools available, and demand continues to grow as the range of possible media outlets expands. Think "Super Bowl commercials to viral videos, web videos and everything in between," as Lohse puts it.

In this new world, big brands need the crowd just to meet demand.

The Crowd Wants What The Crowd Wants

With more screens, more channels and more media platforms, it's also become much harder for advertisers to deeply connect with every group or demographic. The top-down model no longer works. Asking a crowd to create an ad is much more likely to result in something that resonates with, well, that specific crowd. 

PepsiCo, which owns a number of food brands, including Doritos, has done just that in order to appeal to multiple demographics, particularly younger ones. In this case, the rather odd crowdsourced advertisement featuring a goat ultimately made it into the company's Super Bowl ad blitz. 

Big brands use the crowd not just for ideas, talent and inspiration, but to help generate brand awareness - even at the ad concept stage.

Pizza Hut, for example, encouraged football fans to submit videos incorporating the idea of quarterbacks shouting "hut" to hike the ball. Along with many great entries received, the campaign itself was a clever means of increasing brand awareness long before any finished advertisement even made it onto the television screen.

While Pizza Hut selected the finalists in its crowdsourced challenge, a popular vote was used to decide which ad made it to the Super Bowl.

Deconstructing the Advertisement

Whereas companies like Poptent have created a platform that connects global talent with big brands, Tongal has taken the crowdsourcing model one step further - by deconstructing the advertisement into its constituent parts.

For example, I may have the perfect idea for the next great iPhone commercial. 

Note: Idea for next great iPhone ad: a virtual 3D Steve Jobs and Tupac Shakur share iTunes Radio playlists and wisdom as they are seated cross-legged on a barren desert.

Problem: I have absolutely no filming talent. Using Tongal's platform, big brands offer "challenge rewards" not only for fully edited video advertisements, but for ideas for commercials. 

Tongal president and co-founder, James DeJulio, told me that this new model will permanently disrupt how television advertising gets made:

So many talented people have until now had little access to do really creative work. In Hollywood, for example, every studio relies on the same ten names for every action. (Crowdsourcing) rearranges the labor market for creative work.

Tongal has received $15 million in venture capital funding. The company works with popular brands by crafting an advertising "challenge." First, is the idea challenge - anyone can submit a idea for the brand's next commercial. The crowd - at least, those registered on the Tongal site - can submit and/or vote on these ideas. The most popular ones are then awarded a cash prize of, say, $500.

Video artists can then craft an advertisement based on the top five most popular ideas, for example. Again, these videos are voted on and the winner receives, say, $25,000. In addition, each winning participant across the challenge's several stages has a chance for an additional slice of the reward pool. If the second most popular "idea" is ultimately used in the winning video, for example, the person with that idea receives an additional reward.

The entire process, from creating the challenge, generating ideas, and developing a finished advertisement takes about 8 weeks - far faster than the traditional model. Throughout the process the challenge is simultaneously being aggressively promoted on Twitter and Facebook. 

DeJulio estimates that "easily 10-20% of all television advertising over the next few years" will be based on a crowdsourced model. That's tens of billions of dollars.

Surprisingly, money is not the driving factor for many participants. "More money typically equals better participation," says DeJulio, but this is not always the case. The more people that use a product, such as a toothbrush or deodorant, the more likely it is that more and better ideas are generated via the crowd. This is doubly so, he suggests, for products that have a rabid fan base - for instance, women's shoes.

A Whole New World

The rapid advancement of low-cost HD video tools, steady cams, and professional editing software, combined with globally accessible social media platforms which aggregate and empower the crowd, are finally disrupting the insular, highly profitable television advertising business.

Lego, Pringles, Axe, Pepsi, Nokia, and numerous others now rely upon crowdsourcing to generate ideas and foster new talent. Everyone wins. Big brands get a great commercial, possibly at a much lower price, and far faster than ever before. At the same time, talented folks from around the world have a chance to build a career in a new industry. Teens such as Zach Boivin have already earned thousands. 

Consider this advertising challenge linking Pringles and Star Wars. It yielded thousands of fan-generated entries, such as the one below.

The winner, to be selected later this month, will receive a $25,000 fee, and the winning ad will be shown on national TV. 

Here are the 10 television shows that I think have most inspired generations of geeks. Not all are about computers or rockets, nor space travel or science. But all possess a common theme. Being smart, passionate, dedicated, hands-on and driven are qualities to be celebrated. 

10. Lost in Space

From the opening notes of the show's theme song, it was clear: danger and adventure was at hand. Lost in Space was campy, no doubt, and laughably wrong about so much. All its faults can be forgiven, however. It's best qualities were the stuff of dreams: traveling the galaxy was the norm, interacting with aliens to be expected, working alongside robots a part of everyday life. Even better: mom and dad and all the children were super-smart and highly capable. It went off the air before most of you were even alive.

9. Top Gear

Exceedingly British, preternaturally opposed to even great America cars, and their are many, Top Gear celebrates automobiles, engines, and learning by doing - in the most audacious, outrageous and ballsy challenges imaginable.

8. The X-Files

The truth is out there. Now go find it. This smart mystery-science fiction-thriller series never pandered, even while hunting down alien life forms in middle America. The X-Files spawned intense, volumnious online discussions, a decade-plus before Twitter arrived.

7. Futurama

The show that refuses to die - like Star Trek, which inspired it. Futurama taught America, once again, that animated shows can be smart, clever, provocative and fun. Space, time travel, genetic mutations, immortality, parallel universes - not to mention ridiculously amusing future inventions - are all topics for dissection. Your children love this.

6. Mythbusters

Is there anything more 'geek' than proving common wisdom wrong? Mythbusters gleefully takes on sacred cows and forces them up against the unwavering, un-feeling hegemony that is science. Plus, they blow stuff up.

5. Doctor Who

I'm American. I don't get Dr. Who. And, honestly, Daleks seem ridiculous. Nonetheless, scientists, computer geeks and all the smartest kids have found awe and inspiration from this long-running British science fiction and fantasy series. It's about time travel, space travel, aliens - and that rather deep reservoir of cleverness and mechanical aptitude that Brits seem to possess. 

4. Prisoners of Gravity

This ultra-low-budget Canadian television show may be the most geeky of all. Frustrated with the world, a man builds his own rocket, takes refuge on a orbiting satellite and spends all his time interviewing the most extraordinarily talented men and women of science... fiction and comics. "Dr. Rick" celebrates the creators, the visionaries, the builders of worlds - those who light a path to our future. 

3. Star Trek: The Next Generation

Building on the vision of the original Star Trek, ST:TNG otherwise boldly went where no one had gone before, its super-smart, exceedingly brave crew of men, women and children traversing solar systems, visiting alien worlds, fighting Borg, sacrificing their lives for their ideals and always always always putting their computer and engineering skills to the ultimate test. Space may not be the final frontier, but it absolutely inspires the best in all of us.

2. The Big Bang Theory

The most popular show on the list - and the most un-geek, truth be told. If not for the great geek shows of the past, however, the very shows which challenged us every week to think big and dream bigger, this comedy about misfit scientists trapped on present-day Earth likely never would have seen the light of day.

1. Star Trek

Could it possibly be any other show? Kirk. Spock. Scotty. Bones. Uhura. Chekov. Sulu. You know them and they matter deeply to you. More than any other television program, possibly more than any other work of fiction, Star Trek inspired you to believe in yourself, believe in a greater good, a better future, and work toward making it so.

Would there be iPhones without tricorders? SETI without Starfleet? Space shuttles without Gene Roddenberry? Star Trek has not simply inspired a generation of geeks, but several generations.

There were many great programs that did not make it into my list of ten. The Office, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight Zone, Lost and many more. Add your suggestions in the comments section below.

Indeed, if the data-fueled success of Netflix's House of Cards is as crucial to TV's future as many believe, what Google is most likely planning will make the transformation we've witnessed so far look like early innings in a very long ball game.

First, though, a caveat: Google has said almost nothing about its plans for taking on the TV market, and I don't have any new inside information to offer on that front. What follows is instead a giant thought experiment — a plausible (to me, at least), fact-based extrapolation of just how thoroughly Google could disrupt the TV industry should it put its mind to it. And should users consent to its plans.

TV's Future Hinges On Content, Data and UX

Whatever TV looks like in the future, it will be built atop three crucial components: content, intelligence and user experience. A fourth element, known as actually making money, hinges heavily on the "intelligence" part — which is to say, data. 

The industry is collectively still figuring out the user experience part. Apple is rumored to have "cracked" the interface problem, but until Steve Jobs's prophetic words find a home in reality, we're stuck with the puzzle's most promising pieces: the likes of AirPlay, Roku and a small army of creative video app designers. 

That leaves the content and intelligence parts, which are what Netflix is purported to have mastered with House of Cards and what Amazon hopes to mimic with with its own Internet-first TV pilots. Hulu has taken its own stabs, but has yet to score a House of Cards-sized hit.

For the last few years, Google's YouTube has also invested quite heavily in original, TV-quality programming for Internet audiences. It, too, is still trying to find its Kevin Spacey. But it's likely only a matter of time before everybody's buzzing about the new show on YouTube, much like we've long chattered about double rainbows and finger-biting babies. 

Google will find its killer content. It will do so in part by leveraging the very thing that gives the company an advantage in just about any space it enters: all that data. 

YouTube: A Burgeoning Trove Of User Data

An absurdly funny standup routine by Louis CK? Thumbs up. A mini-documentary about 3D-printed guns? Consider the "Watch Later" button tapped.  Every music video I ever wanted to see? YouTube has them too, and designating my favorites is effortless. With every tap of each of YouTube's buttons — thumbs up, add to a playlist, watch later and, most importantly, "play" — I'm feeding fresh data to the world's biggest video site. Which, in turn, it uses to build out personalized recommendations, not unlike the special sauce Netflix used to wipe out Blockbuster.

Of course, the data on Netflix's servers is a bit more useful when it comes to recommending long form, Hollywood-caliber video to its users, since that's what Netflix specializes in exclusively. It's the type of knowledge Google will presumably get better at building as its selection of professionally-produced video expands. 

What Google Knows - And Will Know - About Us 

In the meantime, Google is building out a much richer profile of its users than Netflix and Hulu could ever dream of creating.

Outside of YouTube, Google knows a great deal about us. Just how much it knows varies depending on how heavily you use Google's services — and how finely you tune your privacy settings.

For me, that data includes my browsing history (across devices), email, documents, voicemails, eight years of search queries, detailed location data from Maps, a limited view of my schedule from Google Calendar (I mostly use iCal) and a smattering of other data points from the more than 25 different active services tied to my Gmail account/ And I'm not even an Android user.

These services don't all swap data freely — and my Google Drive may well contain no information that's of value to YouTube. But collectively, these services build out a rather richly-detailed general profile of who we are, what we do, where we go and what we enjoy. In theory, YouTube has the capability of knowing not just what Netflix knows — what we watch, when we skip, how we rate — but also quite a lot about who we are in general. 

In the future — if Google's master plan unfolds accordingly — this will all be buttressed with social insights. As its social efforts ramp up, our list of Gmail contacts becomes much more informative: who's in which circles? What do they +1? Who do I trust? 

Google+ is still the exclusive domain of early adopters and media geeks, but in time the company intends for it to become a viable alternative to Facebook and will eagerly ingest all of the social data points that come with that distinction. You can catch an early glimpse of how Google intends to use social data in the next iteration of its Maps interface, which will leverage your social connections to provide recommendations about where to go next. Think Google Now for your physical location. 

How Google Could Use This Data To Win At TV

Similarly, we may one day see Google Now for TV. That is, anticipatory content recommendations fueled by your viewing history, social connections and insights inferred from a complex tapestry of data points from across services and devices. 

Recommendations are important (indeed, cracking this code certainly helped put Netflix in a position to win with House of Cards), but they're only the beginning of what's possible when television is fueled by very, very big data. As its video efforts ramp up, Google — like Netflix before it — will be able to factor in mountains of user data to determine not just what to recommend, but what content to buy the exclusive rights to, or even produce outright. 

Unlike other Internet TV shows, these new premium productions will sit within the world's biggest repository of online video. Sure, much of it is garbage, but the sheer scale of the material it has on hand increases Google's ability to smartly serve up relevant, worthwhile videos to people who come to check out its new shows. Not to mention how easy it would be to rope YouTube's casual, cat video-watching users into clicking the play button on their next big TV-style program. House of Cats, anyone?

In the fall, Nielsen is going to start factoring Internet viewing stats into its decades-old TV-viewing measurement methodology. It's a move that's widely viewed as being both long overdue and symbolic of where TV is heading. If you ask me, Nielsen isn't going far or fast enough to stay relevant. The further companies like Google move into the TV space, the less sense the old, panel-based methodology for tracking makes sense. 

In a recent post on the Monday Note, Frédéric Filloux argues that the sample-based method Nielsen uses to track Web user activity is ripe to be upended by Google's far more sophisticated mechanisms, which even go so far as to use statistical pairing to filter out repeat visitors that may be coming to the same site from multiple devices. Filloux is referring to Web tracking, not TV viewership — the traditional part of which Nielsen is uniquely capable of measuring.

But his argument carries over into the realm of online video and usage, which Google is far better at measuring than Nielsen is. As more viewers turn to the Internet for what we've historically referred to as "TV", Google's method — and what it means for potential advertisers — becomes a lot more attractive than Nielsen's.

When it comes time to monetize those shows, all that big data will be just as useful. This is, of course, Google's specialty. The company that figured out how to make billions by serving contextually relevant ads to people searching the Web is probably well-positioned to do the same with the future version of what we once knew as television commercials. 

What Stands In The Way

Just because Google has the algorithmic capacity to acquire, smartly deliver and monetize rave-worthy content on a disruptive scale, that doesn't mean it will. If this indeed what Google plans to do, it's going to have to clear some hurdles. 

For one, there are privacy implications associated with the type of cross-service data sharing Google would need to do in order to build out these rich, super-profiles of viewers. Using that data to sell video ads won't go over well with everyone, even if it isn't that far off from what Google does with Web search ads. The change could be as simple as a privacy policy update and opt-in button, but nothing Google does on that front will ever fail to arouse concerns about privacy. 

Then there's the content issue, which is huge. YouTube already houses a massive amount of video, and Google likely has the intelligence to find its own House of Cards. But when it comes to hosting premium, TV-caliber content, Google is still playing catch up.

As Tim Carmody pointed out recently, Microsoft is much better positioned to win the living room than Apple is, primarily because Microsoft has managed to pull together the most compelling selection of content. (The same argument applies if you substitute Google for Apple.) That includes not just video games like Halo and Gears of War but online video sources and live TV available directly from cable providers.

With the XBox One, Microsoft also takes a pretty compelling stab at the interface problem. It doesn't eliminate the hand-held remote, but rather augments it with voice control and gesture-based interfaces that make us feel like we're truly living in the future.

To win at TV, Google is going to have to learn from products like the XBox One and incorporate a level of polish and attention to the user experience as its done with its more recent Android versions and handsets. If Google can create the Nexus 4 or set top boxes, loaded up with with a bulletproof UX and a wide selection of supreme-quality content, the Apples and Amazons of the world will have some catching up to do. And the traditional players will be screwed.

But not every show that ever aired is legally available online. Surprisingly, there are plenty of high-profile shows that are not available for online consumption – not even for purchase. For a variety of reasons, there are some seriously popular (or once-popular) shows that you just can't find online.

Here's my list of the concluded shows that were popular in their day and are not currently available online in any streaming form. DVD collections do not count, and the show doesn't have to be free online: shows on HBO Go are regarded as online, even if you have to subscribe to HBO to get them. (I'm looking at you, Sopranos.) And because legal is the watchword here, I am not going to count the ways you can download copies of episodes with BitTorrent or watch them on YouTube.

Note that the availability of online shows is constantly shifting. The Cosby Show was once on Netflix, then off, and now is on Hulu Plus. Nor is this list complete: you may have your own favorites that you can't find online. Stick around until the end, though; I've included linkst to a set of tools that can find shows even on obscure networks.

1. Batman

Image courtesy of Greenway Productions/20th Century Fox Television

Thanks to the DC Comics/Warner Brothers money machine, you can view Batman animated series episodes practically anywhere on the Internet. But the original 1966-1968 classic show starring Adam West and Burt Ward is not showing online at any Bat-time or any Bat-channel. For comic-book aficionados, this is both bad (it's Batman!) and good (the Batusi? Really?). But at the end of the day, who wouldn't want to relive the harrowing cliff-hangers we saw as kids while also catching the barely disguised innuendo we can detect as adults?

2. Full House

Image courtesy of Jeff Franklin Productions/Miller-Boyett Productions/Warner Bros. Television

Yeah, I cringed too. But the 1987-1995 run on ABC was hugely popular and its absence online is sure to be noted. This wholesome-to-the-max family drama with three men caring for three girls (trust me, it worked) actually poked a few holes in the usual sitcom situation, especially with the notion that dads could parent, too.

3. The Golden Girls

Image courtesy of Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions

In the days when comedy shows reigned supreme, this one showed viewers that old could mean funny. For seven seasons, from 1985-1992, this NBC show featuring four sharp women was acerbic enough keep even younger audiences interested. But older audiences flocked to this show, and might again if it was more widely distributed online.

4. The Honeymooners

Image courtesy of Jackie Gleason Enterprises

"To the moon, Alice!" Or at least to the nearest IP address, please. But alas, the comedic genius of Jackie Gleason and an incredible cast of comedy veterans is not to be found online now. Popular from 1953-1956, and then even more when it was revived as a part of a variety show from 1966-1970 (with sporadic episodes throughout the '70s), this comedy about working-class couples remains timeless.

5. Little House on the Prairie

Image courtesy of Ed Friendly Productions/NBC Productions

For about a season, maybe two, this NBC family drama followed the books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder fairly closely. But the popularity of the family drama pushed the writers to expand the Ingalls-verse to keep the show going. Until the end, it mostly worked. The saga of Charles Ingalls and his family in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, was compelling and genuinely warm, even if it bore little resemblance to history.

6. M*A*S*H

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Television

One of the longest-running shows on television, this medical procedural/comedy/war series ran for 11 seasons on CBS, bringing the Korean War into our homes every Monday night. You wouldn't think a show about a medical unit in a proxy war in Asia would be a hit so soon after the actual Vietnam War, but it was. The chemistry of the cast and the razor-sharp writing kept this show alive far longer than the conflict in which it was set. I'd like my kids to see this one.

7. Mork and Mindy

Image courtesy of Henderson Productions/Miller-Milkis Productions/Paramount Television

This spin-off from Happy Days (yes, go look it up) followed the adventures of one Mork from Ork in Boulder, Colorado, for four seasons. Not a long run, but Robin Williams, Pam Dawber - and even the late Jonathan Winters - created a show full of insane improvisation and sheer goofiness… and maybe a valid mirror on human behavior. That it's not online now? ShazBot, somebody call Orson.

8. The Six Million Dollar Man

Image courtesy of Kenneth Johnson

You can rebuild him. You can make him better than he was before. Faster. Stronger. But if you want to actually watch Lee Majors as the world's first bionic man online? Forget it, the show's locked up tighter than the OSI. Okay, so the show doesn't rank up there with the greats, but it was pretty decent sci-fi that managed to bring super-heroics to the screen and show us a surprisingly realistic future of bionics. Even if they always did run in slow motion.

9. Thirtysomething

Image courtesy of The Bedford Falls Company/United Artists Television

I may be one of the few people on the planet that has never watched a single episode of this show, but there's no denying its impact as an ensemble drama that drew in the lucrative demographic of, well, thirtysomethings to ABC for four seasons. The show's depiction of baby boomers in their thirties was smart, well-written and very much loved by its viewers.

10. The Waltons

Image courtesy of Lorimar Productions

This nine-season family drama based on the novel Spencer's Mountain ran from 1972-1981 depicting the lives of a rural Virginia family in the midst of the Great Depression and World War II. This was a big family, too, with seven kids, the parents, and the grandparents all trying to make do in one of the roughest American economies ever. A lot of people make fun of this show, pegging it as pure schmaltz. Yet the Waltons enjoy a lifestyle that many people not-so-secretly strive for - and might watch all over again.

Good night, John-Boy.

Find Your Own Favorites

If you are not sure if the show you want to watch is online anywhere, try Sidereel, which does a pretty good job listing the online availability of shows. It's not 100% accurate, though, so if your results come up empty, try Hulu next.

Even if you are not a Hulu subscriber, you can still search for TV episodes on the site. If Hulu does not have them, it may point you to other sources (like cable channel websites) where the show can be watched.

You might also try Netflix, which often changes show availability at the drop of a hat.

Hopefully, all your favorite shows will be online someday. Until then, what shows are you missing?

Lead image courtesy of Henderson Productions/Miller-Milkis Productions/Paramount Television

We've all been there. You want to push a piece of furniture or a countertop appliance close to the wall and a protruding plug stands in the way. And let's not even talk about the wall-mounted flat-screen TV that require unsightly cords and plugs but needs to sit flush against the wall. Here's a simple solution: recessed outlets. 

Above: Notice the absence of cords connecting to the flat screen TV In a Brooklyn loft. Recessed outlets sit invisibly behind flush mount screens, keeping plugs and cords out of sight (for more guidance, see 7 Secrets for Living with a Flat Screen TV, Cord Control Edition). Photograph by Ragnar Ómarsso via Skona Hem. 

Above: You can push a dresser up to the wall and still use the plug that is tucked behind by sinking a standard two socket outlet into the wall. The Leviton Recessed Duplex Outlet is available in white, black, ivory and almond; $7.53 at Amazon. 

Above: To be filed under "great practical ideas," the simple Leviton Recessed Single Outlet with Clock Hanger includes a hook for mounting clocks and other objects (like a piece of art with a picture light that needs power); $6.80 at Amazon.

Above: Hiding outlets behind small appliances not only eliminates an eyesore but also helps gain counter space as the appliances can be pushed directly against the wall. The Arlington Recessed Electrical Outlet Mounting Box accommodates two-, four- and six-plug receptacles (sold separately) and has a paintable coverplate for even more camouflage; prices start at $15.24 at Amazon.

Above: The Leviton Recessed Dual-Gang Duplex Receptacle with Six QuickPort Openings works well for wall-mounted flat screen TVs, wall units and computer monitors. It manages multiple cords in a single location with connection points for AC power, audio, video, data and phone; $20.95 at Kyle Designs.

Above: The Datacomm Recessed Media Plate with Duplex Receptacle features a super-low-profile design that fits behind the thinnest mounts and  TVs; $20.45 at Amazon. 

Another solution for eliminating electric socket eyesores in the kitchen? Flush pop-up outlets. 

People have been watching TV programs online at places like Hulu and Netflix for years. But until recently, most that viewing has involved programs that had previously aired on broadcast or cable TV. There have long been geek-centric webisodes of TV-esque programming online, but nothing that everyday people would watch. This year, things are changing. 

"An Inflection Point For Online Television"

For evidence of the mainstreaming of Web-first TV, look no further than the online revival of All My Children and One Life to Live. The classic TV soap operas are returning not to a broadcast network, but to Hulu and iTunes. It may sound like a distribution strategy fit for a tech video podcast or no-name Web TV series, but these are soap operas. TV doesn't get more mainstream than this.

(See also: The Internet's Assault On Traditional TV Is Working)

Citing an "inflection point for online television", the shows' backers are betting big on the notion that enough people watch TV online these days to make this a profitable endeavor. If recent history is any indication, it's a safe bet.

The first sign of Internet TV's legitimacy among mainstream audiences came earlier this year with House of Cards. We still don't know precisely how many people tuned into Netflix's TV-quality political drama, but it's clearly been popular among the service's 29 million subscribers, as well as many critics.

Most importantly, the show got people talking. Not just tech-savvy people living their lives online, but normal, everyday people. Suddenly, you could hear House of Cards being chattered about at parties as though it was the latest drama on HBO, whose U.S. subscriber count Netflix just surpassed. (Sort of, at least.)

At 4 million subscribers, Hulu is markedly smaller than Netflix, but it's growing fast. And unlike Netflix, Hulu lets non-subscribers stream shows for free from the desktop, so the potential reach of shows like the new All My Children isn't capped at 4 million, or even 29 million, for that matter. Then there's iTunes, through which viewers will be able to purchase individual episodes.

The Imperfect Science of Measuring Web TV

Even on these popular online services, these soap operas will almost certainly fall short of the kind of ratings numbers they used to see on daytime TV. It's impossible to know for sure, since each of these services has different viewership metrics and they're not particularly eager to share. Even Netflix, which proudly boasts the success of House of Cards, won't say just how many people actually watched the show. 

The measurement challenge might begin to change soon, as Nielsen moves toward measurement tools that Internet sources into account. Next month, a temporary pilot run of its Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will track online views from the networks' own websites. In time, the tracking method could become a standard utilized by an array of online video services, finally painting an accurate picture of what's getting watched. 

Nielsen has a long way to go with Internet TV measurement, but the fact that it's tinkering with a decades-old formula is a sign that online TV viewership is now too enormous for it to ignore if it wants to stay relevant.

Before the year is halfway over, we'll have another test of Internet TV's mainstream appeal when Arrested Development's fourth season lands on Netflix. Like the soap operas, Arrested Development is making the leap from TV to online, but in this case the show is backed by eight years of anticipation and the same data-driven smarts that all but ensured House of Cards would be a hit. 

Again, we won't know how many people will actually tune in to the new season of Arrested Development unless Netflix decides to share that data. In the meantime, we'll have only limited, largely anecdotal clues to go from. Perhaps the most important: Are people talking about this? I don't mean on Twitter, but at the bar. That's how we'll really know that a new era in television's history is underway. 

In keeping with ReadWrite's mission to map the programmable universe, we figured that a roundup of some of the greatest inventions from the year 3000 was most definitely called for. Futurama, after all, was always at its best turning some recent technological development or scientific notion into farce.

Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments.

Disclaimer: We decided to keep it light-hearted, so we apologize in advance to any fans of the infamous suicide booth.

1. Smell-O-Scope

In the show's first season episode "A Big Piece Of Garbage," the Smell-O-Scope was Professor Farnsworth's seemingly useless space smelling invention. As he explained, "If a dog craps anywhere in the universe, you can bet I won't be out of the loop." It certainly came in handy when it detected a giant ball of garbage — a last-ditch effort by New York in the year 2020 to stave off overflowing landfills — that was hurling towards the Earth. The ensuing antics involved continuous spoofs on the 1998 film Armageddon. 

Turns out that in 2011, a small company actually invented a handheld Smell-O-Scope, although it dubbed it  the Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer. Killjoys.

2. Scooty-Puff, Jr.

When Fry was tasked with saving the universe from the Brainspawn in season four, he had to infiltrate their secret base, the Infosphere. Fry's allies against the brains, the highly intelligent yet adorable Niblonians, gave him the Scooty-Puff, Jr. for the task. A wind-up contraption resembling a children's toy, the Scooty-Puff, Jr. ended up falling apart when Fry tried to escape, leading him to request a more advanced vehicle — the larger, more impressive Scooty-Puff, Sr.

3. Fing-Longer

Invented by Professor Farnsworth in an alternative timeline — one he detected via the What-If Machine in the season two episode "Anthology of Interest I," the Fing-Longer allowed the wearer to reach farther than normal — say, to press buttons. Not exactly groundbreaking, but who couldn't love a name like the Fing-Longer? 

Not only does this device now actually exist as a Wii mote accessory, the idea of the Professor getting inspiration from himself provided an interesting philosophical conundrum. Can you be said to have invented something if the initial inspiration came from some external source, even if that external source is an alternate version of yourself? Yeah, we'll get back to you on that.

4. Mind-Switcher

The season six episode "The Prisoner of Benda" introduced this invention of Professor Farnsworth and Amy, the Mind-Switcher. After a dizzying number of mind switches, the whole crew is in disarray with everyone in someone else's body. 

This episode generated what was apparently the first mathematical theorem created for a television show. Futurama writer Ken Keeler, who holds a doctorate in mathematics, wrote the Futurama Theorem as both a real-world theorem and the solution used in the show that proves "that regardless of how many mind switches between two bodies have been made, they can still all be restored to their original bodies using only two extra people, provided these two people have not had any mind switches prior."

5. What-If Machine

The What-If Machine was a Professor Farnsworth device that could predict a scenario based on any "what if" question it was asked. After a series of events that pertain to each character on the crew and their respective "what if" questions, the Professor tosses the machine in the garbage, declaring it a failure due to the preposterous scenarios it generated. The whole episode turns on its head when everything is revealed to be one huge, layered simulation from the What-If Machine, generated when the Professor asks what if he had invented the Fing-Longer.

6. eyePhone

One of the few times Futurama took a swipe at real-world companies and products, the season six episode "Attack of the Killer App" introduced an obvious parody of a well-known Apple device. The writers envisioned a 31st Century eyePhone as an actual eye implant that projects a holographic screen in front of the user's face. 

7. Forwards Time Machine

Featured in one of the show's best episodes, "The Late Philip J. Fry," the Forwards Time Machine is a Professor Farnsworth invention that only lets you move through time in one direction, specifically to avoid temporal paradoxes (a topic the show has explored in past episodes). Fry joins Bender and the Professor to take the machine one minute into the future, though of course they screw up and get thrown thousands of years forward. Ultimately, they have nowhere to go except the end of time. 

In true high-low concept fashion, Bender, Fry and the Professor couch it on lawn chairs, crack some beers and proceed to watch the universe end, only to realize that a new Big Bang begins to happen all over again. Turns out that idea is an actual scientific model, called the Big Bounce, that posits that the universe is forever oscillating through a cosmic boom-bust cycle.

8. The Electronium Hat

Invented by the Professor to give animals super intelligence, the Electronium Hat was a wearable device introduced in the season one episode "Mars University." It used sunspots to produce "cognitive radiation," whatever that means. The monkey Guenter gets uplifted by the hat and spends much of the episode quarrelling with Fry and lamenting the fact that he can't live his natural life due to his unnatural super-smarts.

9. The Clone-O-Mat

In the season two episode "A Clone Of Mine Own," the Professor introduces his own 12-year-old clone, named Cubert. Created via the Professor's Clone-O-Mat, Cubert gets named as the Professor's heir.

The Clone-O-Mat makes a return in the season four episode "Jurassic Bark," one of the rare but emotionally powerful moments when Futurama shifted from comedy to animated drama. Nominated for an Emmy, the episode explores Fry's anguish after discovering his former dog Seymour's fossilized 21st century remains, a find that prompts Fry to agonize over whether or not to clone his long-lost animal companion.

10. The Spheroboom

Of all the Professor's many doomsday devices, the Spheroboom was his favorite and the one device that he couldn't part with when selling his stash to Hedonismbot in "Bender's Big Score," the straight-to-DVD film that became part one of season five. The Spheroboom appears to bend an object around its center until it implodes in an explosion of "doom radiation."

In a not-so-subtle jab at the National Rifle Association, the episode introduced the National Ray-Gun Association, which protested a three-day waiting period for mad scientists to purchase doomsday devices.

Betas is one of the eight comedy pilots that Amazon has been featuring on its Instant Video page. If enough voters back Betas - or any of the other comedies - then Amazon will greenlight its development into a full-fledged original series, taking on shows like House of Cards and Lilyhammer on Netflix.

Betas = Heart, Surrealism And Desperation

To its credit, Betas integrates much of what made 1980s comedies great - heart, a touch of implausibility that borders on surrealism - and swirls it all together with the desperation and ambition of the Silicon Valley feeding frenzy. For many entrepreneurs, the right handshake seems to be all that separates them from poverty or untold riches, a cruelty that can instantly reduce months of work to ashes. Chasing that dream is frustrating. And funny.

Betas reminds us that Silicon Valley has become high school writ large: geeks may be the new jocks, but the popular kids still have all the money and dweebs are still dweebs. And owning all the toys is still the high score.

Betas begins in the sort of community workspace many techies could imagine working in, if they weren't, you know, working: Employees chase each other around with Nerf guns, others grind Cheetos into their keyboards. "Nash," the neurotic, socially inhibited engineer played by Karan Soni, can't take it. He freaks out and hides in one of the telephone booths the workspace has put against the wall, a quasi-ironic homage to older technology. Nash, despondent, tells his company's founder, Trey (Joe Dinicol), that the latest build of their Highlight-like social discovery app, BRB, bricked the phone.

"Who cares? Investors are making investments from napkin sketches made by high school dropouts!" Trey responds.

"I don't make napkin sketches!" Nash wails. 

The plot of the pilot revolves around a meeting that Trey is convinced BRB needs with George Murchison (Ed Begley, Jr.), who plays electric flute with Moby and slices his own "Ferrari of trout" with an Asian shortsword. Part of the reason is one-upping the team behind "Valet Me," a parking app whose sudden success makes the douche bag developers instant stars. Trey is convinced that the when Murchison hears BRB's pitch, he'll invest - and talks his way into Murchison's home using "Larry Page" as an alias.

The other members of the BRB team include Hobbes (Jonathan C. Daly), a bearded, jaded developer whose idea of relaxing is watching Webcam porn at a local laundromat, and Mitchell (Charlie Saxton) a pudgy dweeb whose biggest goal is to talk to Mikki (Maya Erskine), the cool Asian chick who's looking for just about anything to spark her empty life. "I would never say damp," Mikki muses. "It makes my vaj seem like the Dagobah system." 

Betas Brings Silicon Valley To Life

Betas may be a scripted comedy, but it feels a hell of a lot more real than Randi Zuckerberg's reality TV fiasco, Startups: Silicon Valley that debuted last year. Then, a cast of pretty wannabes partied their way from meetup to meeting to hangout to loft party, leaving everyone in Silicon Valley muttering, "What the hell is this?" Startups' worst crime, however, wasn't that it was vapid; it was just boring, and we'd seen all the tricks that reality series could throw at us before. It's hard to fathom how anyone got beyond an episode or two.

(See also Startups Silicon Valley: The Painful Truth Behind A Caricature Of Excess.)

The Big Bang Theory may hold the crown of TV's geekiest show. But BBT mocks geeky science culture - Star Trek, Iron Man and the ins and outs of academic life - without really touching on what makes a life in technology so great. Betas tosses you in the deep end; it assumes you know what "Series A" funding is, and who Mark Zuckerberg and Page are. Little touches - bumping phones to swap digits, for example - lend the series the "oh yeah, people really do do that" feeling. Silicon Valley will hit the big screen this summer, when The Internship looks inside life at Google - but do you really think a sanctioned look inside the Googleplex is going to end up all that funny?

(See also Geek Movies: The Top 10 Most Inspirational Films For Techies.)

Think Scrubs: Silicon Valley

Think of Betas as Scrubs Silicon Valley: the four members of BRB are starting at the bottom, hoping to climb to the top. In Scrubs, there's a natural progression: the young residents must earn their way up the medical ladder to become full-fledged doctors. What makes Betas so compelling is that Silicon Valley isn't like that. Instead, it's a roller-coaster ride: This week it's a funding deal, next week it's a show-stopping bug. What happens if Trey and the team accidentally leak their user information? What if they're hacked? Do they attract the attention of Anonymous? Does Microsoft make a pitch to buy them? Does IBM?

Look, crazy stuff happens in Silicon Valley every day. But there's no reason why we can't watch it on our TVs at night, too. So watch Betas. Vote for it. Let's make this happen, people.

Indeed, Amazon's tablets offer a useful analogy for what we should expect from Amazon TV: an affordable device that mimics  existing offerings with direct connections into Amazons products and services. The idea is to provide just enough value to carve out a respectable slice of the market. In the process, Amazon sets up another entryway into its universe of content and goods. As The Verge smartly put it, it's all about the ecosystem. 

See Also: What The New Kindle Means To Amazon

The Kindle Fire didn't turn out to be the "iPad killer" some predicted, but it appears to be selling fairly well. The class of 7-inch tablets it helped popularize were popular enough to induce Apple to release the iPad Mini. For Amazon, the Kindle Fire isn't a huge money maker, but it plugs millions of people (and their credit cards) into Amazon's storefront. Expect the Amazon TV to do the same. 

Another Streaming TV Box? Really? 

This makes total sense for Amazon as a business, but why do we, the buyers, need another set top box?

Each of the devices on the market has its own benefits, but none of them are a slam dunk. Boxee's buzz has given way to an identity crisis, while Google has yet to apply the proper amount of polish to Google TV. The Roku has tons of content, but Apple TV's AirPlay feature offers even more, letting iPhone and iPad users stream anything from their devices onto the big screen. It's really the Apple TV that Amazon is taking aim at here. And the Apple TV, it's worth noting, has not generated iPad levels of popularity or excitement. 

Maybe that's the point. This could be a preemptive strike on Amazon's part. Whether Apple launches an HDTV set or not, the company is widely expected to make a splash in the Internet TV market sometime this year. By launching something with a TV app store, or at least an AirPlay equivalent, Amazon could beat Apple to the punch. That sounds a lot better than launching an inferior (albeit still good and, crucially, cheaper) competitor after the fact, as Amazon did with the Kindle Fire. 

How Amazon Can Nail This - And Apple 

In that sense, this is a huge opportunity for Amazon. A super-cheap device with a bulletproof user experience (this is TV, after all) that taps into a rich app development ecosystem could blow away the Rokus, Boxees and Apple TVs of the world. For consumers, the goal is to get as much content as possible on the new device, including a Web browser. If Aereo survives, Amazon should have an app for that, right alongside Hulu, Netflix and all the little guys building innovative video apps with awesome user interfaces.

See Also: The Internet Assault On Traditional TV Is Working

Whatever shows it plays, the Amazon TV box has to be absolutely painless to operate. Television has been dead-simple to use for decades, a fact that the makers of many Internet TV products seem to forget. None of these boxes will truly take off TV watchers find them the slightest bit confusing or intimidating.

Don't Mess This Up, Amazon

Here's what we don't want: A half-decent piece of hardware that pushes you toward Amazon's content but doesn't let you stream Hulu Plus or YouTube videos. The things most people want to watch are fractured across these devices as it is. The reason Apple's AirPlay is so promising is that I can get almost everything I want to see on my iPad - and then beam it to my TV. 

You know what doesn't work with AirPlay though? The Amazon Prime iPad app. There's no good reason for that other than the fact that Apple and Amazon are rivals. We consumers shouldn't get caught in the middle of a corporate spitting match and get stuck with a crappier experience as a result (I'm talking to you, Apple Maps). 

It's clear why Amazon is working on a device like this. It makes total sense from the company's perspective. As long as Amazon also takes the consumer's perspective into account ours, this could be huge.  

Despite the industry's furious efforts to starve or shut down its online rivals, the Internet is starting to carve out a respectable slice of TV's future. The good news is that while the coming transistion is likely to be rough on many established networks and providers, it's going to be great for consumers and developers. Here's how.

Netflix Bounces Back, Surpasses HBO 

Case in point: Netflix. The video subscription service has bounced back from its 2011 faux pas to not only regain members, but surpass HBO in U.S. subscribers for the first time ever. As Quartz's Zach Seward points out, Netflix now commands more daily attention than any cable channel in the United States. 

See Also: Do We Really Need Amazon TV? No, But Amazon Does

Netflix's dominance over HBO in particular makes for some pretty symbolic future-of-TV discussion fodder. It is, after all, HBO that refuses to offer its programming as a stand alone subscription service, despite growing demand for such a option. It is precisely its old media business relationships and norms that are holding HBO back from letting non-cable subscribers use its HBO Go app, a fact that seems worth recalling at this particular moment in history. It's no wonder that the company's CEO is publicly rethinking that strategy and admitting to reporters that cable-free access to HBO Go may be an inevitability.

It's also interesting to note, as Seward does, that HBO started out much like Netflix did, by first making out-of-theater movies available to subscribers, and then moving into original programming. 

The Internet Masters What Matters: Programming

For the last few years, it was the hardware, distribution and overall experience of watching TV that started to change at the hands of the Internet and mobile tech. Now, crucially, we're getting down to what matters most: the stuff that actually draws viewers. 

The trend toward original, Internet-only, TV-style programming is something we tech blogs have watched and opined about for the better part of a year. In the first half of 2013, the theoretical promise of original Internet TV has morphed into a confirmation that it is, in fact, something normal, non-techie people care about.

Netflix's Lilyhammer may not have changed the landscape, but it was an important precursor to House of Cards, which appears to be doing exactly that. Meanwhile, Hulu, Amazon and YouTube continue to make their own investments in original programming to compete with cable and network TV. 

The success of House of Cards has led to a great deal of discussion about the rise of data-driven TV programming and what it means for TV's future. Unlike the people who have traditionally made TV programming decisions, Netflix is sitting on a mountain of data about its users. That includes 30 million plays and 4 million ratings per day, in addition to details about when people watch, from which devices, which parts they rewind and more.

By looking at this trove of data, Netflix was able to place a pretty safe bet on the notion that a remake of this particular BBC show starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher would do well. 

Netflix isn't the only company tapping its users to help with video programming decisions. This weekend, Amazon asked viewers to rate the pilot episodes of 14 different Web series, which apparently resulted in quite a few views for the original programs. The company hasn't launched a stand-alone Netflix competitor, but Amazon Prime appears poised to evolve into such an offering. There's even an Amazon TV set top box rumor, hot off of the presses.

Aereo: Please Excuse This Interruption

Next month, people living in and around Boston will be able to join New York's early adopters in subscribing to Aereo, an innovative and controversial Internet TV service. Since its launch, Aereo has under assault by much of the TV industry, which claims its antenna-renting and re-broadcasting model of mobile and Web TV amounts to copyright infringement. That may or may not be true, but it's certainly threatening their business model, which is why they wasted no time in trying to sue Aereo out of existence. 

So far, Aereo has prevailed. That is, early court rulings have sided with the startup's claims of fair use and thus declined to shut it down before the lawsuit goes to trial, which will undoubtedly be an interesting affair to follow. 

If Aereo survives this litigious onslaught, it's poised to be one of the most disruptive forces the industry has seen in awhile. And while that would be bad news for network executives, it's actually pretty great for consumers, who will be able to tune into broadcast TV online without dealing with rabbit ears or a cable provider. It would also be a huge win for the Internet in the battle for TV's future.

The Original Web Programming Revolution Continues

The next big test for Internet-only TV will be the return of cult classic Arrested Development, a new season of which will land on Netflix next month, eight years after Fox dropped the original. If the show's enduring popularity and House of Cards' recent success are any indication, May will be a good month for Netflix. 

We won't actually know how well Arrested Development does, though. That's because like House of Cards and everything else on Netflix, it isn't tracked by the same TV ratings system that has measured TV viewership in the U.S. for six decades. The only numbers we get from Netflix are the ones it chooses to share. The company isn't typically generous with that data, which is somewhat ironic considering how much its users willingly hand over.

That all might be about to change, as Nielsen gets ready to update its TV audience measuring methodology to include Internet sources. It's not clear whether the long-overdue update will track views on Netflix when it gets rolled out this fall, but the normalization of TV measurement should help paint a clearer picture of what's getting watched, regardless of the distribution channel. 

If nothing else, the Nielsen update further illustrates the extent to which TV is changing in the age of streaming services and mobile devices. 

Following Japanese mobile carrier Softbank's bid to acquire Sprint, the No. 3 mobile operator in the United States now has a new suitor looking to dance: Dish Network. The satellite TV operator has come up with a bid to buy Sprint that is several billion dollars higher than Softbank's offer - and cliams that it can provide a better experience for consumers and a better return for investors.

(See also What's The Real Impact Of Sprint's Japanese Lifeline?)

According to The Wall Street Journal, Dish is offering Sprint $25.5 billion, about 13% more than the Softbank offer, which is for only 70% of the company. The business dynamics of the merger are fairly complex (with a fair amount of spectrum up for grabs, especially through spectrum wholesale operator Clearwire, which Sprint is the primary owner and Dish tried to acquire earlier this year).

But to us, there is just one truly pertinent question: Would this deal be good for consumers?

The Dynamic Of A Sprint-Dish Network

Sprint is a mobile carrier. As such, it owns and operates wireless spectrum, builds infrastructure, distributes hardware (such as smartphones) and dabbles in media, applications and entertainment. Sprint is in the same situation as the rest of the U.S. carriers: watching its market position turn into “dumb pipe.” Thats why it wants to expand its revenue sources into areas like video and audio, application ecosystems and services. The broader its product portfolio, the more attractive Sprint might be to consumers choosing a carrier.

On the other side, Dish is a satellite pay-television operator. That is about it. It offers programming, television hardware and subscriber packages to consumers and businesses. The problem with Dish is that the pay television market is growing slowly (and could soon begin contracting if cord-cutting becomes rampant) and highly competitive. 

What would you get if you combined the two?

• A mobile network that can push premium video to smartphones, tablets, televisions and computers.
• The ability to, perhaps, give consumers the ability to use satellite connectivity for their data connections (in addition to terrestrial-based mobile networks based on GSM or CDMA technologies).
• A full range of consumer and business services, opening up opportunities for other companies and entrepreneurs to build on top of.

The combination would also look a lot like Sprint's two biggest competitors, AT&T and Verizon.

Both Ma Bell and Big Red have television capabilities to the home. AT&T has U-Verse for television, which it bundles with its Internet and landline voice offerings. Verizon has its fiber-based FiOS network, which it has been building for most of the last decade. In one fell swoop, Dish could create a similar company profile and market it aggressively. 

Let’s Not Forget Who We Are Dealing With

Dish Network does not have the most sterling of corporate reputations when it comes to dealing with consumers. This is the company that dropped AMC and other prominent cable channels (through AMC’s former owner Cablevision) from its roster - the subsequent lawsuit led to four years of litigation that concluded in October 2012. Dish Network is also locked in a battle with CBS over its Hopper DVR's ad-skipping capabilities.

Dish is the kind of company that doesn't shy away from lawsuits with other media heavyweights, consumers be damned. Sprint, meanwhile, is seen as relatively consumer-friendly (at least compared to the other major U.S. mobile carriers). It offers some of the most competitive wireless plans with (almost) truly unlimited data for smartphones and tablets. It's hard to say what kind of company Sprint-Dish might turn into, but Dish Network would be the surviving company in this deal, so you might expect its corporate culture to dominate.

A third major player in the mobile/television market could be a good thing for consumers. Despite its pugnacious reputation, Dish shares Sprint's commitment to being a low-cost leader. If that adds up to lower prices for consumers, great. Unless it all gets tangled up in endless lawsuits. 

With two major deals now on the table, it seems clear that Sprint is going to bought by someone relatively soon. Both suitors claim to have big plans for the carrier, but it's too soon to be sure which one will win out and how the successful bidder will change the carrier.  

Images courtesy Shutterstock.

When you log in, you're shown a TV Guide-style listing of shows that are currently airing. It's not just the four or five obvious options, either. In the New York market, there are 30 broadcast channels that Aereo grabs and rebroadcasts to your account via the tiny antenna you're effectively renting from the company when you sign up.

See Also: To Truly Stop Aereo, Broadcasters Need To Innovate Like Hell

It's mostly typical broadcast fare: local news, daytime soap operas, people having meltdowns on Maury, prime time sitcoms, PBS and so forth. All the standard broadcast networks are augmented with local channels, foreign language networks and an inordinate amount of religious programming. The selection may not be as robust as that of cable, but some of the most popular shows on TV are waiting there, ready to be watched or DVR'ed to the cloud for later.

TV On Any Device, Second Screen And All

Aereo doesn't have native mobile apps yet, but it makes up for that with a very capable, cross-platform Web app. It works in the browser on my iPad and iPhone, from which it can be AirPlayed directly to my television via Apple TV. I didn't get the chance to test it, but I'm presuming Aereo works on most other modern browsers and platforms.

Thanks to iOS multitasking, I can close the browser and do other things like check email, browse the Web and tweet. You know, the second screen stuff we all do anyway. It all still works, even if we use our second screens to feed content to the first screen. The only drawback is that the transition from video to video is not entirely smooth with AirPlay. That experience should get better once Aereo develops native mobile apps and, eventually, lands on smart TV platforms. 

I am admittedly not a huge TV person. Still, as I use Aereo's Web app from device to device, its value starts to feel more and more obvious. I can watch my favorite PBS shows, tune into the local news (for whatever reason) and watch popular prime time shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, all using the Internet, which is what I use for just about all other media consumption. 

Indeed, after a few days of testing Aereo, I'm left with the distinct impression that this is not only a useful service, but something that needs to exist. I understand why it frightens the TV execs, but I wholeheartedly disagree with them. This is a hugely innovative service that hands control back to the TV-viewing consumer in a way that wasn't possible before. I'm not a legal scholar, but the copyright infringement claims made by the big media conglomerates against Aereo seem like a stretch. So far, the courts have agreed. 

The TV Antenna Of The Future

Since Aereo launched, the television industry has been hoping to sue it out of existence. Early attempts to have the service shut down have been unsuccessful, thanks to legal logic that may well wind up saving Aereo in the end. Meanwhile, the networks are clamoring for a plan B, which, if you believe the claims of network execs, includes threats to pull out of broadcast TV all together. (Said threats are, of course, unbelievably stupid.)

Aereo does not disrupt the core broadcast business model. When I'm watching TV shows on my iPad using Aereo, I'm still seeing all the commercials, just like I would if I tuned in via an antenna on my television set. The problem is, my antenna sucks. On a good day, I can get four or five channels to display clearly on my TV, and even that involves some finagling. It feels decidedly old-fashioned to be tinkering with an antenna just to watch NBC. 

By contrast, Aereo feels right at home in the 21st century. When you watch it, it doesn't feel like you're stealing anything. Instead, it feels like the service has restored your ability to conveniently tune into broadcast TV — an ability that's atrophied for years thanks to changing viewer habits and, consequently, expectations for picture and sound quality.

Broadcasters and TV service providers didn't come up with a good solution, so Aereo rose to the challenge. Aereo isn't stealing anything. It just wants to sell you the TV antenna of the future.

Why Broadcasters Hate Aereo

This infuriates broadcasters because it could eventually threaten the lucrative fees they get from cable providers, whose all-or-nothing, bloated content bundles suddenly look a little less attractive once a service like Aereo is available for $13 per month. Combined with Netflix and Hulu, Aereo makes cable look less necessary than ever and all three combined are still cheaper than most cable bills. 

I have no interest in subscribing to cable. It's expensive and the vast majority of what I'd be paying for is, so far as I can tell, complete garbage. Instead, I catch up with favorite shows via the Internet, where I can also find a growing selection of perfectly worthwhile non-TV video. Aereo is perfect for people like me.

More importantly, it could be an easy sell to many in the upcoming generation of "cord never getters" who are now totally accustomed to getting their TV online. We like to think about what the future of TV might look like. If it survives, Aereo seems very well positioned to be a part of that picture.

Aereo, the controversial startup that provides subscribers with access to local TV programming on tablets and smartphones, will live to fight another day after a decision handed down from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, affirming an earlier ruling blocking an injunction on the service.

The preliminary injunction was requested by the plaintiffs in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against Aereo by local New York broadcasters and their corporate parents.

Aereo uses tiny antennas to rebroadcast over-the-air channels to each of its subscribers' mobile devices, even recording broadcasts using DVR-like functionality.

The problem for broadcasters, which include CBS Corporation, Comcast, News Corporation, PBS and the Walt Disney Company, is that none of Aereo's $8/month fee goes to the local TV stations. This is not the case when programming is carried over cable and satellite services, which have to pay the stations rebroadcast fees - fees the TV stations are increasingly depending on in a time when advertising revenue is on the decline thanks to competition from Internet ad services.

(See also To Truly Stop Aereo, TV Broadcasters Need To Innovate Like Hell.)

The initial injunction against Aereo was spiked in July 2012, and the broadcasters in the lawsuit vowed to appeal. Yesterday's ruling from the Second Circuit is the result of that appeal.

Because each customer controls one and only one antenna in Aereo's antenna farm, the judges felt that this did not constitute public performance of TV programming. And the DVR service seemed to be in line with an earlier ruling in a case against Cablevision that found DVRs to be perfectly fine.

For cable cutters, particularly those in the larger cities when antenna use is not always practical, services like Aereo will serve as an effective tool for customers seeking to bypass cable and satellite fees.

But Aereo could also be a source of disruption for the first generation of alternative broadcast sources, such as Hulu, Apple's iTunes, and Amazon.

For example, today, if I don't catch a network show over the air (which happens a lot on my schedule), and it's not available on Hulu Plus, I will have to buy that episode from Amazon. But if an Aereo-like service ever comes to my city, I can DVR that episode and hold it to watch it when I want… even without waiting the usual one day later for the episode to be available on one of these services.

If reliable, then now I would have to re-balance my entire cable cutting budget. Hulu Plus provides my primary network TV programming with Amazon as backup. An Aereo-like service would enable me to skip the Hulu Plus subscription fee and buy less programming from Amazon, thus saving me even more money, which is the whole point of this exercise.

That's just in my situation, of course, but I would imagine anyone that's taken an Apple-centric approach would find similar savings with buying less programming from iTunes.

Aereo and similar services won't completely replace Amazon/iTunes content, because there's content on basic cable channels I like to watch, and more esoteric channels like BBC America for Doctor Who. Not to mention that right now Aereo works best for tablets and other mobile devices, not the big-screen television.

Aereo itself is not done yet - the plaintiff broadcasters can still appeal the injunction decision up the legal ladder. Even if they don't, there's still the actual court case that must be to be held. But for now, it looks like the startup has found a way to successfully dodge copyright restrictions to keep its service going.

If ultimately successful, Aereo and similar services will prove to be disruptive to many forms of programming providers, not just broadcasters. Expect a lot of companies to be tuning in to this trial.

Image courtesy of Aereo.

Right.

Yes, Google in all its infinite wisdom wants to compete with the decades-old giant that is the multi-billion dollar television industry with paltry investments of $100 million or so every couple of months.  /sarcasm

YouTube Cannot Replace TV

The notion is just plain silly - it even made Time Warner’s CEO laugh. But this motif, if you will, continues to dominate the discussion - much to the chagrin of YouTube itself. Whenever YouTube invests in networks or lures mainstream celebrities (or almost celebrities) to start “channels,” which it has been doing with increasing frequency over the last two years, that same line pops up. I am officially sick of it, and YouTube is too.  

2011 was the year marking Google’s biggest investments into video content, and it was this same year that the “YouTube competing with TV” meme was born. Media outlets everywhere served up some derivative of this sentence, including Reuters, which wrote “the Google-owned site is issuing a direct challenge to the television industry.” A direct challenge!  

Can you blame Reuters though, when everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the Hollywood Reporter, was doing the same thing? Hell, I am guilty of it, too.

And it isn't going away. Canada's The Star printed the headline just yesterday: “YouTube aims to compete with TV.” 

No, Canada, YouTube does not aim to compete with TV. How could it?

TV Still Rules

YouTube doesn't want anyone to think it has any intention of replacing television. The company hews to the sentiment first expressed by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes not so long ago - namely, that it's ludicrous to think YouTube's relatively tiny content budgets, ad rolls, and Internet infrastructure could really compete with the giant television industry.

YouTube — realistically — views its place in the entertainment industry as complementaryto television and Hollywood. If you consider things in light of the Life is Like a Jar of Rocks analogy, here the rocks are Hollywood, the pebbles are television, and the sand is YouTube and Web content. There’s plenty of room in the jar for everyone, and no one is trying to replace the others.  

YouTube wants to be the sand to TV’s pebbles in the entertainment jar, everyone. Let’s all write it together so we remember: YouTube is the sand to TV’s pebbles in the glass jar of entertainment.

There's only one problem. No matter how accurate the analogy, rocks, pebbles and sand make for far less interesting copy than the threat of taking down TV. No matter how ridiculous that might be.

Updated: I've rewritten the last section in light of new information. 

Image via YouTube. 

By the time the 2013 fall season begins, the 23,000 homes Nielsen uses to sample TV viewership will be equipped with a new system that takes Internet content into consideration, according to a scoop by the Hollywood Reporter. 

Piecing Together Fractured Viewing Habits

The report was short on details, but from the looks of it, Nielsen is going to start tracking select online video sources like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu as well as streaming devices like Xbox 360 and other gaming consoles. By the end of the year, TV viewership from iPads will be counted as well. That's good, considering the rising popularity of iPad apps like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu Plus and the ongoing push by cable operators and networks to make shows available on tablets. 

It's not clear which online content sources will be tracked at launch, since participating in Nielsen's ratings measurement system will require opt-in technical changes to the way those videos are encoded and streamed. 

"On the path to capturing all viewing in all homes, this foundational change addresses the lion’s share of viewing, in effect including any home with a TV that can receive video via an external source," Pat McDonough, Nielsen's SVP of Insights and Analysis told ReadWrite via email. "In collaboration with clients, we will continue to expand the reach of television audience measurement."

This isn't the first Internet-inspired change Nielsen has made to its methodology. In December, it announced a partnership with Twitter to launch a new social TV metric that will take into account the social chatter about popular shows. 

It's all part of Nielsen's larger plan to more accurately track media consumption habits that are increasingly fractured across time, devices and sources. Since the advent of TV, there's never been a change this dramatic in how people consume it. The seismic shift that's happening now calls for an equally significant retooling of how various aspects of the industry function. In a business fueled in large part by advertising, there are few moving parts more crucial than accurate audience metrics.  

Perfect Timing: Internet TV Is Growing Up 

The ratings updates come at a pivotal time for Internet TV. Online video has more than 182 million unique viewers watching 38.7 billion videos, according to ComScore's U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2013 report. The most popular video service remains YouTube, followed by Hulu, Vevo, Yahoo and AOL, in that order.

And we're not just talking about Justin Bieber songs and viral kitten videos anymore, either. In the last few years, YouTube, Netflix and Hulu have all been investing heavily in the production of their own TV-quality content. 

2012 saw a few Web original shows amass a notable amount of buzz online. This year, shows like Netflix's House of Cards are finally starting to grab the attention of everyday, non-cord-cutting viewers and generating almost as much discussion as popular shows airing on A&E or HBO. In May, Netflix will exclusively stream the fourth season of Arrested Development, a cult classic show whose low ratings got it booted from Fox a decade ago. Like House of Cards, the show is expected to draw plenty of attention, not to mention more new media pundits pontificating about the future of TV.

Online TV Ratings Could Help Fuel The Future

How many people will watch Arrested Development? We won't know, unless Netflix decides to tell us. And if it doesn't perform as well as hoped, why would it bother? The company declined to release viewership numbers for House of Cards, saying it had "no motivation" as a non-advertising based business to do so. 

That's true, but without an integrated, cross-platform method for tracking viewership, nobody inside or outside the industry has any way of knowing how popular a given show truly is. That's chiefly useful for advertisers, but such insight is valuable to plenty of others. 

There could hardly be an example more illustrative of the need for such a system than Arrested Development. The show got its start on broadcast television. As a Netflix exclusive, season four will be different only in how the episodes are released - all at once, rather than sequentially. Other than that, it will be very much the same show: Same dysfunctional family played by the same actors, presumably picking up the story line (or at least general premise) of the original. It's still a TV show, so why not measure it like one? 

As a journalist, I would love to know how well the new season does compared to the original three. Hell, I'd be curious to see how many views those first few seasons have racked up on Netflix since they've been available to stream. 

It's not just reporters, researchers and media nerds who could benefit from those insights. This is the first time a television show has made the transition to an online-only service. Will it work? Plenty of other content producers and streaming providers would love to know, and sharing such data could help inform future decisions about premium video content, potentially helping to shape TV's future.

When it comes to tuning in online, this won't be anything like the Summer Olympics. There will be plenty of free livestreaming options across a variety of devices, as well as any number of social chats, on-camera analyses and interactive features from media outlets, journalists and the White House itself. 

Livestreaming The State Of The Union Address

The White House will not only be live-streaming President Obama's speech Tuesday night, but it will be displaying relevant charts and data in sync with whatever the President happens to be talking about. The White House's "enhanced livestream" begins at 9pm Eastern Time (6pm Pacific Time) and will be followed by a live panel discussion with policy experts. All of this will be available on the White House's website, as well as its official iOS and Android apps. 

If the White House stream freezes up right as your SOTU drinking game is just getting rowdy, you can always jump over to C-SPAN.com, which will be streaming the speech as well. On C-SPAN, you can also compare Obama's fourth State of the Union with archived addresses from the past. The C-SPAN folks have written transcripts dating back to Franklin Delano Roosevelet and archived videos as far back as Ronald Reagan's fourth State of the Union address in 1984. For even more historical analysis, check out Al Jazeera's interactive tool comparing Obama's past State of the Union speeches. 

And if all of those options aren't enough, CNN, Wall Street Journal, YouTube and HuffPost Live will also be live streaming the speech. 

The State Of The Union Is… Interactive

These days, it's pretty much a given that any big news or entertainment event is the "most interactive" instance of that event that's ever happened. That's what progress is all about.

The State of the Union is no exception, and not just because people are increasingly connected and more prone to live-tweet TV events in general. The famously tech-savvy Obama administration has been proactive about baking interactive elements into the speech and encouraging online participation. 

On Twitter, the White House has officially endorsed the #SOTU hashtag and is encouraging users to use #WHChat to submit questions to on-air policy experts after Obama's speech. The administration will also be actively maintaining conversations with citizens on Facebook and Google+. 

Meanwhile, Republicans will be live-critiquing Obama's speech on the official GOP website and encouraging rank-and-file conservatives to do the same over various social channels. 

Media outlets are running their own interactive features during the speech as well. Huffpost Live, for example, will be doing its usual thing, live-streaming the speech and post-speech reactions while inviting viewers to join on-air discussions and live chats. 

Skewing Younger!

The secret to Smosh's success? Make content for viewers under 18. 

Like every YouTube act that has owned the coveted #1 spot, Smosh's YouTube content is decidedly aimed at a younger teen and tween audience. 

Johnson, who riffs jokes on viral videos pre-Tosh.0 and also runs the popular animated channel Your Favorite Martian, has held the title of most-subscribed YouTuber since June 28, 2011.  Johnson’s content is less teen friendly than that of Smosh or Asian vlogger Ryan Higa (Higa held the top YouTube spot before Johnson) but his audience is still decidedly underage.  

Reclaiming Their Throne

Smosh’s ascent to the top is actually a reclaiming of the throne -  the duo held the #1 spot back in 2006, before YouTube became the do-it-yourself micro-Hollywood it is today.

“[C]ongrats to SMOSH for being #1 on youtube” tweeted longtime YouTuber Shane Dawson over the weekend. “[T]hey prove that being a youtuber doesn’t mean you have a short shelf life & thats very inspiring!"

Besides their signature channel Smosh, which averages 4 million views per video (be it a skit or them joking while driving), the 25-year-old Hecox and Padilla operate seven other YouTube channels including the insanely fast-growing Smosh Games (focused on - you guess it - video games), the news and entertainment show SmoshPit Weekly, El Smosh, which is SmoshPit Weekly in Spanish, and Shut Up! Cartoons, which was partially funded by Google as part of its original content initiative. The duo even has their own bobble-head dolls - so you know they must be big time.

Padilla began building Smosh'a new-media empire back in 2002 with the creation of Smosh.com, a Huffington Post-style aggregator of funny Internet stuff. The first video featuring the duo hit YouTube in 2005 and happened to be a lip dub of the Pokemon theme song Gotta Catch ‘Em All. It went viral, with 24 million views (which was huge in 2005) before it was removed for “copyright infringement.”

It's All About The Underwear

Part of Padilla and Hecox’s long standing success on YouTube - besides making content for minors - is heavily related to how they pander to young teen girls, aka fangirls. (Higa and Shane Dawson also appeal to this demographic.) The YouTube community often reacts negatively to women and girls who flaunt their sex appeal, but seems to approve of men dancing around topless in their briefs.

At last year’s unofficial YouTuber's conference - VidCon - Padilla and Hecox’s booth featured them in their underwear. The crowd of girls they attracted was in serious danger of hyperventilating. 

Despite corporate YouTube’s best efforts, viewers under 18 still rule the video-sharing site, relying on it not just for entertainment and music, but for news as well.  Hence, Smosh's dominance.  

Smosh was acquired by new media network Alloy Digital in 2011.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

The inter-generational habits of Internet denizens have been revealed in a numbers-rich infographic posted this week, which reveals that among Baby Boomers, Generation X and the Millennial generations, it's the GenXers that spend more time online and produce more data than their children and their parents. (More analysis below the infographic...)

Wikibon's infographic pulls together a rich collection of stats, including the total data footprints of the three generations. Generation X leads the way, consuming 59.6GB of data per month, with Millennials close behind at 54.GB and Baby Boomers trailing with 44.8GBb.

TV vs. Work

Wikibon is not just counting computer and mobile surfing habits in its estimates… it's also added television watching to the tally. While Baby Boomers watch more traditional television than do the other two generations, the combination of traditional and online viewing still pushes the GenXers over the top for the video viewing data footprint.

Generation X, defined as those born between 1965-1983, also has a higher percentage of desktop computer owners and spends more time online. But their Millennial kids, born 1984-2002, have a higher percentage of Internet users, and dominate the mobile surfing habits.

One reason why Millennials have the lower footprint online than their parents is clearly the lack of television the kids are watching on TV sets (110 hours to their folks' 145 hours). Much of their video consumption happens online, where Millenials watch nearly 23.5 hours of video a month, compared to the less than 15 hours GenXers watch online.

But even taking TV out of the equation, Generation X and even Baby Boomers spend more time surfing on computers than do the young ones. One reason may lie in device preference, because kids are much more likely to use a mobile device than a computer to surf.

Another reason may be due to work: many Millennials are still in college, or just entering the workplace, and therefore aren't online for professional reasons as much as their parents and even their grandparents - who either haven't retired yet or are working a part-time job.

Data Generation Is Exploding!

But perhaps the most telling stat in this infographic can be be found at the very top: from the beginning of time until 2003, humans generated 5 billion gigabytes of data. That's 4.9 million terabytes, or 4.66 exabytes. Right now, we generate that much data every two days… and by 2014, we'll be creating that much data every 10 minutes. You think data is big now? This is the kind of stat that gets database engineers reaching for the nearest bottle (aspirin, vodka, it doesn't matter...).

As generations continue to adapt to new technologies and create this mega-data, their online habits could change, of course. And that evolution will remain of overwhelming interest to the marketers and entertainment companies who need to know where their intended audiences are hanging out online and what they are doing there.

Videoscape Unity

Cisco's Videoscape Unity is a content-delivery platform for the living room. Software embedded in a set-top box would enable subscribers to watch content from a TV, tablet and smartphone. Cable operators would be able to deliver, for example, a Major League Baseball game on the TV and provide simultaneously stats on the players on an iPad.

In addition, the technology would be able to recommend movies and programming based on a person's TV habits, and a cloud-based digital video recorder (DVR) would let subscribers record content for viewing later from any device. The platform would also have a social media element. Viewers will be able to chat with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

For the pay TV industry, Cisco's platform provides a much better business model for squeezing more money from subscribers. In general, cable operators today charge more by adding channels to packages. However, the cost of content is high and good programming is scarce. Just think of how many times you've searched dozens of channels and found nothing you really want to watch.

Changing Business Models

With technology like Cisco's, cable operators will have to worry less about the number of channels they offer and focus instead on charging more for the services they provide. For example, European cable operator Liberty Global rolled out last year its Horizon platform that provides similar services to Cisco's product. Horizon represents a "whole brand new revenue stream," Balan Nair, chief technology officer for Liberty, says.

"With our Horizon product when we launched it, we didn't have anymore-new channels, but we charged quite a bit more for that product," Nair said during a panel discussion following Cisco's announcement. "And it was just based on the fact that you got a whole bunch of new features and some ancillary services."

Using technology to sell more products to subscribers is behind much of the excitement over products like Videoscape Unity. But whatever money comes in won't go only to the cable operators. Deals will have to be made with movie studios and TV networks, and possibly Apple, which currently dominates the tablet market.

With Apple, Nair made it clear that Liberty Global prefers not to offer its service through an app sold in Apple's App Store. "There's a whole bunch of other ramifications associated with that, especially in the economics of delivering that content," he said. Liberty would rather use a browser plug-in to deliver programming via the web.

New Content Deals

Content providers have already put cable operators on notice that they will need to sign licensing deals to let people watch on multiple devices. New contracts will also be needed, if cable operators plan to let people view programming on a tablet outside of the home.

Another issue is whose customer is the viewer? Is it the cable company, the content provider or the TV network? Also, who gets access to valuable information, such as TV habits, and how is revenue from services and advertising shared?

"Part of the challenge is how does this stuff get glued together so that it's intuitive and seamless to the user, understanding the fact that there are business models that are very important that need to exist or change or evolve," panelist Joe Inzerillo, senior vice president for multimedia and distribution for MLB.com, said. "This content, this professional content, is not created for free and that's sort of the elephant in the room. How do you get there?"

Until new revenue sharing and licensing agreements are made, it's unlikely cable operators and content providers will sign up for Cisco's or any other new platform for TV. For example, Cox is committed to Videoscape Unity, but it hasn't said whether it would include a cloud-based DVR, according to CNET.

Indeed, the use of such a service has been challenged before. In 2007, the TV and movie industry sued Cablevision for launching what it called a "networked DVR." Instead of having the video recorder functionality within the set-top box, the cable operator stored recorded programming on a remote server, reducing Cablevision's hardware cost by taking the DVR out of the box.

Cablevision won the suit on appeal in 2008, but that has made movie studios and TV networks even more cautious in letting cable operators use the cloud to provide content to subscribers.

In time, deals will get made as the home entertainment center evolves from static viewing to a more interactive experience. But as business models are built around services, as well as programming, consumers will have to look at their current cable TV bill and decide how much more they are willing to pay.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Aereo uses tiny, remote antennas to grab broadcast signals and convert them into video formats that can be transmitted over the Internet and watched from any device and recorded for later viewing. It's a brilliant idea, but one that immediately won the ire of the TV industry, who responded with a lawsuit. In July, a federal court ruled that Aereo did not violate copyright law in the way broadcasters alleged, allowing the service to continue operating as a larger legal battle looms. 

In its corporate rhetoric, Aereo very deliberately positions itself alongside the VHS tape and DVR, two technologies whose core functionality was challenged by the content industry on copyright grounds. The company and its supporters are hoping that the courts see the similarities as well. (For more insight, see Is Barry Diller Stealing Broadcasters' Content? Patent Application Says Maybe Not.)

Aereo's fate is far from firmed up, but that's not stopping the company from pushing forward with its expansion into new markets. Specifically, it will launch later 2013 in Boston, Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Cleveland, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham (NC), Salt Lake City, Birmingham (AL), Providence (RI), and Madison (WI).

For $8 per month - the price of a Hulu Plus subscription - users can tune into whichever over-the-air broadcast channels are available in their area. It's the same stuff you can get with a digital antenna affixed to your TV, but Aereo makes it available across devices and has built-in DVR recording functionality. 

Will people really want to drop $8 monthly to access broadcast TV more conveniently? Aereo is banking on it. Even combined with a Hulu Plus subscription, users would pay only $16 per month for access to a huge selection of content, some of which is live - including many live sporting events. That beats cable's hefty monthly bill, but it still won't get you Game of Thrones or the latest episode of Breaking Bad. 

If Aereo manages to survive its legal challenges (and the company just raised $38 million to fund its expansion and pay its legal bills), it's yet another step toward making the cord-cutting lifestyle a viable alternative. Of course the Cable/Satellite industry isn't sitting still: on Monday Time Warner Cable announced a limited deal to make some of TWC content available on Roku set-top boxes - although users will still have to have a cable subscription.

See Is Cable TV Tuning In Its Own Obsolescence?