Over the course of 40 slides, the presentation explains that Netflix will stay focussed on delivering TV shows and movies rather diversify into other forms of content (like news, sports etc..). It also remains committed to a consumer paid subscription model.

The company see a steadily evolution into streaming with its own estimates showing that DVD distribution will peak in 2013. Netflix streaming is available on more and more platforms like game consoles, Blu-ray players, laptops, Apple’s iPad and soon Mobiles!! With Hulu expanding to subscription, Netflix acknowledges that this could be a significant competitive threat.

Using Netflix with a subscription from just $9 a month is one of the best ways to Cut the Cable or Ditch the Dish. The full presentation is below.

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The study conducted by Retrevo using a panel of 1,000 US consumers. Fully half of all consumers watch at least some of their television online with almost a third of under 25 year olds claiming to watch most or all of their content over the Internet. Few will be surprised that men (17%) were more likely than women (9%) to say they watched most or all of their TV online.

Cable and Satellite TV providers continue to claim that they are not concerned with the emergent trend.

“We don’t consider it a threat to our business,” said Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable. “Being able to watch TV on the Internet is not new.”

link: NY Times

However the research suggests they should start to change their tune, especially in the current economically sensitive environment. The average household cable bill in the United States hit $64 a month in 2009, up from $47.50 in 2004, according to Leichtman Research Group. Perhaps this is contributing to the 26% of consumers who claim they have considered or actually already cancelled their cable or satellite service? Tellingly, only just over half said they are happy with their service.

Certainly the topic is beginning to gain traction with mainstream media as this ABC clip clearly shows.

Cut the Cable TV will continue to champion the cause and provide you with information and solutions so that you can Ditch the Dish or Cut the Cable in your home!

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Clicker is the TV guide for the future, billing itself as the complete guide to Internet television. It aggregates in one place all the content that is available to view over the Internet. This is a very useful service. Free Internet TV is scattered all over the web (e.g you can only watch South Park for free at South Park Studios) and while sites like Hulu aggregate a lot of traditional shows, not all the episodes are available free and some content is published only on the web.

Clicker brings everything together from sources such as the web, Hulu, Apple, Netflix and Amazon. This provides the fullest array of content for your viewing pleasure. You can filter by source, in particular which sources are free and which require some form of payment, either by show (Apple, Amazon) or by subscription (Netflix).

You can search by category (e.g Action & Adventure, Drama etc..) or Network (e.g ABC, TNT etc..) and then get straight to the show you want to watch from the site. If you sign up for a free account then you can subscribe to your favorite shows. When you do this, new episodes will be automatically deposited into your playlist as they become available, in effect providing you with a virtual TiVo.

A most interesting feature of Clicker is the ability to see what is streaming live right now. This helps with one of the limitations of cutting the cable, that of no access to live TV. The site not only shows you what is live right this moment but what is coming up next.

In summary Clicker is the perfect way to find content to watch online but as useful as Clicker is on the web, it is even more useful when incorporated into a media center solution like Boxee. But that is the subject for another post.

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Hulu is a great service (even if it will soon go subscription) that provides TV entertainment with a minimum of advertisements, typically only 3 or 4, 30 second spots per hour hour of programming. This makes for an easy way to catch missed shows but the experience can be so much better if you download and use the free Hulu Desktop application.

Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center remote controls or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons. For users without remotes, the application is keyboard and mouse-enabled.

link: Hulu – Labs: Hulu Desktop

Once you install the application you can browse through Hulu’s entire lineup of content in alphabetical order, by network or by Hulu channel. You can use the keyboard and mouse, or a windows media center or Apple remote to navigate. The best way to use it is to link it to your free Hulu account. Once you do this you have access to to your queue. This means that new episodes of your favorite shows will miraculously appear in your queue when they are available to watch. If you discover a new show you like, you can add that to the queue from inside the application. You can add either a single episode or subscribe to a entire series (in this case all the new episodes will automatically appear in your queue).

Perhaps the best part of Hulu Desktop though, is simply how beautiful it looks, turning your PC into a pretty slick media center that makes watching content so much more enjoyable than the clunky Hulu web interface. The video below shows the interface in action.

Using Hulu Desktop is one of the easiest steps you can take towards Cutting the Cable or Ditching the Dish. Give it a try. I think you’ll be impressed. If you use a Mac, there is even a way to launch the Hulu Desktop application from within the Front Row media interface, but that will have to wait for a future post.

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