Something that’s been lacking for quite some time now in this digital age is the acknowledgement of the format/idea by many established companies and providers of content. Specifically TV networks. In this day and age, the word “Bittorrent” is the word of choice for people who want to obtain things fast and quick (and most of the time illegally). There’s plenty of sites around that you can get things from, and despite a recent crackdown on torrent indexing sites, the medium continues to thrive. For example, the remake (and extremely good, I might add) of Battlestar Galactica is currently on Sci-Fi channel here in the US. It was a 13 episode run co-produced with (I believe) the BBC (or some other british tv entity). Anyway, my point is that the 13 episodes finished in the UK right when they started airing here in the US. How is this relevant? The entire run of the series was available as a torrent download – completely bypassing the need for folks who downloaded it all to even watch it on Sci-Fi.
In fact, I read once that a study believes that 1/3 of all Internet traffic is Bittorrent transfers. I don’t know if that number is true or not, but yikes – it’s still a boatload of traffic!
Anyway, an awful lot of people who do torrent TV downloads have posted online that they’d pay a small fee to someone who can provide them with a legal download of programs they want to watch. Some have said “keep the commercials in”, if we can download it for free. I don’t know about that, but legal downloads of TV shows is something that’s been needed for ages. It appears to finally be happening, as a company will now be offering NBC programs for download. I don’t know all the particulars, like the old archives, or if this is just new shows, and if so, WHEN they’ll be available (some torrent downloads are available within hours of their airing, or in some cases – before!)
Now this plan isn’t perfect, the story I link to allows for rental STREAMING – not complete downloads. But it’s at least a step in the right direction, I think.