Viacom Puts the Daily Show Archive Online 153
tburton writes "Viacom has put the entire eight year run of the Daily Show with John Stewart online. The content is available from the official Daily Show site, and features clip rating, tags, and numerous community features. The whole thing is supported by relatively unobtrusive contextual ads. 'Viacom's decision to post its entire archive--while fighting YouTube in the courts--sets the scene for a battle between the established media players and their high profile entertainment brands against the user generated content sites, most notable YouTube. Also watching closely the Viacom experiment will be the telco IPTV industry which has seen the market place change rapidly as the quality of online video continues to improve, with at least one platform/site, Vimeo, already offering 1280X720 HD quality direct from the browser.'"
They will never learn! (Score:5, Insightful)
But because people are obviously interested in this medium and they are pissed that Viacom is being a bunch of fucking litigious bastards, they had to do something... We'll see just how it stacks up but based on the other networks' actions, I doubt it will be nearly as popular as the content available in one place - YouTube.
I realize they want to control the content they own and all, but seriously, isn't it just easier to have someone else foot the bandwidth bills and to have your viewership get it the way they want? They will never learn
Nitpick (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Should have guessed (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda demonstrates the case for p2p file transfers, huh.
Re:They will never learn! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh, yeah, I'm all about "sticking it to the man" too and I get rather pissed off when media outfits try to use DRM to lock down content that I've paid for, but what exactly is the problem with this?
They are putting the entire archive of a fairly popular TV show online, at no expense. Even if you have to watch commercials with it (do you? You did on their old site, but TFA seems to suggest you won't) how can you complain about that?
I would love to see an online archive of Babylon 5, Star Trek:TNG, Law & Order, 24, or any of the other TV shows that I watch. If I could go back and watch my favorite episode at the click of a button and the only downside was a few ads (that I'd see on TV anyway) how am I losing?
Why is it cut up into 3 minute clips then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Viacom makes me hate the Daily Show (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break! They aren't CHARGING YOU FOR THIS. THEY ARE GIVING IT AWAY. There is no way in hell that you can compare them wanting videos removed from Youtube while GIVING AWAY THE CONTENT FOR FREE to the bullshit that RIAA is trying to pull.
Either I watch on YouTube, or I don't watch at all. I'm not bookmarking 5,000,000 video sites to do casual browsing. That's stupid.
Again, grow the hell up. It's really that much harder to do a Google search for 'The Daily Show' and following the first link as opposed to doing a search on YouTube for 'The Daily Show'? If you owned the content would you want YouTube raking in the ad dollars for something THAT YOU CREATED?
In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They will never learn! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should have guessed (Score:4, Insightful)
This "we must have control at all costs" never makes sense to me, especially when there's a financial reason not too...
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not the entire run (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They will never learn! (Score:3, Insightful)
and I get to watch them in low compression 720X480 resolution instead of 320X240 incredibly high compressed.
Incredibly high bandwidth, very high latency. and no DRM... well no drm that isn't easily circumvented.
Motherload? (Score:2, Insightful)