Licensing balooey 2008-09-17

One for the pet peeve pile: tv networks who can't keep to a schedule, and so DVR users get the first couple minutes or last couple minutes cut off.

And that's just the ones who don't do it on purpose. A pox on the networks who do it on purpose to try and make you watch the show live. As if I'm going to correlate that this always happens with this show, therefore I'm going to start watching it live. Not.

A double pox on those networks who randomly make one of their episodes run 5 minutes late in a lame effort to make me miss whatever other show I might be watching/recording next and watch their next show instead.

This tirade brought on by the fact that the premier of House last night went about 30s too long, and so the big revelation at the end was cut off. But, that's old news. This time, I figured I could go online and watch the end. First, I tried Hulu, no luck. A bunch of episodes from last season, but not the new one. Fine, its too new. Next, try Fox.com. Nope, they want me to install some specialized player. Not. They didn't have the episode anyways. Try again today, now Hulu tells me the new episodes won't be online until 8 days after they air "streaming restrictions require an eight-day delay for this series." Lets ignore for the moment that its not streaming restrictions, its that the license under which they get this content has these streaming restrictions. So, in theory, its Fox that's retarded, and not Hulu. For some reason, they don't want you to be able to catch up on an episode you missed... before the next one airs. So, we'll try Youtube. Success. Pretty crappy version, from someone else who didn't get the end on their Tivo. Probably got it from Bittorrent or who knows where else.

So, congrats to Fox. You just had to get that one last commercial in, so your hit show got cut off for everyone not watching it live, and then you couldn't be bothered to make it available online, so the internet routed around your idiocy and made it that much less likely that you're attempts to work with the internet to work.

And to top it off, I think all I actually missed were two words and House watching Wilson walk away, hardly worth the effort.

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