lonecity.com

I’m sure I have mentioned before on my blog that I’m just a bit of an anime fan.  (that first sentance should really be read as freakish otaku geek)  I’ve even managed to get my poor little brother hooked on my bad habit.  So the other day he called me up to tell me about a new website he discovered to watch anime online.  Theres plenty of sites that boast illegal uploads of pirated anime.  You practically can’t look for information online without stumbling across them.  This site is different though.  Its actually legit, paid for, licensed material.  It kind of shocks me that nobody managed to do it sooner.

I should mention here that I’m not bieng paid to promote this site.  Its just something that I’ve stumbled across and I felt it was worthwhile to give a reccomendation for on my blog.  The site is hulu.com Their business model appears to be very close to that of broadcast television.  They license a movie/tv series and then pay for it by streaming commercial interruptions.  The only difference between them and good old broadcast tv is that they are on demand over the internet.

I’ve always felt shafted by my cable tv providers (this includes all of them.)  The way I figure it if I pay to watch a show it shouldn’t have commercials.  Thats why I’m paying.  If they want to provide the show for free then Amen to the commercials.  I don’t mind supporting a good cause by concidering the things they are pitching if they spend a few bucks entertaining me.  In this respect hulu has gotten it right.  They dont charge you to watch their service, but you do have to watch the commercials.   I suppose thats why tivo went over so well though.  I’m probably not the only american who’s sick of paying $50 to $80 a month for the channels that aren’t broadcast, then getting screwed over by bieng forced to watch the commercials anyway.

Well thats all I really wanted to talk about this week.  As an anime fan, (not an anime pirate) I really believe in buying the dvd’s and supporting the artists.  Needless to say its pleasant to see a video on demand service showing anime that wasn’t blatently “stolen” from its copywright holders through the guise of letting the unscrupulous users do the theft.  I’m talking to you youtube and veoh.  Everyone knows that your services are filled with pirated material and thats where you are making your money.  Its one thing for a dishonest person to pirate a movie and if he or she gets caught they’ll get what they deserve.  Its a whole other thing for an entire business model to be built around helping your users pirate copywright materials.  So for anyone reading this give hulu a try.  They get a big thumbs up from me.  Oh and BTW, hulu is not just for anime, theres all kinds of commercial video goods there, and so far its all free to the viewer.