Television is a great entertainment device, but cable/broadcast TV is dead, except for live events. With excessive commercials, demanding life schedules, poor programing, high price of cable, etc., who wants to watch TV the "old" way?
As of today, Hulu, many TV networks, OnDemand, NetFlix, Boxee, Apple TV and the upcoming Google TV are forever changing how we watch television. People can now search for what they want to watch, and most of it is free over the internet via legal sources. And of course, there are also the other channels such as Justin.tv, atdhe.net and Veetle.com.
I've been using the Boxee (http://www.boxee.tv) program to make watching my favorite shows more convenient. I simply click to The Office, and the most recent shows (and reruns) are displayed in a list for me to select the one I want to watch.
Commercials are still present, but minimal. I assume that this is the trade off of the advertisers being able to target better. Believe me when I say, they know more about you than you think about who you are (sex, age, interests), or can at least target ads more specifically than a broadcast TV commercial.
How do you feel about this? I'm not sure that I like it. Privacy is eroding.
But, I can say that I'm excited about the changes coming to the stale television industry.
