Lost, Desperate Houswives will be free on the web

For all the people dissing this, I'm assuming you're in the US. For those of us not in the states (or another country that offers ITMS video) this is fantastic!

In Australia we've only just started Lost and Desperate Housewives seasons 2 and Alias season 5 has been cancelled. This will give me the oportunity to legally and for free watch the shows - much sooner than they come out here. We don't have the option of ad-free and paying money so this is always good.

I just hope they don't come up with a way to block all but US computers although I can't see how they would - the only way ITMS manages is by requiring you have a US credit card which obviously wouldn't be an issue here.

another site had deets - its flash streaming

Um guys- it's called "summer" - it happens when it gets hot outside and most networks start running reruns of popular shows. If they were trying this in-season I would be startled, but this is just a longevity thing to keep the interest ball in the air.

Chances are they will do iTunes as well as pre-packed streaming. Or just the latter stacked with commercials.

Either way, they aren't going to harm the cash cow during milking season.

Given that for a nominal one hour program there are only 43 mins of content, wasting 17 mins of my life watching something I don't want to see is easily worth $1.99.

Most likely streamed episodes that only stay on their site for a week or something similar.

It's a great idea. I hope they are not just 'web based' as I'd buy a video iPod if I could add TV for free!! So what, there is commercials. That's time to feed the cats, get food or go to the bathroom. Excellent idea! I just hope they don't make them flash and low-bandwidth.

bt- i download 'em to watch on my TV via my mini. i hardly ever watch em on my iPod.

I've read elsewhere that you won't be able to skip the commercials. This tells me, as bt says, that it's a custom player. It's probably Flash-based to be universal. That's good for Mac users, and hopefully given enough bandwidth, Flash video quality doesn't have to suck mightily (unless all submissions to YouTube and Google Video started out that way).

The Reuters article makes NO mention of what streaming file format Disney plans on using. QuickTime Streaming Server? Real? Microsoft? Jobs on the Disney board aside, I'm wondering if these shows will be viewable on Mac OS X. Naturally it would be pretty stupid if they weren't.

ronn-
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