I believe that TV should be a user driven experience, it’s a leisure activity after all. However, that’s never really been the case. In the UK a handful of companies control the TV landscape (The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, five, Sky (Sky 1-3, Movies, Sport etc.) and Virgin (Living, Bravo, UKTV etc.) and if these companies don’t want to show a programme it’s pretty much not going to be seen by the masses in the UK.
Thankfully due to broadband becoming cheaper, bandwidth becoming cheaper and access to TV quality cameras also becoming cheaper many home brew shows have been released for niche markets that just wouldn’t get shown on mainstream TV. These can be downloaded any time, watched any time and (in all my cases) free to watch anywhere you like, as much as you like.
The following are some of the shows that I watch pretty reguarly or subscribe to:
Alex Albrecht & Kevin Rose of tech.tv fame present a look at the week’s top stories on the social news bookmarking site digg.com developed by Kevin Rose (amongst others.) Contains a fair bit of language and drunkedness. But also cool for catching up on the top techy-ish or cool-y stories that were on digg, because nobody has enough time to actually read all the stories that are on digg. I really like the geeky humour and Alex’s constant over emphasizing, although a lot of people find him annoying, I love him! Comes out every week and lasts about 30-45 minutes a piece…
Darren Kitchen & Wess Tobler present a home studio based show about computers and tech which sometimes dips its toe into the other side of hacking. It also has lots of modding sections on how to add LEDs to your toaster with a splash of humour thrown in. Released every 5th of the month it tends to last about an hour each ep. They’ve started to do some live “beta” episodes which really are beta but fun to watch it all go slightly wrong.
Pure Pwnage is a web based mockumentary series about the life of “Pro Gamer” Jeremy all being filmed by wannabe film director, and brother, Kyle. In it we meet such interesting characters as FPS_Doug, a cool guy who thinks he’s actually in a FPS game and Tagi a cute girl who’s obsessed with MMORPG World of Warcraft. All the time there’s a story arc of some weird plot about how something bad is going down. The show has got that big now that the series finale for series 1 was shown at a few packed out cinemas in Canada and the cast are going on a tour to launch Series 2 at some point this year across Canada and the US.
InDigital is hosted by Hahn Choi, Jessica Corbin and Wil Wheaton. It takes a look at new and upcoming consumer tech products and has other content such as coverage of Consumer Electronic Show and a Dolby competiton to build a bad ass Home Theatre setup and then give it away! I personally like Wil’s humour and his constant striving to have things free and his rants against things like Blu-Ray/HD-DVD wars or other such things. Hahn and his big TVs and Jessica is, obviously, just there for eye candy and to review exercise equipment.
Hosted by Alex Albrecht & Heather Stewart this is a disaster cooking show meant to be teaching geeks how to cook. It’s a bit cheesy, but the idea is good and it’s pretty well done.
Not entirely sure what the point of the show is, apart from to make a cocktail, but it’s funny. Plus it has the cute, but (apparently) not bimbo dumb, lala. Plus, it only comes in at around 5-10 minutes per episode, so definitely light viewing.
DL.TV (formerly DigitalLife.tv) is hosted by Patrick Norton and Robert Heron (of tech.tv fame, again) and is basically a less extravagant version of The Screensavers, focussing more on product reviews, opinions and news as opposed to labs & experiments. Quality is good and Heron knows his shit when it comes to anything related to HD. Released twice weekly.
thebroken is presented by Kevin Rose and Dan Huard and looks at computer security, cracking and social engineering. It’s a bit shady, but nothing too black hat. They’ve shown how to get free pizza, crack WEP and had an interview with social engineering guru Kevin Mitnick. Released once “every so often.”
Systm is kinda like the more legitimate brother of thebroken. Presented by Rose and Huard this deals more with projects such as setting up your own Asterisk server, wiring your own audio cables and building a MyTV box. Filmed in a home made studio it’s well put together and pretty well polished, even if some of the segments do drag a little and Dan’s acting can be a little cardboardy. As with thebroken the releases come once in a blue moon.
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, often abbreviated as RvB, is a machinima comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed primarily through the Internet and DVD. The series chronicles the story of two opposing teams of soldiers fighting a civil war in the middle of a desolate box canyon (Blood Gulch), in a parody of first-person shooter (FPS) games, military life, and science fiction films (Courtesy of Wikipedia ;))
I’m sure I’ll add some more as I remember them…
Enjoy!
Tired
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