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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Cable Beware, Another Reason To Cut The Cord

From Cynopsis:

"Cord cutters will delight in the new Clicker.tv site unveiled at Google's I/O conference yesterday. It's similar to the online Clicker service, which provides cool search and discovery tools such as highlighting "headlining" and "trending" TV shows, movies, web shows and news clips that are catching fire online. But this version leverages the HTML5 video format and streamlines the interface (much bigger icons) to make it perfect for browsing through a PC-connected large screen TV. Navigate using keyboard arrows or a configured remote to find just about any video online. The Clicker engine does a great job of categorizing some 650,000 (legal) episodes of 10,000 shows. It's designed with Google's Chrome web browser in mind (hence the I/O demo), but it also works with other browsers and thankfully doesn't require any troublesome plugins to work. Now what's needed are more customization features and social recommendation tools that have become a great differentiator for Boxee from your boring old cable guide. After all, when it comes to TV, too much is never enough, notes Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone. "As Americans we already watch 37 hours of TV a week. I have no idea how we're going to fit more viewing hours into each week, but we're going to be given every possible freaking opportunity to try!," he writes in a blog post unveiling Clicker.tv."

As consumers look to other sources for TV programming, Clicker seems to offer the popular shows from Fox, NBC, Comedy Central, and others. On the computer and available whenever and wherever you want. With the ability to connect PCs to TVs, these same shows can be seen on big screens or small. Why are they cutting cable's cord? Why buy the cow if the milk is free.