Sunday, April 13, 2008

Why we need to be in the experience business....

Hi all,
Check this out:
www.fancast.com

It's Comcast's new on-demand website. Not only can you watch nearly any episode of many contemporary TV series (The Office, 30 Rock, Amsterdam, The Simpsons as well as classic TV series, Arrested Development, A Team, MacGyver, Firefly, Buffy etc) but you can also watch a limited number of streaming, full-length feature films, all apparently absolutely free with no need for registration. Movies now available include Sideways, Ice Age, and one of my favorites, The Big Lebowski).

This train seems to be a comin'...

What will we be offering if a "perfect storm" of digitization comes together in the next 5-10 years (or sooner!) and patrons no longer have to come to us through any medium to checkout DVD's, music and perhaps books? (Which is probably actually a good thing for many patrons...)

At the very least, it looks Fancast and Joost point to the video portion brewing on the immediate horizon, and Google certainly has designs on making the world's text available online...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Patrick, I just wanted to thank you for the nice words about Fancast. As you noted, we have TONS of absolutely free content up from a variety of entertainments creators. We hope it's a good resource for you and your readers to catch up on some film and TV viewing.

You just touched briefly on the shows available. The full list can be found here
http://www.fancast.com/full_episodes

and the movies here
http://www.fancast.com/movies

Cheers,
Jim (for Fancast)