Webware

College football is back, and so is fall television. If you're looking to pick up some free TV shows (legally), the Internet is your friend and is a great place to go for digital versions of TV shows, sans a TV or the need for a VCR or DVR to watch shows when you want to. Note that several of these sites are walking a fine line of what's legal and what's not, which was outlined in yesterday's post about legal suicide for start-ups. We don't condone piracy or encourage it; this guide is for entertainment purposes only.

Free (and paid-for) downloads:

iTunes. iTunes is worth mentioning here because you can often get the first and last episode of any show for free. You can then put it on your iPod, iPhone, or watch it full-screen on your computer. While the iTunes Store is now lacking shows like The Office, because of NBC pulling out of its renewal deal, you can still find shows from ABC, CBS, and Fox--which incidentally is offering free pilots of all of their series, which you can find here (link opens up in iTunes).

Editor's Pick: Kitchen Nightmares--it's like Dinner Impossible, but with more volatility and endive.

Amazon Unbox. While we may not have had the best experience using this service in the past, if you're looking for legal digital copies of NBC's newest shows, you're stuck with Unbox until Hulu launches next month. Like the iTunes Store, you'll find all the big players here, although keep in mind that you can't watch these shows on any portable media players, which makes the $1.99 price tag a little harder to swallow.

Editor's Pick: MythBusters

Joost. There is an absolute ton of content on Joost, including entire seasons of the original Transformers from the 80s. The only catch? You've gotta download and install the client, and get a private beta token, which these days is about as easy to get as it was to get a Gmail invite a few years back.

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Update: Representatives from Netflix have let us know these lower-priced plans are part of a test for selected Netflix subscribers, and the current prices that were lowered last month remain for new and existing customers.

Netflix is cutting the price of two of its most popular plans by $1 today, less than a month after its last cut in July. The pricing hasn't been changed on Netflix's rates page, but the company has been sending out rounds of e-mails to its customers about the change since last night, and made an announcement about it earlier this morning. The change covers the two- and three-out-at-a-time plans, the latter of which is the most popular and competitively priced.

The move is the latest in a series of aggressive cuts to compete with Blockbuster's popular Total Access service, which exploits Blockbusters brick-and-mortar stores to provide on-the-spot rental exchanges for about the same price as Netflix's offerings. Netflix has since fought back with its video-on-demand Watch Now service, which competes with Amazon's Unbox, and Movielink, which Blockbuster snapped up last week for just under $7 million. Interestingly enough, with this morning's change, Netflix is also slicing an hour of Watch Now usage off each of the plans, cutting them down to 13 and 16 respectively.

The three-at-a-time plan is Netflix's most popular, and started out at a flat $19.99 in late 1999. Both Netflix and Blockbuster have since been fierce competitors, lowering prices and adding new features to their services, despite the increasing costs in gasoline and postage.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Amazon Unbox on TiVo launched yesterday, which means TiVo subscribers will be able to download selected Amazon Unbox videos straight to their TiVo box. We were pretty excited about the announcement, because at first glance Amazon Unbox on TiVo looks to be a possible replacement for a DVD renting service like Netflix, or Pay-Per-View services available on cable or satellite. The service works on any broadband connected Series2 or Series3 TiVo, and we took it for a spin on our Series2 TiVo.

We had absolutely no trouble linking our TiVo with our Amazon account, and we were selecting movies in just a couple of clicks. The interface to select movies will be familiar to anyone who has used Amazon, which is to say it's pretty painless. The only knock we had is that Amazon doesn't seem 100-percent ready for TiVo fans, as the method of filtering TiVo-transferable files from other Amazon Unbox files is just using the search term "tivo" in the Unbox section. A separate section of Amazon Unbox would be preferable.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

We found the initial selection to be a little meager. Not all Amazon Unbox videos are available to be transferred to TiVos, presumably because of the need to convert the files to a TiVo-friendly format. As of press time, 1,433 videos were labeled "TiVo", which is a combination of TV shows and movies. Sure, that's a lot of videos for any one person to watch, but it's not much of a library. However, Amazon claims it will be adding new titles every week, so you can expect this library to grow. In terms of cost, most movies we saw were $15 to buy and $4 to rent, while TV shows were $2 to buy.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

• TiVo users get unboxed. TiVo users looking to spend their hard-earned money on digital downloads of movies and TV shows online can now do so without leaving the couch. Last month's announcement of the partnership to bring Amazon's Unbox service to TiVo owners has been fulfilled, and now TiVo users can pick from more than a thousand pieces of content to download straight to their set-top box. (News.com)

• Friendster makes Google its ad, search supplier. Google has unseated Yahoo for advertising supremacy at Friendster, one of the oldest social networks that still has 37 million registered users. Friendster will now feature Google text and picture ads, along with a Google search bar for searching the Web or member pages. Worth noting is Google's attempt to purchase Friendster in 2003. (News.com)

• Webcasters to see hike in Net radio fees. Popular Web radio services such as Last.fm, Shoutcast, and Pandora could be in hot water with new rate increases for streaming music on the Web. The rates per song are due to double in the next three years. Is this the end of Internet radio? (Wired)