The television season is about to arrive full force.
Soon, most of your favorite television shows, as well as new series, will be making their way into your home. But if you're unsure when your show will come back, you want to catch up, or you simply want to track the show as the season progresses, I have you covered with some great sites.
Let's check them out.
Tracking TV
Hulu...There are few better ways to track your favorite shows than to watch them on Hulu, which is backed by NBC Universal, ABC, and Fox.
Thanks to strategic partnerships that Hulu inked with networks, finding and watching your favorite shows is quick and easy. And since the site is ad-supported, you won't need to worry about doling out cash to watch your shows.
I spend considerable time on Hulu. I caught up with last season's of "Family Guy" on the site. The videos run well. The ads, while a necessary evil, aren't that bad. And the quality is outstanding. Even better, you can embed Hulu videos into your blog, making it a great platform to share your favorite shows with friends.
Hulu has outstanding video quality.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)MyTVRSS...When you first get to MyTVRSS, you'll probably be a little sickened by its design. A black background sitting behind pink type makes the site an extremely unattractive target for your attention. But once you realize you'll spend very little time there, you'll get past it.
MyTVRSS lists every television show currently in production. When you click on one of the links on that site, you'll find a show summary, information on the last episode that aired (assuming it isn't a new show), and the series premiere's date and time. Unfortunately, not all the show listings are as informative as I would have liked. For instance, the site's "The Office" page was great. But its "30 Rock" page didn't feature nearly as much information. Your mileage will vary.
As you sift through all the shows on the site, you can pick those series that you watch most often by checking the box next to their titles. At the bottom of the page is a "Create Feed" option. When you click that button, you'll receive a unique RSS feed that you can add to your reader. That feed will alert you when your shows air. For someone like me who easily forgets a favorite show is on, it's a nice service to have.
MyTVRSS is certainly an ugly site.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
On Monday i.TV, the movie and TV show listing service for the iPhone, pushed out a really neat update that marries the idea of its live content guide with services that can take advantage of it as a platform.
The first service to be introduced into the mix is Netflix. I.TV users who are also Netflix subscribers can manage their queue right from the application, as well as start Netflix searches from i.TV's own listings.
If you find a movie in theaters, or recently aired TV show that you'd like to add to your Netflix queue, you can now do it from i.TV.
(Credit: CNET Networks)An example of how this might work is if you're perusing the latest movie listings. If you see a film that you'd like to watch when it's released on DVD, you can simply cross-reference it with Netflix's library. If it shows up (which I found to work with all the latest releases at my local theater), you simply hit the "add to queue" option and it will go into your saved items. This is also helpful for wannabe movie aficionados, since if the film you're looking at is a remake, you can see and rent the older versions from the same interface.
More importantly, with the outcropping of Netflix streaming-capable devices like Apple computers, and soon the Xbox 360--there's going to be a need to help pick out streaming TV content. Using i.TV, you can easily add any content that has a streaming counterpart to your Watch Instantly queue.
As a Netflix manager it's not as competent as an app like Dashbuster, which is currently unavailable from the app store while it works out some bugs. There are no Netflix RSS feeds (which can be a source of rental inspiration), and it doesn't save box art in a local cache, which can give the app a slight speed gain. There is one big plus though--i.TV is free, whereas Dashbuster and several other iPhone-based Netflix queue managers are not.
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