The History Channel website offers a variety of full-length episodes that can be viewed in entirety online.

What the History Channel Website Offers

The History Channel website offers a number of interesting full-episodes of programs to watch online, such as “Hero Ships” and “Cities of the Underworld”. In addition, the site offers a interesting variety of clips and videos from other programs from their lineup.

Whether the offerings of the history channel really go above and beyond “sensational” history is another story completely – the impression I get is that a large volume of the supposed historical episodes have to do with UFOs, Nostradamus, and the unexplained.

Navigation and Finding Full Episodes to Watch

From the main page of the History Channel website, simply clicking on the ‘Video’ tab routes you to a comprehensive listing of all of the channel’s current show. Conveniently, the shows that offer full episodes are marked with a red “Full Episodes Available”, a nice touch when other sites (like Disney, for instance) make navigation to full episodes of programs more of a difficult task.

In addition, this main video page also breaks down the collection of videos by category, allowing you to find programs of interest based on topic (although “Mysteries and the Unexplained” seem to take up an unnecessarily large section of the categories. Well, whatever.)

Viewing Episodes Online

I selected “UFO Hunters” (as that was always my favorite aspect of world history in public school…) and was routed to the page for this particular series. Following a brief commercial, the first things broadcast were a short succession of video clips from “UFO Hunters”. You need to click another tab for “Season 1 Full Episodes” in order to get to full-episode segments, broken into 10 minute playtimes.

The audio and video worked fine for the video, and offered features such as full-screen and email sharing options. It’s just the selection of subject matter that remains a little questionable, and makes me wonder: if this represents history according to the History channel, then why did I have to learn about Louis XIV in school and not aliens and Mayan 2012 predictions?

History Channel Sample Programming

Other Features of the History Channel Site

The History Channel site also offers a guide to current programming, a large number of games and multimedia applications, a store for purchasing various episodes, and info about their magazine.

The site is comprehensive, and above and beyond the full-length episodes there is a lot of interesting content to check out.

The History Channel

• The History Channel
• The History Channel on Wikipedia

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ToonJet offers a large selection of full-length classic cartoons that can be viewed online.

What is ToonJet?

ToonJet allows you to watch free online cartoons, with many full-length cartoons that can be viewed right within an internet brower.

An interesting feature of the site is the ToonJet Live feature, that basically allows you to watch the equivalent of a live cartoon channel as its streamed through the site. I was able to tune in and right away enjoy a Porky Pig cartoon already in progress, much like tuning into a live show.

Cartoons Offered

In addition to the live streaming cartoon, you can also select a tab to view cartoons for various categories such as:

• Betty Boop
• Felix the Cat
• Looney Toons
• Popeye
• Superman
• Tom & Jerry

You can also opt to receive content via RSS feed, so you can keep up with the new content being added.

Other ToonJet Features

You can create a user account with ToonJet, and use it to identify and save favorites, as well as befriend other ToonJet users.

ToonJet also offers a blog (with fairly outdated content as of this writing). I would have liked to see a little bit more, such as some image galleries or games, but as it stands, the video content of the site is plentiful and enough to keep me occupied enjoying classic toons.

Video Sample from ToonJet

A Repository of Classic Cartoons Online

As a big fan of the classic cartoons of long ago, ToonJet is a online treasure of toons such as Bugs Bunny, Superman and Tom & Jerry. The live streaming option is a nice touch, but it’s nice that there are categories of videos to select from if you aren’t in the mood for whatever the live channel is offering at the time.

ToonJet

• ToonJet
• About ToonJet

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WatchUWant.tv offers an endless stream of videos to watch, based on your search criteria, and functions in a manner similar to streaming radio sites like Pandora and LastFm.

What is WatchUWant?

From their site, WatchUWant describes the internet as being a new infinite number of videos, but states that its site “automatically separates the wheat from the chaff, recommends new and interesting content, and moreover, tailors its selection to you.”

Sounds interesting enough, but does it work?

Getting Started

What’s interesting about WatchUWant is that there are NO user accounts. You just open the site and jump right in. And while this is nice to just get started, without user accounts, how are your interests and selections saved?

Anyhow, I ran a few searches, and there are some Pandora similarities, but as I’ll explain, there are also a number of notable differences as well.

Viewing Related Videos

My first search was for composer “John Williams”, so I entered these terms and started searching. Right away, I was presented with a number of related and semi-related clips on YouTube.

But what’s odd is that you can’t really rate the videos, but rather, if you don’t like it, you just click ‘Next’. So my question would be, what if you LIKE the clip, but just want to skip it for now? And what if you want to ban a clip you strongly disliked?

Strange and Somewhat Irksome Lack of User Accounts

Most puzzling is, unlike Pandora, you don’t have user accounts to remember what you’ve seen and rated, so in a frustrating way you have to reinvent the wheel every time you visit WatchUWant. I’m not crazy about that, as there were plenty of results from my searches that I definitely did NOT want to view again.

One of the nice things about having accounts with Pandora and LastFm is not just the ability to create accounts that retain personal interests, but also having the ability to share stations with friends and other folks. You can’t do that here, which is disappointing as well.

Following the Trends of WatchUWant

WatchUWant also offers a tab for seeing the current viewing ‘Trends’, or searches that are currently popular with WatchUWant users. Nothing really earth-shaking here, other than spring-boards for viewing currently popular topics.

Again, this would be more interesting to me if these were individually-rated accounts, but instead these just appear to be streaming channels of videos on certain topics.

A Notable Positive…

There are a few noteworthy positives to this system, though, that I think are worth pointing out. First is that, if you want to use WatchUWant as a radio player for music, you could pick a musician or band you like, kick off the station, then work on something else in another browser tab.

WatchUWant will continually stream content non-stop, so if you want to listen to video content like a radio, this is a nice option. The player will just endlessly stream related content based on your search without stopping.

Another Positive

Another thing notable about WatchUWant is that the site/player is VERY open and uncluttered. It’s a minimalistic player with no comments, ratings and other clutter, so if all you want is streaming video watching and nothing else, this is an ideal system.

Being able to use a back arrow to the previous film also makes this a notch better than Pandora and LastFm, both of which systems do not let you jump to a previous song.

Maybe with addition of user accounts this could be an ideal system in which one can rate films and retain these ratings for future viewing.

WatchUWant

• WatchUWant
• WatchUWant – Information about how it works

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CBS has an interesting gimmick going on at their Ad Labs site, in which you can view advertisements in order to watch CBS full-length episodes online. Will this trend take off?

Watching Ads for Free TV

To get up and running, you need to register with CBS, and the registration process runs fairly quickly, prompting you for a username and password along with other information. You can also log in with a facebook account.

Once you create an account, the CBS AdLabs page presents you with basically two options: watch ads or watch TV shows. Your current credit balance is also displayed on the screen as well.  You start off, obviously, at zero credits.

Selective Ad Watching

I started out watching a few ads to grab some credit. Selecting the “Earn Credits” link routed me to a page in which I could select which ads I wanted to view, each earning 1 credit.

This sort of gimmickery reminds me of some of the “make money online” sites, that pay you something like the 100th of a penny for every advertisement you view, but in the case of Ad Labs, you’re just building up a collection of credits for viewing CBS programming.

The ads are fairly standard ones: luxury cars, blackberry devices and credit cards, etc. Nothing overly exciting, but they pass quick, and you can always flip over to a different browser tab while they run.

Thoughts about the Ads…

One of the nice things about this system, though, is the fact that you can select which ads you want to watch. You aren’t at the mercy of CBS but rather you can scroll through a long list of adds and view these for credit.

Truth be told, this could be a neat system if CBS included a few movie trailers in the mix, but instead the selection of ads isn’t the most exciting.

At least CBS does offer a feedback form at the bottom of the page, so if enough folks write in to suggest that CBS ad some half-interesting movie trailers (namely anything without Owen Wilson) there might then be some improvement to the site.

Watching Shows with Earned Credit

The shows are currently limited in selection to programs like NCIS, Numb3rs, and some of the CSI programs. So I selected ‘CSI: Miami’ (if for no other reason than to catch a David Caruso philosophical-sunglasses zinger).

An episode of CSI:Miami required two credits, so I needed to sit through two ads prior to proceeding, but once the ads were done and the episode was started, it was refreshing to be able to watch the full episode, totally commerical free (even if the episode of CSI was completely contrived.)

Other Thoughts…

Its fascinating to me the level at which television has mutated over the years. Gone are the commercial breaks inbetween segments of the show, and now we can “earn” our way around these ads by simply watching a few selective ads at our own convenience and then get rewarded with our show.

Although I wonder…

What is it, though, that keeps the viewer from starting the ad and then jumping to another tab? Or reading a book?  True, “traditional” TV ads are no different: you can always get up and walk away from those ads too, so is this basically the same paradigm?

I have to wonder if this sort of system will catch on, or if this will just be another gimmick that never quite takes off because the same programs can be found somewhere else without the cost of commercials?  It will be interesting to see what happens.

CBS Adlabs Links

• CBS Ad Labs
• CBS Ad Labs FAQ

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Telemundo offers a number of full-length Spanish television programs that can be viewed in entirety online.

Telemundo – Spanish Television

Even for the mildly-Spanish literate, the Telemundo website offers a number of programs that can be viewed online, in addition to various video clips from numerous Telemundo television programs. While the site offers no direct English translation, the navigation is obvious enough that you can easily access the video page to watch full-length Spanish television episodes.

Getting Started

From the main Telemundo site, if you select the “Shows” tab, you are routed to a page featuring a number of programs that can be viewed online.  Some of the content is a little questionable, with numerous images and articles featuring scantly-clad bodies interspersed throughout the site… enough that I wouldn’t recommend Telemundo as ideal viewing for all-ages. Anyhow, on the right of the page you can select the program name that you would like, and then you’re routed to a page for that show, with links to articles, images, and extras. Clicking ‘videos’ will route you to a section with “All the videos” and there you can view full episodes (broken into 3-part segments.)

Playing the Videos

The episodes all started without any problems and the video quality is fine, as is the audio (translational differences notwithstanding.) The video player features the standard controls for play, volume, etc. Programs with full-length episodes available include:

• 12 Corazones
• Al Rojo Vivo
• Casa Cerrado
• Levántate
• Nitido

Other Content on Telemundo

Telemundo offers plenty of other content on the site, including galleries of images, music and, oddly, a page for new and used cars. Again, though, with content favoring scantly-clad women and sexually-suggestive video clips, I would not recommend this site as appropriate for all-ages. But for fans of Telemundo and Spanish programming, the site is plentiful with content.  It also serves as an excellent means to validate your 10th grade Spanish language elective.

Telemundo Video Links

• Telemundo
• Telemundo Full-Length Episodes
• Telemundo on Wikipedia

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Reeltime.com is a site offering video-on-demand of diverse television programs and eventually movies. Its apparently pre-launch and content is still being added, but in fact the site has been around since 2004.

What’s Reeltime All About?

Reeltime.com (not to be confused with ‘reel-time.com’, an online resource for saltwater flyfishers) has a confusing home page at first glance and my initial reaction was, “What on earth does this site broadcast?” 

Generic images flicker on the site, such as a family, some elephants, a sunset, a mountain? Initially I was wondering if this was a place for streaming video or was it just a generic clip-art site?

5 Years in Pre-Launch?

According to Wikipedia (and a citation is needed here) the site launched in 2004. Yet now in 2009 a ‘pre-launch’ notice is apparent on the ReelTime site.

According to a review on KillerStartups from 2007 it appeared that ReelTime was focusing on movie rental, including HD movies, but that focus seems to have changed since.

This makes me wonder if the site is ever going to officially launch. It’s typical for innovative start-ups to jump around with ideas and try different things, but after 5 years it still seems that ReelTime still has not found its footing, as the rest of this review will highlight.

Its also no surprise that the company has yet to turn a profit.

Navigation and Getting Started

The main page lists out a number of different “channels” with different topics, so to get started, I clicked on “1 ACTV”, which was arts and culture. This routed me to a list of interesting episode titles such as “ballroom dance healing”(?) and “Healing harp”(??).

Reeltime requires a registration before you can start viewing the videos, which I got through pretty quickly, and once you’ve completed this step and received your user confirmation email, you can begin viewing programs.

Channels Offered from Reeltime

I selected the option to view a program called “Trees Made of Glass” (if, for no other reason than the cool sounding title) and was routed to a page prompting for a Microsoft Silverlight plugin, which I installed fairly quickly through a link on Reeltime.

As far as browsers needed for Reeltime, I usually drive on Firefox, and this browser is supported, as well as IE and Safari. Windows and Mac 10 are also supported.

Some Technical Issues…

Once the Silverlight install completed, Reeltime told me:

Now, as an aside, I’m a software Quality Assurance Analyst full time, and nothing bothers me more than unearthing bugs on sites on which I don’t get paid to unearth them, especially if I’m NOT running a beta of a product, but an actual site.

However, clicking the, ahem, “1″ pop-up, cleared the message and I was on my way to learning about “glass trees”. The reeltime player worked fine, and offered a number of typical features like a full screen option, navigation buttons, and even a link for sharing the video clip.

Other Channel Offerings on Reeltime

My attention only being held so long, I decided to pop back to the main page to see what else Reeltime had to offer. Here are some samplings of what I found on the main channel map:

• FTV – “Food Television”, with programs such as “Church Pie Ladies” and “Chinese Feast”
• LTV – “Laugh Television”, featuring one program, “Speedy”(?)
• RSFTV – “Reel Sci-Fi Television”, featuring one program, “The British UFO Files” (no Doctor Who?)
• RLTV – “Reel Legal Television”, featuring “The Jaundiced Eye” (why have I never heard of some of these)

One of the channels, RTV-”Romance Television”, didn’t have any offerings, as well as some of the other channels, giving me the impression that this is a fairly new system and is still getting it’s footing.

Thoughts About the Programming

This looks and feels a lot like PBS broadcasts, or the type of programming you’d find on public television on any given day. Not overly thrilling material if you, like me, were weened on programs featuring cinematic space battles, evil aliens and robots.

Another thing that seemed strange to me was that the episodes I sampled capped off at about 2 1/2 minutes, with no continuation. Should there have been a ‘next’ button, or was that it, and shouldn’t the video have had a text message indicated something about the fact that I was only watching a trial? The few programs I caught, while not exciting, just ended after a couple minutes with no sense of completion. I had a hard time figuring out what was going on with this site.

Reeltime Store for Reeltime Items

Reeltime’s main page also links to a Reelstore where you can purchase things like hats, books, and health products, but much like the video selection, many of the departments are completely empty, such as the “Reel History Department”, which opens an empty folder stating “This department is currently empty. Please check back soon for new Products…” This site, and it’s store, could really benefit from a more robust inventory.

Premium Content with Reelclub

Reeltime also has a section for a reelclub that you can join. The offer includes discounts on merchandise from the stores, as well as a 10% discount on pay-per-view movies. What’s puzzling to me is that, all I can find on this site are television episodes. What movie’s is this talking about?

Apparently the site is in pre-launch, so it’s understandable if the site is missing some content or clarity, but it would have been appreciated if prior to putting this site online the folks at Reeltime had given a little more information about what this site is supposed to be about and when it will be offering full episodes of programs online.

Reeltime Links

• Reeltime
• Reeltime Channels and Categories

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The Bravo cable channel offers a number of full-length episodes that can be viewed online, including “Top Chef” and “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”

BravoTV Full-Length Episodes Online

Bravo is a cable channel offering a wide-variety of original programming. Their site, BravoTV.com, offers a number of full-length episodes, a large of video clips (over 7,000+) from a large number of their programs, in addition to other comments like image galleries, games and blogs.

Detailed Schedule of Bravo Programming

BravoTV also offers you a detailed viewing schedule of the day’s programming, with the ability to see two weeks worth in advanced. The schedule includes the name of the show, the broadcast time and a comprehensive description of the episode (enough of a description to let me know that I personally have no interest in viewing any of these programs in the first place.)

I know of the Bravo channel from watching “Inside the Actors Studio” with James Lipton from year ago, so it was interesting for me to research into Bravo online to see what else they are offering in addition to this. From the programming lineup, it appears the Bravo channel basically offers a large selection of original programming, some films, as well as repeats of older prime-time programs such as “West Wing”.

Full Episodes Available on BravoTV

Bravo offers some full-length programs on their site, and I checked out a few of these. Personally the sfull-show election seems a little limited, but all the same, it’s a fair sampling of some of Bravo’s original programming. Curiously, the first time I attempted to select a particular video I was routed to a blank screen and a “null: null” message, and as I’ve noted before, since my background is quality assurance, nothing irks me more than unearthing bugs that I don’t get paid to find (especially on high pagerank sites like BravoTV.com)

Regardless, I checked out an episode of “Top Chef”, and the episode loaded fine for me, with decent picture and sound. The episode starts, as you’d expect, with a quick advertiser message at the beginning, then a full episode plays with the standard navigation controls available on the site. Other than the initial “null” message, I was able to sample a couple videos, all of which ran fine but didn’t hold my attention for long.

BravoTv Clip of James Lipton Interviewing Hillary Swank

Other Features of BravoTV

In addition to online videos and episode guides, BravoTV also offers a number of, frankly, inane blogs. Unless someone is a serious fan of the programming and the actors from these shows, most all of these blogs are irrelevant and really didn’t hold my interest with any valuable content.

The Photos page of the BravoTV site offers a limited selection of images from Bravo programming (mostly dubious OC Housewife material), and the Games page of the site offers a selection of mostly IQ-style trivia games, again based on Bravo programming and that, if you don’t know the shows, the trivia is, well, trivial.

Final Thoughts…

In the quest to seek out new television programming viewable online, I have to say that personally, there is nothing whatsoever at all on Bravo that appeals to me personally, either in the programming or the site content.

Nevertheless, I’m sure that there are some people who will enjoy the full episodes offered online through Bravo. However, after browsing what Bravo has to offer I’m just left feeling that most of what they offer is shallow and superficial.

Bravo Video Links

• Bravo Main Site
• Bravo Full-Length Episodes

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