I just watched the latest episode of House, a show that I really enjoy. As far as I know the episode was shown on television last night or at most a few nights ago, and faster than I could get it from one of the many BitTorrrent sources I look at when I miss a show, it was on Dailymotion for easy flash based viewing. The quality was good enough for my needs, and the download was fast.

This really leads me to believe that such technologies are really progressing to the point where television on demand is definitely not a pipe dream, and BitTorrent is maybe not even the technology that will bring us television on demand, except for maybe high definition shows. Maybe, though, the next version of flash could bring us even closer to not needing BitTorrent for such services.

Without using any special tools, the video remains on the server, not on my hard drive, advertisements surround the show as it plays, and I enjoy the same show that was on television just one night ago, on my web browser today. This is quickly becoming something that many television stations in the USA are looking at, and have been posting their videos on custom sites the day after the episode airs. Being in Canada, I can’t access these services as it says that it is for US citizens only. I could use a Proxy and get there, but why fuss about when I can find other ways to get the content I want.

While this might not be perfect for everyone, I still think it is an amazing advancement, despite not being entirely legal in its current form. There are sites popping up all over the net indexing the uploads to popular video services like Dailymotion and whatnot. I will definitely be watching this evolve, and how the media industry deals with it.