Joseph Maina is a Prison Break fan, but his life doesn't always permit him to watch it during its scheduled time.
"If I miss a show, then I go online and watch it," Maina (junior-computer science) said.
Maina is not alone. He is part of a growing number of television viewers who use the Internet to watch television shows. More than a fifth of households with Internet access watch television shows online, according to a September study conducted by market research firm TNS.
"Fundamentally, consumers expect content to be available when they want it, and on the screen of their choice - TV, PC or mobile," Michael Saxon, a senior vice president at TNS said, according to release. "For consumers, PCs enhance content on demand from simply time-shifting to place-shifting."
Professor S. Shyam Sundar, founder and co-director of Penn State's Media Effects Research Laboratory, said time-shifting, or the ability to choose when to watch television programs, puts consumers in charge of their television viewing habits.
"It gives the users more control," Sundar said. "It actually makes them more active users."
The top two Internet video destinations were Youtube.com and the official homepages for the various television networks, according to the press release. Other online sources for television shows mentioned in the study were hulu.com, iTunes, file-sharing programs and social networking Web sites.
However, the relatively young online video market is still growing, with yet another time-shifting option: Amazon Video On Demand.
The new service allows users to stream television programs to their PC or Macintosh computers using only an Internet browser.
This is in contrast with Amazon's other video service, Unbox, in which users were required to download television programs to their hard drives and view them using the Amazon Unbox application -- think iTunes for Amazon.
The programs available on Amazon Video On Demand are similar to those offered on its Unbox servies: The Office, 30 Rock, Bones and Knight Rider, to name a few.
Another similarity between the two services is price. Television episodes cost $1.99 each, or $1.89 per episode if viewers preorder an entire season from Amazon Video On Demand. The pay-per-stream model differs from Hulu's ad-supported free streaming model. Hulu recently made a move that could signal a shift in traditional television distribution models. According to its official blog, Hulu will stream the season premieres of Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, Life and 30 Rock a week before they are broadcast on television.
"The decision to debut shows on Hulu first is an interesting one," Don Reisinger wrote in a post on Techcrunch.com. "For years, TV studios were loath to even put television shows on the Web and most wanted to maintain the same business model they had clung to for years."
Sundar said the shift in viewing habits will make for more discerning television viewers.
"With greater activity comes greater critical thinking," Sundar said, adding time-shifting will make viewers "more selective with what they watch."
