Sanctuary, Starcrossed & SciFi.com: Watching TV Online

TV sure is changing. Not only are we all going digital and having the choice of going High-Def, but we're getting other new options as well. How about TV shows that are only available on the web?

Enter SciFi.com, which seems to be leading the way to TV-less television.

• Their Sci Fi Rewind video player is being upgraded for better streaming video of full-length TV shows.
• They're premiering the debut episode of Battlestar Galactica's last season online, nine hours before broadcast.
• They're creating original scripted and unscripted shows for broadcast on the website -- including Sanctuary, starring Amanda Tapping from Stargate: SG-1 (filmed entirely against green screens) and Starcrossed, a series about a sci-fi space soap. Eight webisodes of Sanctuary are available, and you can buy them to watch on the web or download to your computer. (Each webisode is as long as is needed to tell the story; in essence, all shows will be directors' cuts. And a side note: the creators allow purchasers to pretty much do whatever they want with the downloaded file. Burn it to a DVD, share it with a friend, whatever.)

Why do I, a librarian, care about where TV is going?

Well, I care about stories, whether in print, audio, on film, or even told over the campfire. The delivery mechanism for stories is changing -- reaching out through new technologies to people it could never reach before -- and that I care about very much.

I've been talking up going to the library without walking through the doors of the building, and what SciFi.com is doing is right down my (virtual) alley. So you don't get good TV reception. So you live in an area that only gets three channels. So you're vacationing in Spain, working in Hong Kong, or fighting in Afghanistan. Or maybe you're living in London or even at the South Pole. Got the internet? Then you can kick back and watch new shows that aren't chopped up by commercials, censored because of advertisers, or chopped into bits that don't really make sense so they'll fit in a particular time slot.

The story IS what it needs to be.

And a librarian can sure get behind that.

(Starcrossed is written by Stargate Atlantis' David Hewlett, and its creation is a web story in itself. For a preview, see Hewlett's indie film A Dog's Breakfast, available for download and on DVD.)

Currently Reading: "How Starbucks Saved My Life" by Michael Gates Gill
Currently Listening To: German Requiem by Brahms