TVSquad

There are dozens of ways to find out what's on TV tonight. You could check the TV listings in your local paper, or in TV Guide. But honestly, I don't know anybody who actually does that anymore. There are hundreds of web sites with TV listings as well. But mytvrss provides one of the simplest web-based solutions for keeping track of new episodes.

When you visit the mytvrss web page, you're presented with a list of a few dozen popular TV shows. If a show you watch isn't listed, just contact the site and they might add your show to the list. All you have to do is click the check boxes next to the shows you want to follow and mytvrss will create a custom RSS feed for yu. Pop it into your RSS reader, and you'll receive an update every time there's a new episode of one of your shows.

You don't get a ton of information in your RSS reader, just the series and episode titles and an episode number. But there's also a link on each item that you can click to receive episode summaries.

[via MakeUseOf]

I'm starting to feel like Hulu was designed specifically for people who don't have cable or satellite television. Well, people who only need a handful of cable channels including Sci-Fi, FX, and Bravo, anyway. I've been using Hulu to keep up with a couple of shows that I can't pick up with my terrestrial digita antenna, like Battlestar Galactica and The Riches. But Hulu only keeps new episodes of each show online for a limited time, so if you forget to watch for a few weeks you could miss a show.

Now Hulu has added a subscription feature that helps ensure you never miss a show. Hulu already let you add programs to a queue for later viewing. But now the site has two new features which make the queue more useful. First, when you subscribe to a show, new episodes will automatically be added to your queue. Second, you can set your queue properties so that Hulu will shoot you an email any time a new item is added to your queue.

Polls/contests like this always make me a little nervous. I just know that they are going to leave out one of my favorite characters, and it just ticks me off.

The folks over at RedEye in Chicago are holding their 2nd annual Best Character on TV poll. They give you a list of characters to go up against one another (in different "regions") and you vote for the one you like the best. It's tournament-style, so characters will be eliminated as the weeks go by until we're left with a winner. This is the first round of the voting, and it ends this Friday, May 9, so get those votes in now.

You know how Apple's iTunes store was once music only, and then the company added TV and movies? Yeah, replace the word Apple with Microsoft and you've pretty much got today's news. Well most of it, anyway. Microsoft has rolled out an updated version of its Zune Marketplace software. And while movies are nowhere to be seen, there are about 800 episodes from popular TV shows available for purchase at $1.99 a pop.

Titles include South Park, The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Robot Chicken, and Rock of Love. All of the shows are from NBC Universal, MTV, or Turner. While the pricing in competitive with Apple's iTunes Store, it'd be nice to see a slightly larger content library. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if the networks currently on board sell a decent number of TV episodes, we'll see other networks join soon enough.

Lycos Cinema is a pretty nifty concept. Registered users can login to the site, find a movie they want to watch, and then invite friends to watch on their own computers. The movie plays almost simultaneously on each computer, which lets users chat in real-time about the movie they're all watching. The site featurs a combination of free movies and TV shows and videos available for rental. You can pay to watch a movie yourself, or pay a bit more for a 5 or 10 person rental.

But there's one major problem. The content is absolutely horrid. There are no contemporary movies or TV shows. And the older titles are pretty much B-list material. If you like Godzilla films, Lyco Cinema might be the site for you. But if you're looking for the latest summer blockbusters, you might want to try Netflix.

TV commercials are fairly easy to satirize. If you think about it, advertising is sort of ridiculous in the first place (a TV show is interrupted to ask you to buy toilet paper and gum?), so they're a natural for parody. There have been a lot of great parodies over the years, from shows such as Saturday Night Live and SCTV, and now Nerve has picked the 50 that they consider to be the best.

There are a lot of great choices, from SNL's "Colon Blow," "Schmitt's Gay Beer," and "Compulsion by Calvin Klein" to the Zoloft ad from Mad TV. One of my favorites is SNL's "Happy Fun Ball" spot, which was written by Jack Handey and included in his new book of essays What I'd Say To The Martians. It's a good list all around, though it's also one that I feel is missing a bunch of good ones, only I can't put my finger on which ones are missing at the moment.

The one they pick as number one is undoubtedly a classic, though I think it's overrated. I've always loved the one after the jump.

There is an interesting little bit over at the NY Times about research the Disney-ABC Television Group is working on. That research involves inserting multiple commercials into ad breaks for the online versions of their prime time shows. Well, you had to see this one coming, right?

It's understandable that they would want to increase the revenue from the medium. Just as it's understandable that if it's a success we'll see the other networks follow suit. But, they do need to be careful that they don't chase those fans they do have away by annoying them. Although, admittedly, I would not be one to complain about more Rachel Specter commercials.

What's happening on other blogs via the interweb.

• Is Katee Sackhoff about to join CSI?
• Daryn Kagan visited CNN for the first time since getting canned after 12 years and it was...odd (especially the second video).
• What the heck was going on at the Ellen show the other day?
• Get ready for more commercials on TV network sites.
• Earl Pomerantz tells a secret about a Mary Tyler Moore Show script he wrote.
• How would you like to star in the new music video that Zach Braff is directing?
• Ratings for The Office hit a season low the other night, and 30 Rock's weren't that great either.
• Check out the storyboards for the second season of Mad Men.

Who saw last night's episode of The Office? Were you mesmerized as Dwight swindled Andy into taking a lower offer for his Nissan Xterra? Were you jealous and wished that you could do the same thing? Well now's your chance... sort of. Although, by the time this auction is over, you may have some issues flipping it for a higher price like Dwight did.

Our sister site Autoblog stumbled onto a great find earlier today - the actual SUV used in the episode "Did I Stutter?" is up for auction on eBay. The Xterra in question is owned by one of the studio hairstylists on The Office. The car had been used as a prop car - the car Andy "owned" on the show. Hoping to capitalize on the car's newfound fame, the owner has put it up for sale. To entice Office fans, some extras (not furnished by the dealer) are included:

NBC boss Ben Silverman tells TV Week that in 15 years, we won't really be using TV for anything except launching a show and to watch big "event" shows like American Idol and The Super Bowl.

I have to agree with one of the commenters at TV Week who says that if NBC wants us to go online to see the final scene of a TV show, then we're going to change the channel and watch something else. I don't want to have to work to get my entertainment. It's television; I want to sit in front of it with a cold drink and maybe some Doritos and watch something from start to finish. What's next, movies that end with a giant "GO TO IRONMANMOVIE.MARVEL.COM TO SEE THE EXCITING ENDING TO THIS FILM!"? Or maybe we can purchase a DVD of the ending as we head out the theater door?

I think that Silverman is right when he says that TV networks and shows will have to have some sort of online companion if they want to stick around. But that's nothing new, the networks and most TV shows already have all that. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Personally, I think that in 15 years we're still going to have our TV sets in our living rooms, though the computer/TV merge will be a lot better and in every home.

Besides being the day that the series finale of Seinfeld aired, May 14, 1998 was also the day that legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra died at the age of 82. I remember spending an entire week listening to nothing but Sinatra songs, watching all the specials that aired that week, reading all of the obituaries and tributes. And now TCM is going to honor the man by airing a month long tribute starting today. In fact, they've launched a special web site for the event, Frank Sinatra: The Man and His Movies.

Startup ZeeVee announced its new set media streaming device, the ZvBox today. Unlik the Apple TV, Windows Media Extenders, or pretty much any other set top box designed to let you watch PC and internet content on your TV, the ZvBox works with your home's coaxial cable network. In other words, you plug the ZvBox into your PC so it can use your internet connection, and plug the other end into a spare cable jack. It will find a TV channel not currently used by your cable provider and allow create a new HD channel you to tune in to on any TV in the house to access the ZvBox service.

So what content can you access? Pretty much anything you can watch on your PC, including YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, BitTorrent, and Netflix content. If your PC has a DVD player, you can access that. If it has a TV tuner, you can use ZvBox to watch live TV.. on your TV. Or more to the point, you can set up a PVR in the bedroom and watch recorded shows on any TV in the house -- assuming you have cable in each room in the house. If you're in a bunny-ears only household, the ZvBox might not be the best solution.

The ZvBox (plus the ZvRemote control and Zview software -- they like the letter Z) will be available in June for $499.