Extras – Fox offers 2-4 minutes recaps for a lot of its shows, and several of the shows have extra clips available on the show’s dedicated pages.

NBC
Episodes: 18 (of 26 shows)
HD: 10
Plugin: No for SD, Yes for HD
Extras: Yes

I’m not sure where to start with NBC. They offer a lot of episodes and their extras and web-exclusives were the best of the bunch. They also took a big step this fall and released some of their fall premiers online a week before they aired on TV. You can even set up a viewing party and invite a group of people to join you online. Don’t forget that NBC is a big player on Hulu.com. Add to that the massive amount of ways you could watch the Olympics online this summer and NBC seems poised to jump to the front of the pack.

But things take a big step back when you look at the fact the NBC is the only network that forces you to download not just a browser plugin, but a separate program to watch HD shows: the NBC Direct Beta. Further, once you download the program you have to register with NBC to get access to the HD shows, and once you start watching, there’s a 48-hour window before it becomes unavailable to watch. In this aspect, NBC is far behind the other sites.

HD – Even with all the good things NBC is doing on its site, it’s hard to get past the NBC Direct Beta thing. NBC looks at it as a positive that you are actually downloading the shows to your PC, but the downloads are laced with DRM, can’t be shared among computers, and can’t be backed up or moved to a portable player. On top of that, to watch a show you have to download the player, install it, register, choose an episode, download the episode and then watch it. In that time, you could probably watch a full episode in HD from any of the other three networks. You might think that by downloading the show, you’d get a bump in quality. You’d be wrong. In my tests, NBC’s downloaded HD wasn’t as clear as Fox or ABC.

And remember the player is called Beta for a reason. I had problems with sign in, verifying my account and even getting downloads started during my tests.

Extras - There’s plenty of web exclusive content from shows like “Heroes” and “The Office,” including a couple shows that have recurring webisodes. The “Two-Minute Replays” make it easy to catch up on a show. 

Final Thoughts
We’ve come a long way in a couple years. The networks seem to finally realize the reality of online video and are adjusting accordingly. There’s still a lot of room to grow but the bottom line is you could easily keep up with all your shows, many in HD, without paying a dime for cable or satellite.

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