I wouldn’t normally talk about reading in a column about television, but I’m a technoholic.
My latest addiction, the Amazon Kindle my husband gave me for my birthday, is described by its maker as a “wireless reading device.” I’ve been calling the Kindle the iPod for old people because of its ability to bump up the size of the type of just about anything you’re reading on it, from books to newspapers.
But though the bookworm in me loves being able to carry as many as 200 books in a device that weighs less than many paperbacks, it’s the wireless service Amazon throws in — so far, for free — that feeds my technoholic’s ever-growing demand for instant gratification.
Because if I can buy and download a book I just heard about in less than 30 seconds, I’m going to be just that much more impatient the next time I have to go looking for a TV show or video I want to watch and can’t take it with me when I go.
Sure, I can still pay $1.99 on Apple’s iTunes for episodes of some TV shows and then transfer them to my iPod, but it remains a clunky, two-step procedure and costs more than it probably should for something I’ll likely watch only once.
So I’ll admit I was jazzed when I read recently that , which is now offering some video for mobile phones, had done an end run around Apple and formatted a few episodes of “The Office” and “30 Rock” specifically for iPhones and iPod Touches, whose users can no longer get those shows through iTunes.
It’s not the future yet, but it’s a glimpse.
In the meantime, the present continues to get better and better for those who don’t mind watching television on a computer monitor or laptop.
Where once I might have only shrugged and offered sympathy, I can now point friends who’ve missed episodes and come looking for a screener of that “Grey’s Anatomy” episode they missed toward .
I’m not crazy, though, about the way ABC’s player clutters up my computer with hundreds of little files.
A similar program, from Move Networks, powers the CW and Fox websites, and as a result I’m not able to use any of them on my office computer without causing problems.
Though I continue to turn first to Hulu (hulu.com), as I did to catch up with the season finale of Fox’s “Bones,” I’ve also recently been checking out Comcast’s ., which sometimes gets me stuff I can’t find on Hulu.
I’ve visited but haven’t fully explored the similar-looking Veoh (veoh.com), but I’m holding off on Joost (joost.com) because, like ABC, Fox and the CW, it wants me to download a player.
