At this point, television networks have made some prime time content available for free online. We're not talking about $1.99 downloads from iTunes. We're talking free streaming episodes from networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW.

But you can usually find just few episodes of a few programs. Mashable has put together a list of 33 services that provide online access to TV programs in one way or another. Some are 100% legal, like Joost and Babelgum. Others are a bit shadiers, like TV Links, which doesn't host any copyright-infringing video on its servers, but provides links to sites where you can (probably illegally) stream video.

Thing is, TV still wins. You've got one box that you turn on, and you have access to all the programs you can eat. Get yourself a personal video recorder and you can tape shows that air at inconvenient times to watch later. Sure, you might not get BBC America on your cable plan, or you might not even have cable. But not a single one of these services is as easy to navigate as a TV set with your remote control.

Democracy Player 0.9.6 is out, and the open source media player has added a host of new features for finding and watching videos on the internet or stored on your computer.

Here's some of the new features:

• Democracy Player 0.9.6 fixes some compatibility issues with Windows Vista.
  
• Folder Watch monitors selected folder on your PC. When you add videos to that folder they show up in your collection.
• Democracy Player will save your place if you stop watching a video in the middle. Next time you watch that same video, it will pick up where it left off.
• Mac users can now download and install updates through the client. No need to download an installer using a web browser.
• There are also a bunch of bug fixes, memory leak fixes, and reduced memory usage.
  

The Democracy team is pretty much done adding new features for now, and will focus primarily on bug fixes until version 1.0 hits the streets, at which point the media player will get a new name: Miro.

If you can't beat them, join them -- and charge them. That's Warner Brother's latest strategy for battling video piracy in Hong Kong. The movie studio will offer 100 titles online, including recent DVD releases such as Superman Returns and Happy Feet as well as popular older titles like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The videos will be available for a fee through ViDeOnline's 08Media web site.

Hollywood studios say they lose billions of dollars a year to video piracy, with China being one of the hottest spots for internet pirates. Warner Brothers' move is designed to give Chinese consumers a chance to get high quality movies for a small price rather than turning to the black market.

The files will include DRM to prevent copying. No word on exactly how much the studio will charge for the downloads, or whether anyone in Hong Kong will actually use the service.

Internet television platform Joost is inching closer to a public release. While we might have been expecting version 1.0 to follow a series of 0.9 releases, Joost surprised us with a 0.10.2 "Now For Friends" edition.

Last week Joost announced current users could invite an unlimited number of friends to join the closed beta. In practical terms, that meant giving all users 999 invitations. The latest version doesn't even include a number of invites.

Version 0.10.2 also includes some bugfixes and some new sharing features. For example, you can send users a link to the program you're currently watching. If you click the "i" button next to the title of the show you're watching, you can copy a link and paste it to an email or any other document.

That URL will bring up the landing page for the show you're watching. If you already have Joost installed, when you click the "Click to start Joost" link on the landing page Joost will start, or it will change shows if it's already running.

This doesn't seem nearly as useful as being able to embed video clips on a blog or website, but it's sort of social, right? In other Joost news, the company is continuing to sign major content partners to actually provide viewers with something worth watching.

So what's all this hullabaloo about Joost anyway? If you aren't lucky enough to score one of the invites we're giving away, take a peep inside Joost with our handy video. If you're impatient, skip ahead about a minute, because Joost on a Mac takes a wee bit to shake the cobwebs off.

Click To Play

Ok, so it may not exactly be HD quality video but as compared to what video on ABC.com used to look like, it's pretty darn close. ABC recently re-launched the video player on their website giving the video overall a much better look and getting rid on that nasty freezing and jerking feature that used to be present when you tried to watch full-length programming on the site.The new player has two different sizes for your viewing pleasure. One full-screen option (a first for a network site) and then another "mini" 240x136 pixel screen.

Unlike other network sites where the video is Flash based ABC has decided to use technology from Move Networks. While Flash is encoded at one bit rate, Move video is encoded at multipe bit rates at the same time. Broadcasting and Cable explains the difference by saying "While Flash streams video at a constant rate using the proprietary Flash Media Server, Move Networks streams its videos at an adaptive rate off commodity components on standard HTTP servers." The video quality you see is dependent on your CPU and available bandwidth allowing some computers to approach HD quality with their video. End result? Much better video quality and consistency for watching that Lost episode you missed.

[Via Broadcasting and Cable]