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Despite a regulator-approved delay to the nationwide digital TV switchover, more than a third of the nation's TV stations plan to begin broadcasting completely in digital next week.

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday released a list of 681 of the nation's 1,800 or so TV stations that plan to make the switch by February 17.

Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, the American DVD rental company, has given a vote of confidence to web TV.

Speaking at New TeeVee Live in San Francisco, he explained how in an ideal world all TVs should have internet browsers to watch internet television. The problem is, the technology is not quite there yet.

"In terms of what you want to watch, we may be 15 per cent of the way there, but this will grow with time," explained Hastings.

"When you want to watch is covered 100 per cent, but when it comes to where you want to watch we're still limited to the laptop."

aljazeera-tv-online live

A number of recent patent filings from Google were published at the USTPO, and may provide some insights into Google’s advertising models for Television, Radio, and Podcasts.

I’ve linked to the patent filings below, and included the abstracts from those rather than an analysis of the filings. Most of those abstracts are pretty good summaries.

A guide to helping make the television obsolete, or at least more friendly to your Netflix

One of the simplest ways to save money in these troubled times is to cancel cable services. Comcast’s Digital Starter has an ongoing cost of $57.50 a month, which is an absurd amount for only seven good channels and 150 bad ones.