Wishing you hadn’t missed that latest Today Show episode?

Or maybe the season finale of Heroes, or how about an episode of your favorite G4 show?. How about The Simpsons, season 15, episode 3?

Sounds good to us :D. Don’t have one of those expensive DVR boxes? Not to worry, you don’t need it anyway. Since it is now standard to have a high-speed internet connection nowadays (after all who would be reading a technology blog on dialup?), a lot of television networks are putting full episodes of popular shows onto the web.

Many of the larger networks are airing some of their most popular shows online (such as CBS‘ Survivor, NBC’s Tonight Show, ABC’s Lost). Netflix offers a package that allows users to stream unlimited movies for a nominal fee (one word comes to mind when I heard this - “Arrgh”).

“They’ve got to start making money,” said Adam Wright, the director of Ipsos MediaCT, a market research firm in Minneapolis that analyzes converging media and content in the telecom and technology industries.

Most of the sites providing this feature are hoping to get lots of money of it by adding in short advertisements throughout the video just like we are used to, the only difference is that you can’t fastforward through the ads when you are streaming it. Nowadays most people just pause the tv while they go and do something and then when they get back they can fast-forward through all the commercials.

A study in December by an analyst division of Experian Research Services that people watching online are 44 percent “more engaged” with commercials that are streaming online as compared to those that they see on TV. This means that people will be more likely to watch commercials online instead of using them as a great excuse to go

Get the coffee ready for tomorrow morning

To the bathroom

Refill a drink

Grab another beer.

While the TV is still the main thing used to watch TV (go figure) the internet is gaining speed quickly according to Wright’s research.

Over half the people in the country over age 12 have watched video online. In February 2008 people watched 19 percent of video online, as compared to only 11 percent from the year before, and in 2008 they watched 70 percent of video on the standard tube, down from 75 percent in 2k8 .

What we want to know is where youtube is in this whole matter. we have all seen tons of videos with well over a million views, and google probably has a few million videos on their servers, and we are willing to bet that almost all of them have been watched at least 10 times.

Doing some math here thats at least 10 million views, but since most videos are viewed way more than that, (those of you who saw daft hands - it got like 25 million views before it got deleted for infringing on song copyright) we estimate that youtube videos have been viewed at least 2 billion times.

Last time we checked 1 million was a big number, and we really doubt TV will be able to keep its lead for more than a couple more years. If we are still around then we will be sure to post the percentages again, but until then, keep reading, and feel free to reply in the comments below.