RTLnow sucks!

RTL is a German television station. One of their advertisements went like this:

That is Max. Max has just missed his favourite tv show. NO PROBLEM NOW! BECAUSE NOW, THERE IS RTLNOW! WATCH YOUR FAVOURITE TV SHOWS ON THE INTERNET! (and so on)

Okay, sounds good so far. I mean, that's not the first time I hear about stuff on tv being shown on the internet, too. You can even watch Formula One live on the internet, that's RTL's new service since a while ago. So it's available on tv and internet at the same time, no strings attached. You decide.

So... you might be thinking that RTLnow is the next step, because now you can even skip anything on tv and watch it later, at your own convenience. Needless to say, I will not wait too long because my episode might already be replaced by the one after that. So okay, what do you think I discovered when I checked out this site?

Well... it was shit. First of all, I purposely missed one brand new episode of Dr. House, and that -is- my "favourite tv show". So yeah, I thought: I will just go to this site and watch it there. But no! Not only is House not available on this site (so much about "your favourite tv show"), but you also have to
PAY
for the shit!

What is that? Let me get it straight for you: You can watch F1 live, you get it for free, you can turn off the tv, they don't care, they don't even care that the viewing rate on tv gets low because obviously, just like tv itself, they get clicks or "internet viewing rate" or something like that. I think you know what I mean. So to sum it up: They allow you to watch a great sports event that only comes every couple of weeks. They allow that. Live. No paying, you can just do it for free.

But when it comes to tv shows, they do NOT allow you to:

-watch a crappy episode of any random tv series
-to watch that episode for free
-to watch it for free days after it was already on tv anyway

So... it is only an episode of a tv show, no world championship, no live event, nothing that makes you want to grab popcorn and beer (not that I would).It's not live, so it does not even compete against tv, but nevertheless, you are supposed to pay! And most of all, there is no clue whatsoever in the tv advertisement! It looks like paradise! You miss an episode, who cares, you watch it on the internet! No, it was just a crappy joke.

What do they expect and why do they use this strategy? Is it like "telling them that it costs money will make them shy away"?
I mean, it's not like I see it costs money and then I think: Oh... what a surprise. Well, who cares, just give me the damn episode now that I have gone the long way to my computer and typed in the address!
Hell no! I can watch it for free in English, just have to search for it. It's more inconvenient, but okay, I will do it as long as I know what House did last time, but I'm not paying damn money for it.

The biggest joke of all is this: If I had known all of this before, I would have watched the episode that day. I would have stayed up and not done anything else. I would have given this shitty tv station their viewing rate. But instead, they neither got my viewing rate, nor did they get my money.

I think I will write to them some time in the future. After watching House today. On TV!