Toxic Shock TV has recently had the pleasure of being introduced to a great little Comcast-spinoff website, Fancast.com. If you’re not familiar with Comcast, they’re the largest cable provider in the US as of 2008 and their online media arm, Comcast Interactive, has recently brought Fancast.com online to allow for free viewings of a variety of TV shows, movies and movie trailers. With network information as well as blogs, TV listings, and even on-demand guides, Fancast.com is aiming for providing a well-rounded service that I’m liking a lot.

Upon hearing about the site, initially I figured that it’d be a “too-good-to-be-true” sort of deal, requiring a subscription for full viewings and only offer clips of shows for free. But it’s actually true, allowing for good-to-excellent-quality streams of shows like “Family Guy”, “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”, and even early releases of season premieres, like the second-season premiere of NBC’s hit “Life”. There are even full-length films ranging from the obscure to major hits like 2002’s summer blockbuster “The Scorpion King” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the former WWE wrestling star.

It’s certainly a broad well to draw from, and from what I can tell there really are only two drawbacks here, which are small at best. The first is that being ad-supported, there is some commercial interruption of both the TV shows as well as the films, though it’s honestly no more annoying than watching the films on TV, and here they’re shown uncut and uncensored. So while it’s an annoyance, it is relatively minor.

The other minor drawback is that their database of material is so broad it’s probably not the best place if you’re trying to say, follow “Lost” or “Heroes” from the beginning. For example, a search for say, “It’s Always Sunny…” brings up a smattering of episodes in no particular order.

So if you’re looking to kill time at work or on a Saturday afternoon with nothing good on TV and no interesting DVD’s laying around, this is definitely a site to check out. Even though I’ve been aware of places like Hulu.com before and of the growing availability for legal viewings of my favorite shows online, Fancast.com’s general selection of stuff as well as letting me watch whole films is definitely bringing me back on a regular basis.

In terms of-

Selection: 80%
Video Quality: 80%
User interface: 80%
Average rating: 80%

By: Costa Koutsoutis