It’s wild, but I am beginning to come to a point where my now limited TV watching time is evenly split between using DTV and my traditional cable-connected television set. To be honest, I can hardly believe it myself. A mere two years ago, the Internet offered me little more than YouTube-like video. Entertaining, perhaps. Yet, it offered no real staying power.

Today however, is a very different story. Using programs like Democracy Player, I am able to have access to a number of fantastic independent programs that I would not likely find elsewhere. And unlike Akimbo, DTV offers all of the content I could ever want for free.

Alright, how about a reality check here. Obviously much of what they offer in the channel guide is not a great match for everyone, this is to be expected. But if you know what to look for, you can add any “vodcast” of your choosing: DL.TV, WeatherBug National Outlook, Diggnation, On10.net, Nova, Make Zing and then just for laughs; Ask A Ninja, Tiki Bar TV and of course, Strong Bad Emails.

I am still urging them to allow for an option for minimizing to the system tray, but short of that, both the current Beta version and the new tester’s version are outstanding. To make things even more exciting, I have my favorite video aggregator running perfectly on both my Windows desktop and my Ubuntu notebook. Yup, it runs wonderfully on Ubuntu when you read the directions carefully. All you have to do is download and click on the packages; that and make sure you have Mozilla Suite installed as well. No frustration, no tears - I promise. Also, those looking to run this on Ubuntu will want to make sure that all the missing codec goodies are installed. I recommend Easy Ubuntu for this need - it has never failed me.

For those Windows users interested in taking a walk on the wild side, I would suggest looking at the latest nightly build - 0.9.0-rc2. Seriously, it’s incredible.