By this time you probably know that Netflix has been forced to increase their prices by sixty percent in order to remain profitable after Hollywood decided to kill the golden goose (e.g., jack up the prices that Netflix has to pay for streaming movies and rental DVDs). My wife is adamant that we’re going to cancel our Netflix subscription altogether because of this. I don’t have to live with Netflix, so I’ll live without them.

But what will replace our instant-gratification streaming movies and cheap DVD rentals?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that Blockbuster is not an option; they’ve just closed the local store in my home town, and I don’t trust them to stay in business long enough to deliver any streaming video after they get my money, so buh-bye Blockbuster, it’s been real.

What about Hulu Plus? Nah. One basic rule: Never pay to watch commercials (cable or satellite doesn’t count, you’re paying them for signal, not content). Besides, even the most recent experience I’ve had with Hulu tells me that they don’t understand how to design a streaming video client that works well on anything less than a Cray, or a HAL 9000.

So what else is out there?

• The free version of Hulu. Not my first choice, but let’s just get it out of the way. Not available for Roku (yet). Works (for some values of “works”) on PCs.
• Redbox for DVDs, although they’ve had to increase prices, too, from 99 cents to $1.15 per night.
• A quick look at Amazon Video On Demand shows me that they have most of what I’d be willing to pay for, and mostly at reasonable rates. In fact, Amazon Prime members don’t pay extra for quite a few of the shows and movies I’d be interested in seeing. Amazon Prime works out to about $6.58 per month (it’s quoted as “$79/year”), so that’s even less than the Netflix streaming-only option under the new price structure, at $7.99/month. Supports Roku and PC.
• E-Z-Takes offers both sale and rental of “hard to find” video, both streaming and downloadable (which can then be burned to DVD).
• Crackle.com (mentioned here previously) has movies, TV, and original content for free (ad-supported, with considerably fewer ads than prime-time TV). They have a new Android app, too, in addition to the PC and Roku options.
• First on Mars has a pretty good line-up of broadcast TV series. PC only as near as I can tell.
• eclipse.tv works  with Google Chrome, Firefox, Google TV, and Ubuntu to bring you streaming video.
• YouTube Movies offers full-length videos on a pay-per-view basis, including free and 99 cent rentals.
• Boxee either as a downloaded and installed program on your Mac, PC, or Linux system, or the Boxee Box. This gives you centralized access to all sorts of streaming video as well as local content (on your hard drive or local area network).

So, I will miss Netflix, but not that much. It’s not like there’s a whole lot of content coming out of Hollywood that’s worth watching, anyhow.

This past week, I was pleasantly surprised to find a new channel on my Roku player called “Crackle.” It was free (ad-supported) so I took a look at it. I found that it’s basically a Roku feed of Crackle.com, so you people using Home Theater PCs and other devices that can access the Web, and can play Flash videos, can access it too.

So I quickly poked around and found that Crackle has full-length movies, TV series, movie trailers, and original content, all free and ad-supported, more or less like broadcast TV. Now, the movies are not first-run stuff by any means; I watched a Godzilla film that probably dates to the Sixties, but I saw several others that are more recent, including both versions of Heavy Metal and more various Godzilla and Mothra movies than I even knew existed. I didn’t attempt to look at all of the offerings. Crackle also has such TV series as The Tick (woot!) and Bewitched. Later I checked out Crackle.com on my computer and perused some of the original content. One that I am definitely going to watch regularly is called Trenches. It’s science fiction, and the five-and-a-half minute “teaser” episode was probably eighty-five or ninety percent action, with spaceships and ground troops shooting things up with lasers and who-knows-what. Video is available up to 720p so if you’ve got your device hooked to an HDTV, be ready for a visual treat.

About those ads (it’s ad-supported, remember?): During my viewing of Godzilla, there were several “breaks” during which a 10-second blurb for Battlefield 3 played. That was it. It wasn’t long enough to go grab a soda and chips (but the Roku remote has a pause/play button so in theory I could have).

The description for Trenches, by the way, grabbed me: “The creator of Star Wars Revelations brings Sci-Fi online with a take-no-prisoners attitude reminiscent of Pitch Black.” If you’re any kind of a geek, I think it will grab you, too.

Now, let’s see what else is available; visit each link for full details:

• Crackle.com (mentioned above).
• Everyone knows about Hulu by now. Personally, I’m not impressed, but many people love it. I find Hulu to be a resource hog, requiring about twice the amount of computer compared to every other method of getting TV over the Internet. Your mileage may vary; try it for free and see if it meets your needs.
• Boxee has quite a range of shows, plus there is a list of live streaming TV maintained in the Boxee forums
• Eclipse.tv is an app meant for Google Chrome; possibly you could make it work with another browser if you’re that masochistic. It aggregates links to many other video sources. Incidentally, I am running it on my Chromebook.
• YouTube while not as easy to search as some other methods, now carries full movies in addition to user-submitted material.
• Netflix has both streaming and disk-by-mail services, and carries movies, TV series (I am currently getting Season 1 of Torchwood, a Doctor Who spinoff) and documentaries which have appeared on cable channels like Discovery and The History Channel. You can even get full seasons of Mythbusters which is great for those weekends when you just want to blow stuff up, but you live in a no-explosives zone.
• Amazon steaming video rentals range range from free on up.

There are several others that I am currently reviewing; I’ll edit this blog if I find any worth your time.

So it’s Monday, Labor Day, around nine PM, and I don’t feel like going to bed yet. So I asked the wife, “Want to watch a movie?” She says, “Do we have time?” “Sure!” I reply, “We can watch a dozen or so!”

So, during the next hour, we watched Freddy vs. Jason, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pulp Fiction, Highlander, The Big Chill, Night of the Living Dead, Titanic, The Shining, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Exorcist, Alien, Jaws, War of the Worlds, Star Wars, King King, and Rocky.

“How is that possible in just one hour?” I hear you wondering. Well, we watched the 30-second Bunnies Theater condensed versions of all of those movies (which actually are closer to a minute long each). They are all rated “AC” for “Adult Content,” and I would not recommend them for young children, but honestly, of the actual movies I have seen versus the 30-second Bunnies version, I would have to say the the bunnies did it better; not “just as well,” but better!

To quote from the Netflix synopsis: “If you don’t have two hours to watch your favorite movie, get the 30-second, laugh-out-loud version here, acted out by adorable animated bunnies. Jennifer Shiman created this award-winning series and she, along with Douglas McInnes, provide the voices.”

So, to make this review as condensed as the 30-second Bunnies Theater, I’ll cut it short here, and just tell you that there are 3 seasons available on Netflix Watch Instantly, and I look forward to watching all of Season 3 tonight! Don’t wait: Get your bunnies on!