Right now, TV is passive entertainment. You sit at home (if you're lucky), at work or a sports bar and content is delivered to you. Vivid moving pictures and clear sound just 'transmit' themselves to your eyes and ears. Ah, pure enjoyment!
Of course, life is not that easy. I want to watch TV almost all the time, but work, family, life all interrupt my precious TV time. Here comes technology to the rescue. I can download my favourite shows and watch them later. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
American networks like USA do have full episodes available online, but the two biggest disadvantages are (1) You have to wait until they are ready to show you and (2) You may have to watch on your computer.
So, Hulu doesn't work for us in Jamaica, but AppleTV, Boxbe and a number of other services do allow us to identify the shows we like, pay for them, download them and have them waiting for us when we are ready. Even better, we can sync the episodes with mobile devises like an iPhone and voila - TV on your phone.