New South Park site debuts, with full episode streaming

Ah, I remember the good old days -- whenever a new South Park episode aired, we used to walk uphill in the snow, barefoot, to download it off BitTorrent networks or websites like AllSP. And we were grateful!

But no more. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have just debuted a new version of the South Park Studios website with Comedy Central, where - with Darth Viacom's blessing - you can now stream any episode from any of the show's 12 seasons.

Reached by email this afternoon, Matt Stone tells Boing Boing,

Every South Park episode and billions of clips have been online for years on YouTube or BitTorrent (...) we've always loved the fact that more people in more places could see our little show. The new website just makes it easier for people to see and share South Park.

Eventually every episode and clip will be available everywhere in the world. There is a tangle of contracts that Comedy Central has with different cable companies and territories that are preventing us from that right now. But hopefully it won't be long.

Basically, we just got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.

Other features on the new site include embeddable clips, a new avatar builder, and same-day simulcasting of new episodes.

News of these plans broke late last year, but entire episode viewing launched just today. The site's new look was developed by a team at Schematic.

(Thanks, Jason McHugh, Miles, and Jolon Bankey!)

• [Anonymous]

  its working fine in Ireland. Now I want to go to Casa Bonita!

• [Anonymous]

  works fine for me – I’m in the Republic of Ireland. Maybe Ireland and Norway are special.

• [foobar]

  As long as you’re American. All other nationalities need not apply.

• [Songe]

  darth viacom made me lol

• [jonathan_v]

  i wonder if the ‘banned’ / ‘broadcast 1x’ episodes are online.

• [fatpinkchicken]

  I’m excited, yay! More ways to not do my hw.

• [vjinterkosmos]

  Mr. Twig has kept me happy for the past decade, so I don’t expect any low-res (and AFAIK region-blocked) stream to make up for it. 30 min after an episode airs there are 2k+ seeds, so I’m content to wait for 35 min longer than US audience.

• [Mitch Tishmack]

  For some reason I can’t help but laugh at this line:
  Basically, we just got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.

  I wish more tv show producers would think this way.

• [mgabrysSF]

  When you have a sofa in the office, full-screen is actually quite decent from across the room. This reminds me of the fancast.com site where I’ve been picking up the entire run of classic Star Treks and sizable chunks of other shows (WKRP and Sliders are my faves at the moment). They also have movies like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

  Even with single-commercial breaks this is far better than losing massive chunks of hard-drive for once-off viewings and – far far better than doubling my cable bill for the sake of TV.

  THIS is why I love broadband – and is the logical outcome when internet usage grows beyond 30% of down-time for people. It’s refreshing to see the content-providers getting a clue with some decent initiatives rather than the RIAA’s war on P2P. This isn’t a small point because until now it seemed all the content providers were more interested in criminalizing everyone through arcane laws and knee-jerk reactionary politics. It only took 4 years of wide-spread broadband access for the models to emerge.

  Geez this sounds like suck-up blathering – but this is the model everyone was agog about in the early 90s. The whole idea of “interactive TV”. Now I can leave my TV for games and DVD’s exclusively, get content on demand, and leave the reality shows for the dustbin.

• [OM]

  …Hpflly ths st vrsn’s rn bttr thn tht [cnsrd] Bryl hs rn thngs snc lvs ws scrwd vr. Fr ths nt fmlr wth th rgns f Cmdy Cntrl’s ffcl SP wbst, whn thy frst pt p th st, thy hrd gy gng by “lvs”, wh t th tm ws rnnng th #1 fn-rn SP wbst, t rn thr st fr thm. ftr nly cpl f mnths t bcm vry pprnt tht Cmdy Cntrl ws nly xpctng t py lvs ~$25.00 SD mnth fr hs srvcs, s ppsd t mch hghr f grd n. lvs ws rplcd wth Bryl, wh prcdd t rn th st n rthr bmbsh mnnr, nd bcm rthr dslkd fr hr rthr sntty pprch t nswrng Q& qstns – spclly ns tht wr srs qstns. Rmr hs t tht sh dd t vlntrly, jst fr th brggng rghts nd mntn n th shw’s clsng crdts. Whthr tht’s nw dfntn fr prstttn, ‘ll lt y kds dcd fr yrslvs :-P

  …Dspt th fct hv ll th ps cppd, ‘ll chck t th st t s f t’s wrth th hyp.

• [ornith]

  Is anyone else having trouble with the streaming? It keeps stopping and starting. And then suddenly deciding to stop altogether, or that I’ve finished watching the episode. Anyone got a fix?

• [jere7my]

  #1: Addressed in the article, Foobar: “Eventually every episode and clip will be available everywhere in the world. There is a tangle of contracts that Comedy Central has with different cable companies and territories that are preventing us from that right now. But hopefully it won’t be long.”

• [Howard Wen]

  Orinth,

  You’re not the only one. The site seems to be getting hammered. But the way they have things set up, it appears the site doesn’t allow your computer to cache the video file (like the way YouTube and many other video sites work) in order to reduce skipping. That just sucks.

• [remmelt]

  “same-day simulcasting”
  The what now?

  Also, and this may be extremely illegal, immoral, unamerican, socialist, gay, xenophobic and naughty:
  http://www.southparkzone.com/
  Works outside the US de A as well.

• [axelay]

  Seems to work fine here in Norway…

• [Jeff]

  This episode about Britney Spears had me laughing so hard I had to turn it off. Which is probably a bad sign. Some of the best satire on TV or anywhere. The social commentary of South Park is at par with the best stuff out there.

• [thisaintnopicnic]

  http://www.unblockall.net/

  Paste the SouthParkStudios url into there and you’re good to go in the UK. Can’t seem to get the full-screen mode to work but quality is reasonable anyway

• [foobar]

  @jere7my

  That’s really not good enough. They’ve shown where their priorities are, and I’ll be voting with my wallet (and bittorrent) accordingly.

• [BellaSook]

  not available in Canada – although this is one of the shows we can get from itunes. le sigh.