This might be old news to many of you but I just recently discovered the fact that I can relive parts of the ’80s and ’90s through the new existance of…

Full Movies and TV Shows on YouTube

In addition to the usual buttons found near the top of YouTube (Home, Videos, Channels, Community), there is now a “Shows” button that takes you to a listing of full TV shows and movies that are now legally available to watch in their entirety directly on the video sharing site.

In browsing through list of TV shows, the ones that stuck out as interesting to me are:

• Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (the cartoon)
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
• Dilbert
• Bewitched
• Alf
• The Tick (Unfortunately, only the live-action version)

While I’m not thrilled with the idea of watching a movie on my computer (regardless of if it’s on YouTube or anywhere else), I think classic TV shows definitely have a big future in the online world. Hulu really began the process by putting so many great shows online and now YouTube is following along.

YouTube has even taken a few pages from Hulu’s playbook including allowing TV and movie watchers on their site to “turn down the lights,” making most of the page turn dark to provide a better video-watching environment. The shows and films can also be displayed in a larger in-browser size than standard YouTube videos (full screen is still available as well).

Unfortunately, unlike most YouTube videos, the TV shows and movies are not embeddable, so I can’t put any of them on this blog or anywhere else. Before each bit of media, a short advertisement is also played, but that’s easily ignored.

Overall, I like the trend of adding classic television to online video sites. I’ve been buying old TV shows on DVD for several years and would be happy to have access to it all on the Web for free, especially if someone can figure out a way to let me watch them on an actual TV.