Remember commercials?

Those things you used to have to watch, before you got a TiVo and/or you started subscribing to one of the 25,000+ free video podcasts and/or you started losing hours of your life surfing YouTube?

Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE apparently think that you really miss the little buggers, so much so that they’ve invested in a new Internet video startup, Firebrand, that offers nothing but commercials, all the time.

Yep – 24/7 commercials. If you like, you can register at the site and make playlists and favorites. You can even embed videos in your site….so you can add advertisements to your site and not get paid for it. Here’s an example:

We won’t be doing that again…..

Somebody Show These Guys YouTube

We tried out the Firebrand site and found nothing especially compelling in either the site’s design or content. It has a surprisingly limited number of videos. The site’s “Banned” category, for example, only has three videos in it.

The site also limits navigation to small panes. As a result, you can only see and select from three or four videos at a time. It’s almost as if Firebrand hasn’t spent any time navigating sites like YouTube that have large quantities of video and make it fairly accessible.

“What marginalizes commercials is the programming that interrupts it, not the other way around,” says Roman Vinoly, Chief Creative Officer/Co-Founder.

We might be able to believe this, if Firebrand at least offered a great way to experience commercials.

Update: NewTeeVee weighs in on Firebrand, and says “the only mark it‚Äôs going to leave on the world of entertainment is merely a footnote.”