South Park Hits the Web for Free, Legally

The relaunch of SouthParkStudios.com allows fans to watch entire episodes from all 12 seasons for free online.

Fans of Comedy Centrals’ iconic cartoon series South Park need not spend fortunes on DVD sets or scrounge around online to download episodes illegally any longer. Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced the relaunch of SouthParkStudios.com on Wednesday, the show’s new Web site that now includes entire episodes from all 12 seasons of the show.

“We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time so we gave ourselves a legal alternative,” Stone and Parker said in their statement. The site includes entire, uncut versions of each episode in a high-resolution streaming format. The team claims that 168 of 169 episodes in the South Park library are now available online

While contractual obligations require the site to air the shows first on Comedy Central, even the shows from the most recent season will migrate to the Web after a set period. Last Wednesday’s new episode, for instance, will be available April 18 on the site, about a month after its original air date.

Aside from the full episode library and fresh look, the new site retains many features of the original SouthParkStudios.com, including the popular South Park Avatar Creator, news, forums, and games.