Friday, August 08, 2008

Internet TV

In February my TV becomes defunct without an adapter. I need a Digital TV (DTV) Tuner.

I ordered a free coupon from https://www.dtv2009.gov/

But I'm not so sure that I need one. When do I flip on the TV now? To play games, to watch DVDs, and on Sunday nights to watch Fox's cartoons (Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad). All the rest I watch online. These days I can even do most of that legally.

There's two players who have been doing this for quite some time. NASA and C-Span. They've been streaming video for almost as long as there have been video plug-ins for browsers.
NASA - http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html
C-Span - http://c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN_wm.aspx

ABC was the first real TV station to dabble with putting their shows online.
ABC - http://abc.go.com/

ABC's success led the others to follow.
NBC - http://www.nbc.com/Video/
CBS - http://www.cbs.com/video/
SciFi - http://www.scifi.com/rewind/
PBS - http://www.pbs.org/video/
Fox - http://fox.com/fod/index.htm
Comedy Central - http://www.comedycentral.com/funny_videos/index.jhtml

There are sources beyond the networks. Hulu is one of the better ones I've seen. They have many TV shows and much of what they show is incomplete. Only the first five episodes of seasons 1 and 6 of "24". The first two seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". The first season of "ReGenesis" from Canada. Scattered episodes from "Barney Miller". Plus they have movies. Good stuff, awful stuff, new, old, and documentaries.
Hulu - http://www.hulu.com

After asking around I was also pointed at:
TBS - http://www.tbs.com/video/index/#/all-video/full-episodes/
Adult Swim - http://www.adultswim.com/video/index.html
Cartoon Network - http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/video/index.html

Unfortunately the CBC, BBC, and SkyOne all only show clips instead of whole episodes and even then the Brits want you to actually have a UK IP address to see stuff.

I didn't exactly work hard compiling this list. Just the stuff I already use, plus a few some friends use. Feel free to throw some others in the comments. Stay away from the Torrent sites. I'm trying to stick to the legal alternatives here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Joost.com has a bunch of shows but you have to download a program. I don't trust sites like that.

veoh.com has some TV shows as well. I haven't looked into it too deeply to see if it's any good.