Watching TV on the laptop--and on the cheap

(continued from previous page)

But after watching the highlights from Mark Cuban's performance I felt a little better. The judges were right--he needs work. And doesn't Jane Seymour look great and dance well, despite the recent death of her mother?

For NBC, there was a link to the video player right on the search engine I used. I was able to choose between full episodes, two-minute replays and Web exclusives. After viewing a short ad in a small window, up came a full-screen showing of The Office, the U.S. version. I've got to say, I didn't think anyone could play the Rick Gervais character well, but Steve Carell did a great job.

Heading over to check out CBS TV shows on the Web, I was underwhelmed. I mean, aren't people sick of Survivor already? They did have Late Show with David Letterman, but I could only watch segments with highlights, interviews and the monologue. Again, where was the continuity? The notion of a "show" is removed when you watch it in chunks.

Not that it matters to me, but you'll still need a TV to watch Major League Baseball or National Football League games for free.

I had pretty much exhausted my list of must-see TV, so I went to TVGuide online. The site has a handy search box at the top, as well as sections on tonight's and this week's TV, and music videos.

There's a combination of free and paid programming. For instance, most of the full episodes of Brothers and Sisters were free, but many of the America's Top Model episodes cost $1.99 to watch. Then, when I started watching one of the free shows, it took a long time to start playing. Free, but sloooow.

So I switched to a juicy-sounding show called Gossip Girl. It started out with a Verizon wireless ad and then a preview, with a voice over that said: "It takes two to tangle, and girls like these don't go down without a fight." Oh boy!

Ignoring my better judgment, I took a peak at Beauty and the Geek and again didn't make it past the intro. Wow! I had forgotten how much crap was on TV. And the constant commercials are annoying.

I decided to go for something more highbrow, the BBC for news, but found that it doesn't let you watch the programming online.

Next I checked out a local San Francisco news station, KRON 4. There I watched a segment on the city canceling the annual Halloween party in the Castro district. And I watched a feature on an elderly woman whose home was auctioned off to pay off some of a $1.4 million hospital bill. I viewed the footage in a 3x3-inch window. There was no full-screen option.

Pretty much the only sport I'm interested in watching is tennis, so I headed over to ESPN to see if I could see some matches there. Nope. I typed in "tennis matches video" on a Web search engine and saw links to old Women's Tennis Association matches and a video on Metacafe of Andre Agassi and Roger Federer putzing around.

Not that it matters to me, but you'll still need a TV to watch Major League Baseball or National Football League games for free.

There were some sites that offer vintage TV programs, such as Like Television Only Better, where I watched part of a grainy black and white 1957 Jonathan Winters TV show in a small window.

Another site was a real find, wwiTV. It had a long list of countries and categories to choose from to watch live TV Webcasts.

I went to a Portuguese TV station from a town called Guimaraes, but every time I tried to open the player the audio echoed. When I closed the player I ended up on the Guimaraes TV Web site where there was no echo, but the accent was hard to understand despite my having lived in Portugal for a year.

I skipped over to the movie section of wwiTV and saw there were at least 25 channels offering films in English. I clicked on one link and was sent to America Free.TV, where I landed in the middle of a 1969 biker movie with Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern called The Rebel Rousers.

"We don't need your type of people in this town," the sheriff tells them as they ride their choppers into the saloon and dance on the bar. As much as I wanted to see what happens to these misunderstood rogues, I couldn't stand the stop-motion video, which left large blocks of pixels in place of faces. There was no "on demand" aspect to this channel--you have to know when the movie starts to catch it from the beginning.

Other sites worth mentioning include Joost, which lets you watch a wide variety of TV programming over the Internet for free and with a full-screen option, and the open-source company Miro, which offers free Internet TV and a player that plays any video file.

My unscientific conclusion is there's a mixed bag of TV programming available online. A lot of it is trash and a lot of it's glitchy, so I'm definitely not worried about becoming an online TV addict.

I also learned that a show about meerkats is probably the best TV on the Internet.

 

Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported that the full episodes of Dancing with the Stars could not be viewed online.

[arobb24143]

Get a Slingbox

Get a Slingbox and a friend willing to let you park it on top of their cable box and you've got TV anywhere on the planet with an internet connection.
regards,
allan

[skeptik]

really not the point.

This article wasn't about how to steal content, but what was available for free via legitimate channels.
You solution sounds like you just want to mooch off your friends ... or share the cost of their cable, which takes you out of the free content realm.

[smokeonit]

good idea...

but it's already out there without the hassle of having to buy a
slingbox...

bittorrent... much better quality and most shows even in HD
1280x720 quality!

eztvefnet.org for tracker

then you only need a bittorrent client that you will find @
versiontracker.com!

that simple... there's even software that automatically downloads
your favorite shows from BT trackers like "tv shows" for mac osX!

[Alessandra713]

TV Online

I am a TV Producer and out of frugality or inability to live by the Cableman's repair schedule have also lived tv free for long stretches
And now I live cable free in Italy, where most of the sites you mentioned are blocked. Apparently a "Medium" episode viewed in the EU would disrupt the time/space continuum of revenue. However, FRONTLINE has no such boundary. You should by all means go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/ and find a treasure trove of programming.

I could go on about how commercials actually serve a purpose you can only appreciate when they disappear (and I don't mean funding) but the Simpsons are on (in Italian) and I gotta go.

Alessandra

[gggg sssss]

ROTFLMAO

a TV producer who does not watch TV. No wonder there is so much cr*p on the air.

[rafe01]

BBC World is online...

...at least in Europe as a REAL (yuk) stream

http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/default.aspx

The BBC like many other broadcasters has restrictions due to existing contracts for its own content and bought-in content from external suppliers as to what it can stream. Perhaps the deal with the cable/sat companies in US means they don't offer a free web stream.

Within the UK where the BBC comes from :-) & I mostly reside the 4 "networks" (ie BBC, ITV, CH4, five) do provide some kind of online service. The ITV channels (four of them) are all available as live streaming feeds (from www.itv.com). Both the BBC and CH4 also offer free (with time-limited DRM) P2P catch-up applications for most of their shows. Subscribers to the main Satellite provider also have access to similarly time-limted DRMed shows and movies from the past few weeks from channels they have subscriptions for including I guess the above networks (but as I have their PVR I can set the set-top box to record shows I want from the EPG on the web or on my cell which works better for me :-)

[ajwatt12]

Paradigm shift

I dropped my dish subscription a year ago and bought a 22" widescreen monitor, with the goal of replacing all of my TV viewing with online viewing and lowering the total bill.

The difference between cable and satellite subscrptions and watching over the internet is that with the internet you have more a la carte options. I subscribe to two soccer packages online for about $100 per year total, and I get to see all the same matches I could with a $70/month Dish subscription. Add Amazon Unbox or Netflix and you can watch movies too. The quality is not as good as TV yet, but it will get better. And I spend less on TV now.

For those sporting events you can't find online, my solution is to head over to the pub and have a beer and watch on their big screen.

There are free services such as Miro (http://www.getmiro.com/) that show things like Onion TV. The offerings there should increase over time.

[bobby_brady]

Here's how you watch cable for free or half price

Most likely you have friends with cable. Most likely they have a computer. If they have Vista, they already have Media Center, if they have XP, hopefully they have the MC version.

What I do for my friends is record shows that they want to watch. They can choose what to record on MSN and MC will record it. Have MC record it on a external hard drive. When you go over there, you simply copy the shows onto their computer.

If they have Xbox, you don't have to watch it on the computer. You can watch it in your living room. Better then Tivo, you have 30 second skip, not just FF for ads.

You have them pay you for a percentage of the cable bills to. Get enough friends and you can make money, eh?

Works like a charm and it's one way to stick it to the man.

[rdupuy11]

I agree

I agree, Jayne Seymour really does dance well for a dead mother dancer.

What the&#&???

Anyway... this story was more about your tastes, and they seemed a bit oddball, but then again, you didn't dive into the world of porn, so for that we are grateful.

The best the internet has to offer, though, for us 98% who still have TV's...is what is not shown on TV. For some, that is porn...but for me its foreign language programming...it really allows for access to things that were once too distant to get at.

[Mike_in_Florida]

Watching shows

I found a website that collects links for Christmas-related shows.

At least these are free to watch
http://XmasDVD.com

[247mark]

The Problem

Problem with this method is that your laptop soon has a proprietary video player from every "TV station" you want to watch. Try watching NBC content on an ABC-downloaded player. Yeah, right. With 100+ channels now, your laptop could become a de facto tv; instead of changing channels, you change media players. I've been to law school - I understand the contractual obligations to protect the content and the advertisers but wake up to the reality - it's all out there on torrents anyway. Stopping the torrents is rather like plugging a fire hydrant with your finger - won't happen. RIAA is still trying to figure this out, but that's another story. The only one who really can't see tv programs online is people like me who don't use torrents and who refuse to have a half dozen different media players filling up their hard drive. Just like DRM with the music, the legit user gets hosed every time. I'm not advocating stopping torrents but let's make it easier for the rest of us.

[keystonepa]

Finally, sort of TV on the net

I remember reading on Cnet or perhaps ZDnet in the late nineties how TV was coming to the web and we could all watch it for free. As a person who has not owned a TV in years I was less than excited.
I have used Movie link, Cinema Now, Vongo, Itunes , Unbox, Netflicks to rent content. I have used Joost, and other free online content providers as well.
Since the current fall season has started I have cut my online rentals way-way down as I now watch one or two shows from each network-CBS, ABC, Fox, CW, PBS. In fact, as a grad? student with limited resources I am canceling my Net Flicks account as I can spend my limited down time watching for free.
Of course, there is no comparison between a good ?art house flick? and Tv. Who knows, in 3 months I maybe so bored with the TV content that I go back to renting content online.

[smokeonit]

bittorrent has it all!

via bittorrent trackers like eztvefnet.org you get all the US/UK TV
shows there are! in SDTV or HDTV quality!!! and it's free, you have
them on your harddrive and can burn them to DVD or whatever
format you need them, iphone or ipod for example with software
that is readily available....

[smokeonit]

if the industry be smart...

they'd do they BT thing with commericals in SDTV and HDTV and
thus getting more exposure for their commercials and having
better control how many times their show gets watched, eeeerrrrg,
donwloaded, LOL..

[Jackie Quan]

Try Joost.com for TV

Joost.com offers a software program ( for Mac or PC) to access over
250 channels. 15,000 programs. It is TV quality streaming and
free. This could be the future as more people will create content
specific to their interests and all web broadcast. Quality is pretty
good!

[elinormills]

Updated to include Joost, Miro

Thanks for all the reader feedback. I have updated the story to include Joost and Miro, services that allow you to watch Internet TV for free.

[ssmiroldo]

Boob tube

Just wanted to say that my household and my best friend's
household do not, and will not, purchase cable.

I am on a Mac platform and really appreciate iTunes. It's legal,
free, inexpensive, full-length, on-demand, great quality (though
HD would be nice), and has no commercials for $2 a show.

Our favorite show right now is Heroes. We were purchasing that
show last year on iTunes and were looking forward to doing the
same this year. NBC, however, pulled the plug on iTunes for now
- STUPID (it's just starting to gain traction in the video arena).

I can't stand cable or network programing for a number of
reasons... It's not on demand, there are too many worthless
channels you pay for, and a good majority of shows and even
commercials are either anti-Christian or lack moral decency.
There are also so many other productive, positive, things I
would like to do with my life than watch a boob tube. I don't
need the temptation to be a couch potato. ;-)

Thanks for the great article!

[ordaj]

tvtonic.com

Another choice.

[Datcyde]

ESPN

You should had went to espn360.com to watch sports but from what I can tell its exclusive to verizon networks.

[T25]

Try An application called "TVshows"...

(open source)...searches bittorrent sites for hundreds of TV serials/channels...the idea being to catch shows/episodes that you've missed...get a complete series instead if you want...after getting all the links, load into a torrent client and stuff your drive silly...get it here..."tvshows.sourceforge.net"...

[smokeonit]

good that you posted it again! ;-)

good that you posted it again! ;-)

[Hyloka]

Just get yourself an antenna and a Media Center PC

I get more content than I can view for free by recording it in HD off-air onto my media center PC. I can either watch it on my monitor, or send it to the TV via the extender in my Xbox. With webguide (http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/) I can schedule recordings and watch them remotely on either on any device running a browser (no matter the OS). No reason to pay anything for shows broadcast over the air (and you can skip commercials ).

[smokeonit]

or a mac and elgato eyeTV HDTV tuner (free over the air)

since the networks and PBS broadcast in HDTV for free over the air
(antenna) it's an awesome deal... no monthly cost, HDTV picture
quality on the mac (or PC)...

elagto.com

[j_northcutt]

Try Windows Media Center...

A lot of the content you mentioned can be found within Windows Media Center (available in Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate). BBC, Comedy Central, Fox Sports, and Discovery all have "channels" where they provide this same content to you - to view on your PC, or even better (via an Extender and your home network) on your TV. Check out www.windowsvista.com/extender for more info...

[smokeonit]

or a mac and elgato eyeTV HDTV tuner (free over the air)

or a mac and elgato eyeTV HDTV tuner (free over the air)

[rester]

forgot one...

how about tvuplayer . http://www.tvunetworks.com/ works for me.

[Malenx]

Adult Swim

Cartoon Network has put their shows online, adultswim.com

Great site for those who love the shows.

[carmen sancarlos]

free tv is the solution

but when I tried to visit these free sights, its only for the US
market... so why can´t us americans use this in europe. Unfair.