TV on the Web

A few months ago my TV died and, taking my cue from Susan's example (she and her husband only watch series on DVD), I decided not to purchase a new one. Sure I missed some of the shows I watched regularly, but there were other things I could do with the time. And I haven't come to regret my decision yet.

DVD watching is something else I missed, but that was more easily remedied than the lack of television programming. After all, I have a computer with a DVD drive and a decent screen. Windows Media player will handle DVDs just fine. So on holidays I pull out one of my favorites and sit back in my reasonably comfortable desk chair to enjoy it. I've even had a neighbor in to watch one with me while we shared pizza.

Knowing that I was a regular watcher of some of her favorite shows, Sandi decided to come to my rescue and suggested I look for TV shows on the web. It seemed reasonable. I'd heard that there were full episodes online, so I started doing some research and, sure enough, you can indeed watch TV on the web, free and totally lacking any kind of advertisement. Finding the shows you like to watch, however, is a bit dicey as not all broadcasting corporations make their hottest shows available on their websites. Plus you have to do some research to find good pages, which can take a bit of time as you do trial and error on each page you discover. There are some pluses, but more about those in a bit.

My research started with four USA broadcasting corporations: ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. ABC readily puts full episodes on its website and you can keep up to date on their fare easily. That's great, except I don't watch much of what they offer. They were the first major US broadcasting corporation to do it though, so kudos to them. CBS I watch regularly and I was eager to catch up on Ghost Whisperer. Oops, seems CBS doesn't put the latest episodes of its premier shows on it's website, although that may change as recently they've started putting up a very few of their more popular series in HD. Mostly though it's small clips, not enough to call it TV. They do have a chat and watch page, CBS social room. There they let you watch a show with other people, chat, and answer trivia questions at the same time. Sometimes there are current episodes of popular shows, but you can only watch what they are offering that night. NBC is better than CBS and may be as good as ABC. They have HD episodes online too. And a page that is classy looking and easy to navigate. Then I got around to Fox. With Fox on Demand, they may be better then NBC and CBS. The shows are current, but I don't watch many of their shows either. If you want to see what the major networks offer, the links I've provided are direct to their video pages. Still no Ghost Whisperer though, so I kept looking. Three weeks ago, I came across a blog, Free Online Episodes, that had taken the time to address the problem of staying up to date your your favorite series and gave you several urls to watch most of the favorite popular shows. It was a good place to start.

For the next week or so I hung out on that blog and would click through to some of my favorite shows. Not all of the links worked, but usually there was one that did. Like any good blog, they update things as necessary. Their latest offering, posted Jan. 11th, has links to Knight Rider. But still, no Ghost Whisperer. And that was Sandi's big thing. She really wanted me up to date on that, for which I'm grateful. Her support and encouragement were unending. In the mean time, I kept doing searches using the keywords "full episodes" and finally came across a really great website, Surf the Channel.

From Surf the Channel's website you can find most of the shows you know and tons that you don't know. New episodes are put up daily. You can search by genre, title, or cagetory. There's both TV and movies. Many of the links are to Asian web pages so there will be subtitles in the language of that area. You can also find lots of links to Megavideo which is another website offering lots of free online TV and lots of current movies. Megavideo lets you watch for 72 minutes and then asks you to join or wait 54 minutes before watching again. I haven't signed up for their paid service because I don't mind waiting to finish the episode I was interrupted in the middle of. There's tons of other stuff to watch. Since discovering Surf the Channel (StC), I've found episodes of Sanctuary, an exciting SciFi offering that started as HD webisodes, and in addition to seeing all 8 of those I've caught up on most of the rest of the season. There seems to be a 1 to 4 week delay in an episode being broadcast before it shows up on the web. I've also caught up on NCIS and of course, Ghost Whisperer.

When there isn't a new episode to watch among my favorites, I explore the other offerings StC has. So far I've discovered Fallen, a 3 episode miniseries which presents us with a war between angels and nephilim, half breeds bearing both angel powers and human souls. There is also The Tudors, a wonderful series put on by Showtime which takes place in the early years of King Henry's reign complete with court intrigue, lots of mistresses and dalliances, and all the political intensity of the era. I haven't had cable or satellite in several years so I've got a lot of catching up to do and I'm delighted with what I'm finding. That's one of the biggest perks of watching TV online. Another great perk of internet TV is that with no advertising going on the show finishes in about 42 minutes for an hour long show. Yay, you've got time to do other things, like watch more shows than you could fit into an evening of TV watching.

Recently Sandi sent me another link, this one was FanCast which seems to be closely linked with Hulu, which is known for all it's free episodes. What Hulu offers is mostly older TV shows that are no longer broadcast and haven't been in reruns for awhile, but it does stay abreast of a few of the popular shows. You can catch up on Monk there. And it has just about every new movie trailer you could ask for. FanCast is different. They have links to quite a few of the popular shows although their offerings aren't quite as rich and varied as StC. Still, what you don't find on StC you can usually find on FanCast. Plus you don't have subtitles and the screen to watch is larger on your browser than many of the StC places.

Sometime soon, I plan on putting most of those online TV websites among the links on my sidebar. In the meantime, I hope you find the links I've provided useful and discover some new series that you'd didn't have access to before. Enjoy!