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!

Election Day!

It had been my plan to vote early. That didn't happen because I'm the kind of person who wants all their ducks in order before going to the polls. So when I finally found a version of the ballot that included everything I needed to know it was the last day of early voting and I missed my chance at that making preparations to help a friend, who'd just had back surgery, by answering the door and handing out candy for her thus minimizing her need to get up and down.

So this morning I pulled up Google to locate my polling place. The main system that you could use to find out where to go by your registration info kept giving me an error message. So I had to search for the entire list of places and then find my precinct on it. That was good, because then I had an address and could get a map of how to get there. I'm directionally challenged and get lost at the drop of a hat, or the turn of a corner.

One kind of neat thing I found while locating the list of polling places was an interactive tutorial of how to use the electronic voting machines. So I tried it out. It was simple enough that anyone should have been able to do it, but having done that tutorial walk through before heading out made the actual voting at the polls much more user friendly. So that's a good thing.

There was a prediction of a record turnout and long lines at the polls, so I had water, reading material, and my list of choices before I headed out. Then on the way to the polls I got lost. I overshot the street I was to turn on by at least a mile before I realized it wasn't where I had thought it was going to be and turned around to head back and find it. Once I found it, I was kind of surprised at the lightness of the traffic. I turned into the school parking lot and didn't see tons of ads which had been prevalent at the early voting places, which in my case was the public library. There was also plenty of parking. I showed my card, went up a ramp and showed my card again at the check in tables. I was handed a colored Popsicle stick with my precinct number on it for the fellow who set up the booth for you. My polling location was covering 4 precincts. They had about 5 or 6 machines. No curtained alcoves as in olden days. And no stickers for your driver's license...that was only for early voters.

When it was my turn, and the wait was less than 5 minutes, I approached the machine, turned the page of my list to match what I saw and went through the whole ballot (11 pages) one item at a time. There was only one thing on the ballot that wasn't on my paper example and that was a county vote on whether to change term limits on our councilmen and mayors or to leave them to two 2 year terms. I wasn't really happy with either choice and didn't feel they had put a middle of the road choice in there but I did the best I could with that one. Then I reviewed my ballot, hit the flashing red vote button, and voila! I'd voted.

Voting seemed much more relaxed this time around. One of the ladies manning a table outside said she had volunteered for that location because her kids went to that school. I told her that was great because she could not only see her kids but she was setting them an outstanding example. Then I came home. On the way home I got a call on my cell phone which was from "Kids First" and they were offering 2 free DVD movies for me to watch and review. I think it is the family entertainment folk who are no doubt out in force today. I don't have kids but they said they'd send me two free movies anyways. Yay!

When I got home I called a friend to see if they would be watching the election results on TV tonight because I had thought I'd enjoy watching them with someone, but they weren't interested. So I'm going to find a channel online and keep track that way with frequent refreshes if necessary. I don't expect my vote to make a huge difference. I'm just one person in a country of millions. But I know that if I don't express my choice by voting I'll have lost the opportunity to add my voice to the millions of others who also voted and together we can make a difference.

A little bit about spam

Recently my inbox has been assaulted by a particular type of spam I hadn't seen before. This is the ecard spam which claims I have received a card from a friend, classmate, family member, co-worker...all kinds of relational people I might have hoped to hear from but don't recognize in this format.

I admit that I opened the first one and was preparing to click on the link within when I noticed that it wasn't a webpage. Instead it was a set of numbers which I guess was an IP address. When I realized that there was no real address in the link I tried to find the ecard company that it came from. I found a page but no legitimate functioning on it. There was a place where I could put in the number of the ecard but it gave me the same numbered address. I decided to give it a pass. Now, after a bit of research, I'm glad I did.

Apparently, some of these links take you to a webpage which contains nothing and instead connects you to a worm. Others are from major spam servers. All in all it isn't a good thing to get one. Since that first one, my receipt of these letters has grown by leaps and bounds. I'm ignoring them all. The sad thing is that I love getting ecards from my friends and regret the insult this type of spam is doing to the legitimate ecard industry.

How can you tell when one of these ecard letters is spam? Some common sense is helpful so you might want to read the following bits. I've noticed at least one difference between the good and the bad ecard letters.

1. Most legitimate ecard companies have your friend's name or email address as the sender and not their own. Sure, some ecard companies use their own name as the sending email address but these are ones you know and recognize.

2. Legitimate ecard companies don't know anything about your relationship with the sender. They could be your brother or a total stranger but the ecard company doesn't know if you are related to them, went to school with them, or graduated with them. So if the letter claims a relationship give it a pass and send it to the spam filter. Your friend did not give them that kind of info.

3. Don't click on links you aren't sure of. Links in letters can appear to be good but might not be. I use Firefox and Eudora. If you put your cursor over the link these browsers have the real address you are clicking on in the lower left hand corner of the window frame. You can use this to tell if you are seeing the real thing or being rerouted to somewhere else. If the email address isn't on the up and up don't click on it. If you really have to know go to the real ecard address by typing it into your browser and then manually enter the pick up code. If you got a card you can then pick it up safely. If you didn't then the code should get you some kind of error message.

That's pretty much it. Common sense, mixed with a healthy dose of skepticism, is a huge help in figuring out scams and spam. Lots of people have extra "throw away" email addresses. I've never done this. I'm basically lazy and don't want to go through the extra work involved. But don't go by me. If you are inundated with spam then by all means do something about it.

Be careful out there. If you like ecards and use them like I sometimes do why not send a nice letter to your friends telling them which ecard companies you use and then maybe they won't be deceived by the other kind.

Linking to New Worlds

Sometimes I get pulled into a new website by an interesting title. That's why there's a new link on my sidebar today. When going through the Yahoo Picks page I found this story about "the most dangerous roads in the world." So I went to look. It had pictures from all over the world and they are scary enough...I certainly wouldn't want to drive any of these roads.

I was going to just look at the post and then I noticed the cool SciFi links that were on the web page. This page is now beginning to look VERY interesting. So I added the link and hope to spend some time exploring. And that brings me to one of the neat things about blogging. You can find yourself almost anywhere by clicking on interesting links.

A long time ago...on a website far, far away...there was a online SciFi convention at SciFi.com. Being new to the web and loving all things SciFi, I attended from my computer. My friends came over to attend this live online event with me. This would be oh...'95 or '96 (g) One of the cool things they had at that online convention was a pretty good art. The piece of art that wins the novelty award hands down was this picture of nothing but worlds all over this canvas. These worlds were really colorful and came in all sizes. Sometimes they overlapped too. I don't remember the artist or the title of this piece but I kept it bookmarked for a long time. You see, when you clicked on the worlds in this picture you went places. Each and every globe in it was a different link. There were enough of them that you were never sure just where you were going to end up. It was a cool way to surf. And to me blog surfing is kind of like that. You never know what you will find when you connect to something interesting that someone else wrote.