Paying $89 per month for satellite is beginning to annoy me. (Some pay more, some less. Either way, it's a thousand bucks a year). Even more so because I don't watch all that much - basically a few shows like Heroes, Burn Notice, and maybe a South Park if it's on. Mostly network or major-channel stuff that I know I can get online or over-the-air.
But I'm not the only one in the house. I have a Princess who likes her Nickelodeon and Disney, and a wife that can't
go a week without frikkin Grey's Anatomy. So I began a little trial: Can I get by without Satellite?
This requires a few investments:
1. A decent broadband internet service with no caps. I think a 3mb down will suffice, but streaming a lot of TV will
get noticed by your ISP, so make sure you don't have limits. Since most of us already have a broadband internet connection,
this isn't really an ADDED expense, just a required one.
2. An HD antenna for each HD TV that you have (I'm not going into Media Extenders and such right now). A decent
Philips HD Antenna is $38 at Walmart, and mine pulls in 30 HD stations from about 20 miles away.
3. A way to watch internet on a decently-sized screen. I have a home theater PC with a blu-ray player, so I can
watch internet TV on a big screen. You might want to use a 17-inch laptop or a 20-inch flatscreen on your PC. Or
hook your laptop up to your HD set. It all depends, that's what the trial time is for.
HD Antenna for local network stations
Grab yourself an HD antenna to make sure you can pull in all your local channels - for sports like NFL football and local basketball, it can't be beat, plus all your network shows. Even if you don't get it all in HD over-the-air, you'll get a great digital picture.
Here's what I use.
Major Channels Online USA Network 
The USA Network provides full shows like Burn Notice, Monk, Psych, and a few other crappy shows. The sound and video quality is good. Your only choice is two sizes, small and full-screen. USA's full-screen is a medium quality (as compared to other services).
ABC.com 
ABC gives you full episodes with their "player", which has it's own plug-in, the Move Media Player. This one is safe.
ABC has good quality with the Move player, and shows like Scrubs, Lost, Greys (for the wife), and The View
(for Vega). ABC also has closed captioning. HD shows are available for Lost, Desperate, Grey's, a few others.
NBC.com 
NBC also gives you full episodes, some in high-def. Shows like Chuck, Heroes, Life, and The Office. Quality is
very good. Full-screen is average. Closed Captioning also available. No plug-ins or installs.
CBS.com 
CBS also gives you full episodes, but unfortunately most of their programming sucks. You can get How I met Your Mother,
for instance. Their default viewer is small, but the full-screen is actually better than most. HD content is very
limited, though, but Denny may appreciate their "Star Trek Remastered" HD video.
Fox 
Fox has full length episodes of 24, Bones, Family Guy, Fringe, House, and more. Their player is great quality, although
waiting a full minute for your show to start is longer than most services at 15-30 seconds. Full-screen is decent,
and sound is good. Closed Captioning available.
F/X Network 
F/X has full episodes of Always Sunny, Damages, Sons of Anarchy, Nip Tuck, Rescue Me, the Shield and more. The player
looks to be the same as Fox's player (Fox owns F/X). Full-screen quality is average, sound is good. CC available.
MSN TV 
MSN also has shows, obviously NBC shows plus MTV (Joe needs his Hills fix) and other channels in the NBC family.
The player is good quality, full-screen is average. sound is good. You can also get listings of all sorts of old shows
that get streamed from Hulu.
Major non-network viewing channels Hulu 
Hulu is probably the first site everyone mentions, and for good reason. There are tons of shows, old shows, new
shows, full episodes, excerpts, news, sports shows, and more.
Want to watch a full episode of ALF? or White Shadow? Hulu is the place. HD is very limited currently.
Hulu is the only player that you can adjust to any size.
Joost 
Joost no longer requires a client install and is browser based. They offer a lot of shows like Smallville, the Daily Show, and even pay-cable station offerings from Showtime like Californication (edited, of course).
Unlike most, they also offer new and old music videos, which is cool.
Quality is good, full-screen is average. Sound is good. It's a great place to look for shows and videos,
and carry lots of older shows like What's Happening, Gilligans Island, Who's the Boss, etc.
Between Joost and Hulu, you can watch pretty much the last 40 years of TV.
Kids:
For kids, major shows on Nickelodeon and Disney are available online. On
Disney.com | TV | Home, you can see full length episodes of Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, The Suite Life, and more. Disney player is okay, full-screen is average.
On
Nickelodeon, they can watch spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents, Jimmy Neutron and pretty much every other Nick show. No full-screen, but large player is big enough.
Other Sites
--I checked over 25 sites online that claim Free TV watching. Some want you install client software, which invariably
comes with toolbars and crap, and I refuse to use them. The most notorious of these is Zango, which many sites use
to push advertising and crap while you watch. Don't use sites that use zango as the client, and never "install"
anything to "make downloads easier and faster" or any such shit. Just stick to the big guys I've talked about.
There are plenty of sites to visit that offer all sorts of TV shows and entertainment, I'm not covering those, just
the ones that offer TV shows immediately after their broadcast date. As long as these sites don't make you install
software, you should be okay.
Summary:
The networks that offer original shows are almost always the best in quality and sound. Hulu and Joost may offer more
variety and much more in older content, but if it's a recent network show, watch it on a network internet site.
Can you go off cable and satellite? I'd say: Mostly. If you can't get ESPN360's internet service, you're stuck going
to the local sportsbar for live events not broadcast over-the-air on networks.
comments welcome, esp if you use sites not listed here.
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UPDATES:
Quote:
Originally Posted by DennyCrane  |
Reuters is a great news video site with all the major news of the day in video format.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tulkas There are websites you can go to watch TV that you normally can't watch online. Sidereel.com is one of them. They made it even more difficult there to find the shows, but you just have to click "search results" or something like that. They often have some shows before they are even shown on TV. It provides links to sites that stream them or not. It is currently how I'm watch Mad Men. |
Sidereel is worth checking out - lots of links and a centralized place to find shows if you don't know which network or station they originally aired on.
CS:S admin. PM DennyCrane for assistance. 
