Television today is becoming obsolete as there are just better methods to receive programming than via cable or satellite. About six months ago I decided to ditch my TV and get everything over the internet.
When I first started out the first thing I did was download all of my favorite shows via not so legal methods, mainly torrents. I quickly found this method to be annoying and went to find a better method. For some shows that better method was the iTunes music store. This provided the shows with the least amount of work.
The problem with iTunes came when NBC started talking about removing all of their content from the service. At that point I started looking at what other legitimate methods there are to gain this content, namely Heroes and The Office. What I found was the NBC website offering full episodes of certain shows.
The NBC site offers a free flash player which works great for my viewing habits. I have no need to download a show to my computer as I just play them on my computer. If someone wanted to play this content on an device like an ipod or zune it would not work. The player does work incredibly well for what it is; the full screen works great. The only issue I have with it is that I can not multi task while playing a video full screen.
One thing that I did find was a massive amount of great free online content, mainly podcasts. Many of these audio and video sources provide extremely high quality content that is extremely niche. There are so many podcasts out there that odds are you can find one on any subject you are interested in. The best part is they are not competing with each other. They are all trying to make the entire market better, so you will often find your favorite host on some other podcast for a guest appearance.
I choose what I watch not, it does not pick me. If something is playing it is because I choose to play it. This is the huge difference between standard TV and watching it on your computer. The only problem with watching TV on your computer is you can not just kick back and watch some random show. This can be painful at first, but I’ve got Miro setup with a ton of random content that is just fun to watch when it is time to relax.
