How to Watch TV Shows on the Internet

When you’re living on a budget like me, living frugally is just not a option - it’s mandatory!  The more I can cut down on monthly expenses, the better - every penny counts. Unfortunately, my husband and I live in an area where the new broadcast digital television (DTV) is not available over-the-air for us at all (we‘re in a “dark” area).

How do we cope without the television?  Well, we don’t!  Our solution is to watch movies and television shows (or programs) on the internet!

What we do is:

1) We joined Netflix.  They have movies and TV shows available on DVD.   They have many options - 1 movie at a time, 2 movies at a time, up to unlimited movies. We subscribe to the 1 movie at a time option for $9.62 a month (including tax), and we can get an average of 2 movies a week (the first day we receive a movie and watch it, the second day we mail it back, the third day Netflix receives it and mails out the next one). With this option we can also Watch Instantly many TV shows and movies right on the computer - it’s also called Streaming.
(UPDATE: 12/

　

2) We also watch streaming network and cable television shows on Hulu.  This is one of the legitimate sites that has permission for all the shows that is has available. They do have commercials interruptions, however they are only from 30 seconds to 1 minute long. From them, we get a lot of HD (High Definition) shows in 420p (some even in 720p) and if your bandwidth is slower, they have 320p and even 288p.  They play many first run TV shows the day after they air on broadcast television as well as older shows.

A great feature that Hulu has is that if you search for a show and they don’t have it, but they know who does, they will have a connection available to that website! For instance, I searched for “Nature”, and they show you that PBS has it and you can launch it right from Hulu. Great!


　

3) We also watch Fancast - they have many shows available as well. Also, we can watch  Joost  for music videos.

　

4) The above websites offer TV shows and movies in all the different genres. There are other legitimate places to watch TV shows as well. But beware, watching TV shows on places that are not legitimate, as well as being illegal, may open your computer up to receive viruses.

　

5) We monitor our local weather on Wunderground   - it’s great for the local radar and local temperatures. We also compare it to The Weather Channel - we watch their current video updates on hurricanes during hurricane season too!

　

　

6)We catch the national news headlines on BBC  and CNN.  We can also check our local TV Channels on the web for local news.

　

We also wanted to watch these streaming TV shows and movies on our TV in the living room - it‘s so much more comfortable in there - so we connected our computer to our TV. ("How to" article coming soon)

　

If anyone knows of additional legit websites to watch TV shows on, please share that information with me.


Thanks and Enjoy!