Video on the Internet used to be a real drag. Poor quality, herky-jerky playback and lousy audio made online video occasionally interesting, but not anything that I ever felt like devoting much time to. Plus, I’ve never been a big fan of watching TV or DVDs on my computer; that’s what television sets are for.
While most videos on websites such as YouTube still suffer from poor quality, due to their homemade and bootlegged nature, a new wave of high-quality video entertainment is hitting the Internet like a whirlwind. The best part, in my opinion, is that you can connect your computer to your TV and watch online TV where it should be watched: on a TV. The next best part is that most all online TV is free.
Connecting a computer to your TV is not especially difficult. As long as you have a fast Internet connection, all you really need to do is match whatever video inputs that your TV may have. Most modern computers, particularly laptops, have what’s called an “S-Video” output. This, combined with your computer’s headphones, line out or speakers output may be all that you need. Desktop computers may need an add-on video card that has S-Video, composite video or HDMI (the highest-quality connection). Again, it just depends on what kinds of inputs are on your TV.
I do not have a super-fancy, giant-screen HDTV. My Internet-to-TV setup consists of a fairly modern laptop connected via S-Video to a cheap converter box, which supplies composite video and audio to my humble, cheap and cheerful 27” not-a-flat-panel TV. On this frugal setup, video from high-quality Internet sources looks great. There are all sorts of adapters and cables to connect whatever equipment you may have. Places like Radio Shack, BestBuy and even Wal-Mart have all that you need.
You’ll also probably need to change some video settings on your computer, allowing it to send video through the cables connecting to your TV. This is usually done through the Display Properties/Settings/Advanced panel. While specific techniques can vary from computer to computer, they usually involve telling the computer that it’s going to have two displays, and that one of them is going to be a television. Online tutorials abound on how to make this happen.
Next, find yourself some good Internet TV. The biggest website for this sort of thing is Hulu.com. Hulu has a staggering selection of syndicated TV shows from most every major network, as well as a large selection of full-length movies. You may not believe it when you first visit Hulu, but it’s all real and the quality is great. You can watch everything from House to Son of Godzilla to Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Fancast.com and Joost.com are also great websites full of excellent content.
Snagfilms.com lets you watch high-quality documentaries from companies such as National Geographic. Babelgum.com is similar to YouTube, only more organized, and also hosts feature-length movies. If you like PBS-style public television, you’ll want to check out Thirteen.org. Crackle.com, owned by Sony, is a great place to watch all sorts of good movies and TV shows. I just saw Monty Python’s And Now, For Something Completely Different on Crackle. It was awesome.
CBS.com has full-length episodes of The Late Show with David Letterman, as well as a huge lineup of daytime soaps and prime time features. In their TV Classics section, you’ll find goodies such as Star Trek, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, and more. Fox.com lets you catch up on missed episodes of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader, and my favorite, 24. Fox makes you download and install a special viewer to see their shows, and it’s well worth the effort. The episodes of 24 that I watched last week were jitter-free with excellent video quality.
Most of the major networks are putting their TV channel lineup on their websites, with one notable exception being the Discovery channel; too bad for Mythbusters and Survivorman fans like myself.
OVGuide.com tries to be sort of the TV Guide for the Internet, and they do a fairly decent job. The layout is a bit jumbled, but there are enough links and connections here to keep even the most hardcore TV junkie occupied for a very long time.
One of the main advantages to Internet TV (aside from being free) is that I can watch shows at my convenience, without having to mess around with a video recorder. I missed 24 last night, so I think I’ll head over to Fox.com and catch up. Cable TV? Bah; who needs it?