Watching TV on the internet has never been easier. There are any number of great sites where you can watch TV shows, movies, sports and stations from around the world. There are so many shows available you could really replace your TV (if you were inclined to do so). I find my 13-1/2 year old male offspring bounces back and forth between cable and the internet for watching shows, so I doubt I’ll be able to take advantage of any monetary savings in the near future - but you never know…

Follow up:

Some sites require the download of a stand alone player, some do not. I personally prefer those that don’t so I’m going to start with those. Perhaps my all time favorite is OVGuide. Think of it like TV Guide for online TV/Movies. OVGuide links to all of the best streaming sites, and they have fairly high standards for quality. Sites with dead links etc., or that require a stand alone player, are not considered for listing on this OVGuide. This site does not actually stream anything - it is simply portal to help you find the sites that may be streaming what you’re looking to see. It links to hundreds of sites, including the biggies like Hulu, Filmhill, and Fancast.

Not listed on OVGuide but certainly worthy of mention are Justin.tv and Ustream.tv. The male offspring especially likes Justin.TV for watching sporting events. One site that has several good links to online TV is One Tip a Day. This site has quite a nice compilation of sites for any number of categories including sports. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re into online TV. If you should ever exhaust all these possible choices, a good old fashioned Google will find even more sites for you to check out. In fact, the choices are growing so rapidly it’s hard to keep up!

Now, for the sites that require a software download of some sort. Recently I’ve tried Miro, which has been highly recommended on a number of sites. I’m reserving judgement, but I’m not as impressed as I thought I’d be. I also downloaded AnyTV a few days ago, but am even less impressed. Seems it’s awfully hard to find a channel that plays in the free version - and I’m not going to pay to upgrade to the "Pro" version just to watch on there what I can probably find free elsewhere. I do however very much like Joost. I just downloaded this beta today and I’m more impressed with it than the other downloads I’ve tried recently. There are two players I downloaded previously I rarely see mentioned other places. I don’t really know why, but I’ll take the time to give them mention. If you’re interested in trying them, grab Sopcast and TVU Player. Sopcast can be a little tricky, as it’s quite a bit harder to determine exactly what’s playing.

Do you like to watch online sports? Guys? C’mon - I know you do….how often has there been something you wanted to watch that was either not on your local TV/Cable lineup or was only available on pay-per-view? If you’re like me, most anything that’s something you just have to watch - it’s pay-per-view and you don’t really want to spend your hard earned money to watch it. Or, while your friends with Direct TV have a particular channel, your cable company doesn’t offer it. Good news!! You have options!! Thanks to Eagle_Kiwi for pointing me to LiveFooty where there are links to all kinds of live sporting events. I was very pleasantly surprised recently when an event I very much wanted to see, but was only PPV for me was streamed on the American Sports section of LiveFooty found at Live-NBA. Don’t be fooled by either the Footy or the NBA parts - there’s lots more to be found on these sites - I assure you! More recently Justin.tv and Ustream.tv have been a more reliable source for these events - especially wrestling. I highly recommend Justin.tv first (just do a search for what you want to see). If you can’t find it there, take a look at the other sites I’ve mentioned.

I’d like to point out these sites do nothing other than provide a means to finding the streaming video - they do not actually produce the streams. And contrary to what some people may tell you, it’s legal to watch streaming video - but it is not legal to download or save it. I’ll also admit that movies, especially if they are new releases, are little better than the $5 DVD’s you’ll find being sold on the corner. They are usually recorded surreptitiously in the theatre and the quality varies greatly. But just think - every movie you watch online you’ve just saved $5 on the crappy corner video. And some are fairly decent recordings - if you opt not to go to the theatre your savings are exponentially greater. You can still make popcorn and drink soda at home. But some feeds are perfectly wonderful to watch and you’ll find you may enjoy them tremendously. There are any number of movies and shows of the highest quality available online.

One thing to keep in mind though - streaming video does take some serious bandwidth - so you may find it hard to manage other tasks while you watch. Large files are often broken down into multiple sections, so a movie may actually require 3 or more files to be viewed to get the whole thing. And with sporting events, many of the streams are P2P so basically until there are a large number of viewers the quality of the stream may be lower than what you expected. But patience usually pays off and it improves as the number of viewers increases. Dial up users will have a very hard time watching streaming video as the buffering will probably be very frustrating. DSL or cable broadband users should have very few problems.

If you’ve not yet tried it - give online TV watching a chance. You may be pleasantly surprised!