Cable, Satellite, or Internet

These days it seems like we have all kinds of ways to keep up with all the latest shows and even those "oldies" that are no longer around. You can watch your favorite tv shows on your tv, computer, or, if you got one, IPhone (or whatever kind of fancy cell phone you might have). Of course, you can turn your big screen tv into a big screen computer monitor...if you've got the right cables. So my big question is how do you watch tv? Do you watch via your cable or satellite company? Do you prefer to watch your fave shows on your computer via your internet connection?

Well, for me, I watch my fave shows on the computer. The biggest reason is because I don't have cable or satellite. There are all kinds of websites out there that enable you to watch television without the need for a tv. You like NBC's "Chuck"? I do, but I don't like waiting until sometime on Tuesday for the show to be on NBC's website. So, what do I do? I go to sidereel.com. I have "Chuck" set as one of my favorite current shows so it shows up in my profile's tv schedule. I click on "Chuck", which then takes me to the show's sidereel page. After that, I click on the latest episode, which in turn takes me to a webpage of links for that particular episode. You'll find a lot of megavideo.com videos for many shows listed first(because apparently a lot of people upload to that site more than others), but unless you have a paying account with megavideo you don't get to watch more than 72 minutes of video at a time. Let me tell you, it sucks if you got more than one episode to watch!

The good thing about these types of sites (megavideo, ninjavideo, fastpass, etc.) is that you can watch your favorite shows commercial-free! I don't know about you, but I pretty much hate commercials. Most are boring, stupid, or, for me, irrelevant. Of course, Super Bowl commercials are the exception...okay well, some of them. The downside to these sites? Having to wait for the show to finish loading before you watch it. If you have a slow internet connection, expect to wait a good bit before you can sit back and enjoy your show.

Now if you feel like your ripping off NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. by not watching the shows on their sites, by all means visit those sites! You can also watch on Hulu.com, Fancast.com, Amazon.com, and Itunes.com (those last 2 there are pay-sites, just so you know). These sites also have sponsored airing of the television shows, but, unlike on your tv, these commercials are generally 30-second spots about every 10 minutes or so throughout your viewing.

The other advantage I see in watching shows online? Most shows are there whenever you want to watch. It's better than DVR; you never accidentally erase anyting!

So what about satellite viewers? I'm not going to bad-mouth satellite. To be fair, I've never really had satellite. I roomed with a couple of friends that had satellite several years ago, and I will admit that I thought the satellite service wasn't all that great. If we had really bad weather, we had no tv. I lived in Arkansas at the time, so you can imagine what winter was like! I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who love having satellite service. Of course, depending on your location, you might not have a choice but to choose satellite.

That brings me to cable. I've had cable. I loved cable. But when I couldn't afford to pay my cable bill, I lost my beloved cable. I thought I was going to go crazy without my television! I thought my life was going to be boring and unbearable. I thought, "How am I going to keep up with all my favorite tv shows?" Fortunately, I was wrong, and I found an outlet to keep up with tv. I might not be able to pay for digital cable and all the thousands of channels, but I could afford to pay for internet access from a local cable company!

Which brings me back to the internet. Of course, in order to have internet you must pay a cable or satellite provider. So, it all kind of weaves itself back into one another. It's the old you-can't-have-one-without-the-other type of thing. Maybe one day I'll go back to having digital cable...

But I'll just go with nothing more than the expanded tier (gotta have my Discovery channel and a few other cable channels you can't get with the basic plan). Like I said you can watch your favorite tv shows online, anytime, but there's still something about watching it on your tv that makes it still worth keeping a tv around.