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One of the first articles I wrote on this blog was, Satellite TV on PC Scams. It has been one of the most popular posts to date, and some readers asked me for more information.
So, I have compiled a list of websites that should cover ALL your TV cravings. To be clear, this is an article about free websites and programs, and no website or any online service listed here can replace your TV completely. TV stations have the distribution rights in their respective geographical area; therefore, if you want to watch the latest episode of Entourage in HD when it airs, you need to pay. But if you can wait a day or two, you can survive without a TV.
Table of Contents
1A. Live Streaming (Websites)
1B. Live Streaming (Programs)
2. VOD (Video On Demand)
3. Download using P2P
4. Things You May Need to Install
First, let’s cover websites and programs that will enable you to watch live streaming videos on your computer.
1A. Live Streaming – Watch live broadcasts (websites)
| Veetle.com (NEW) – There’s a new kid on the block. It’s called, Veetle. You need to install their program to make it work, but once you set it up, you’ll get the best quality possible live streaming on the net. Depending on the streamer’s quality, you ca get HD live streaming. When available, Veetle has the best NBA basketball streaming. Some nice movie channels, too. Highly recommended. |
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| Justin.tv – Place where users broadcast whatever they want in an interactive atmosphere. You’ll find movie channels, cartoons, animals, lifecasting, and even celebrities. Celebrities have decided to chat with their fans via webcams expanding their social networking reach beyond Twitter. It gets ugly in there sometimes… There’s Bow Wow and Demi Lovato to name a few. |
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| Ustream.tv -Very similar to Justin.tv. It has less movies and other entertainment channels, but has way more celebrity channels.To name a few, P. diddy, Soulja Boy, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Snoop Dog, and Ashley Tisdale. Personally I don’t find celebrities in a video chat room all that interesting. |
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| Freetubetv.net – Found this one recently, and it’s really good. It’s only a listing site with external links, but it’s kept relatively clean and updated. Some channels are live feeds and some are bunch of clips on a loop. Also, many channels link to Justin.tv and won’t be online if the channel is offline at that time. In that case, it’s better to go to Justin.tv and watch the channel when online. |  |
| wwiTV – An old but still reliable listing of all online network channels around the world. If a TV network’s channel is broadcasting live online, you’ll find it here. You may find it interesting to see what other countries’ TV channels look like. U.S. has the most channels listed there. Italy seems to have the second most number of channels. |
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| Livestream.com – Same deal as Justin.tv and Ustream.tv. I personally can’t find anything interesting there, but YOU might. The three sites are competing for viewership with exclusive celebrity channels, so it may be worthwhile to keep your eyes on all three. Justin.tv is the most popular at the moment probably because they’re a little more liberal on copyright issues. |  |
1B. Live Streaming – Watch live broadcasts (programs)
These are slowly taking a backseat to the website counterparts. Because of their ease of access and use, live streaming websites are taking viewers from the installation-required programs. Below programs do have one advantage though. Due to its decentralized P2P model, there’s more content and more freedom as to what content is being broadcast.
TVU Player – Easy installation. Just install and start watching. Now, you can also watch on their website. Lots of soccer (football) channels. There are lots of network channels as well as news channels, so this alone may satisfy many people’s live TV needs. Quality-wise, some are good, some aren’t. This thing’s getting commercialized a bit now :P with more ads than before.- SOP Cast – It’s very much like TVU Player.
- TV Ants, PP Stream, PP Live – In the past I’ve depended on them to watch some sports, but they are not english friendly, and I don’t recommend them if you don’t want headaches.
If you want to catch up on TV shows, VOD is your answer. This area of internet industry has exploded over the last few years with so many budding websites. During that time, some websites have become bigger and more user-friendly than others. Here are some of those flowered websites.
| IceFilms (NEW) – I use this one a lot. You need to install DIVX Web Player (download link is at the bottom) and a Grease Monkey (Firefox addon) script — of course you’ll need to install Grease Monkey first if you don’t have it already. Detailed explanation is posted in the forum. Follow the instruction there and you’ll be set to go. |  |
| NinjaVideo (NEW) – Similar to Icefilms, it uses DIVX player. Ninjavideo is the best place for documentaries. They have links for HD content as well. If you have a decent internet connection, you’ll be able to enjoy HD programs. Ninjavideo has been around for a while. Just don’t forget to launch the helper applet (link is at the top of Ninjavideo pages). Wait about a minute for it to load and for most of the time, you’ll get smooth streaming.
* Ninjavideo is currently shut down. I’ll update once it comes back to life. |
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| TV Shack – Clean interface and good organization. All the video sources are embedded into their own pages, so there is no need to browse away from their website. Virtually all the TV shows and movies are constantly added. You can select an alternate link in the upper right box if the default source isn’t working.
* TVShack is also shut down along with Ninja. No worries. Just visit tvshack.cc |
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| Surf The Channel – Perhaps not as user-friendly as TV Shack, but this one is more popular and has more sources of videos. What I do is go to TV Shack first, then if I don’t find something there, I go to SurfTheChannel. As with many of these sites, you’ll see a lot of Megavideo links. Megavideo has a limited viewing period of 72 minutes at which point you need to take an hour break or something. But if you’re only going to watch one TV episode at a time, it shouldn’t be a problem. |
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| HULU – is only listed here due to its popularity. It’s a network-owned (NBC, FOX, ABC) website and only lets US users have access to its content. HULU definitely has all the shows, but they don’t seem to keep an archive of older episodes. Plus, several ads appear during a show. In this internet era, the archaic geographical distribution rights are big obstacles. |
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Downloading is by far the most flexible and can offer you the highest quality videos. You can download and watch on your big screen TV via burning to DVD, using a media sharing network devices, or XBOX/PS3. The only downside is that you have to wait for it to download.
EZTV – The only place you need to know is EZTV. This torrent site has all the TV shows available. Some are SD quality while some are HD. Of course, you’ll have to download longer for an HD video. If you’re looking for more than TV shows, try Speckly.com – a search engine that indexes all the major torrent sites.
For instruction on how to use BitTorrent using uTorrent, click here.
4. Necessary Plug-ins and Programs
Flash Player – You’ll definitely need this as all the streaming sites use Flash.
DivX Web Player – When you browse around the VOD websites like TV Shack, you’ll find that some sources use DivX format. DivX format videos are usually the best quality you will see. So, make sure you install this one.
For Windows – This is the official download link. It will install the latest version of DIVX player, which won’t work with some streaming sites.
Download version 1.5 instead.
For Mac – Also for Mac, download this one instead.
µTorrent - The most popular BitTorrent client. Download and follow this guide to set it up if you need help.
K-lite Codec Pack – The video files you download are encoded with various codecs (mostly xvid, divx, and increasingly h264). You need to install these codecs to play your downloaded files. K-lite codec pack is a well-compiled set of codecs. I have been using it for many years without issues.
CCCP – Another codec pack. This one is much smaller in size and has a very helpful community. You may prefer this if you want a simpler solution.
If you have questions about any of this, feel free to ask questions in the forum or leave a comment. Also, do make suggestions.
This article is probably going to be edited quite a few times. There will be more information here in the near future, so stay tuned.
2:01 pm
Thanks for the list. I was using missedashow.net alot but i tried divx sites you listed here and they are much better.
11:09 pm
I think EZTV is a great site, but being American it handles very few International shows. I am also a member of TheBox which makes tons of British TV shows available.
But, does anyone know of other sites? Preferable British, but all English-speaking sites would be fun!
12:09 am
Hey Doc.
Didn’t know that EZTV didn’t cover UK shows.
I use eMule to get Korean shows…
I did a quick search and found http://www.uknova.com along with thebox.bz
Maybe that’s what you’re looking for.
8:28 pm
Thanks KVNPark, I just signed up for UK Nova. Can’t comment on it yet, because it appears that I am unable to browse the site until my application is approved.
1:38 am
@Doc Terry
Good to know I found something you haven’t heard of before.
Let us know how that works out for ya.
3:23 pm
FYI: I clicked on your suggestion posted in green, in the Video On Demand section, for “Surf The Channel” and a MALWARE WARNING SIGN POPS UP, stating that this site may harm my computer.
I’m using a iMac.
Pls. look into this.
Thank you for all YOUR hard work and sharing.
3:38 pm
Me again,
Here are 2 more links posted in green in the Video on Demand section that seem to have problems.
Ice Films – This page is generated by Parallels Plesk Panel, the leading hosting automation software. You see this page because there is no Web site at this address.
TV Shack – MALWARE WARNING SIGN, this site may harm your computer.
As I mentioned above, I am operating an iMac if that should make a difference in catching the Malware Warning Sign.
3:49 pm
@CheeMiss
Do you get the malware warning sign from your OS or antivirus (if you have one since you’re using a Mac)?
Or, is the message from the website? One of the ads maybe?
If the message is from your computer or antivirus, then it’s likely a malicious ad that’s being displayed on that site. I doubt Surf The Channel would purposely embed a malicious code into their website.
If it’s the latter — case where an ad is disguised as a security warning massage — then you just need to ignore it. It’s called “scareware” because it scares you into buying their software. I wrote about them a few times. Read this article for more info: http://www.scamfreeinternet.com/?p=1134 If the warning message looks like the second screenshot in that post, it’s a false warning. You need to be able to distinguish an ad that LOOKS like a warning mesage from a real one.
Here’s a few more articles related to it.
http://www.scamfreeinternet.com/?p=1214
http://www.scamfreeinternet.com/?p=1295
I usually use Firefox with Adblock on, so I don’t notice these things. But I do try to allow ads on websites I’d like to support, being a webmaster myself.. hehe… As long as ads are not intrusive, I allow them.
Hope it’s one of the cases I mentioned. If Surf The Channel really is a malicious site or knowingly places malicious ads, I’ll of course take it off my list. But I don’t think it is.
3:54 pm
Hmmm… I’m not seeing these warning messages even on Internet Explorer and Opera.
As for Ice Films, they change their hosting servers quite often. So you’ll see messages like that once in a while. They will likely come back online in a few days.
5:53 pm
Consider adding http://www.topoftv.com/ (TopOfTV)
12:40 pm
Thanks tom for the suggestion. Looks like a good site.
But honestly, with Icefilms and Ninjavideo, I don’t find myself looking for anything else. You should try ‘em out if you haven’t already.
7:00 am
One site I use to watch tv online is http://www.myeasytv.com/. It has all the free TV channels available on the internet, so I know I don’t need to buy any software.
8:32 pm
Is there any website which would stream World Cup Soccer 2010 for free or on subscription?
11:58 pm
@basheer: Try the websites I listed on my how to watch sports article. They’re all free.
6:28 am
I love veetle and freetube :)
1:24 pm
Now we need to figure out which ones are more mobile friendly?!
9:40 pm
@tj: Yeah, you make a good point about mobile friendliness. I don’t know about others, but I know Veetle’s working on it.
I’m not sure what other list you’re referring to.
1:41 pm
What happened to miro off your other list? Duplicate stuff or what?
4:16 am
Another good site to add to the list is http://www.seeimdb.com, lots of links collected from all over the internet and direct access to streaming movies from IMDb by typing “see” in front of the IMDb.com movie page URL.
9:33 am
That is interesting. Thanks.
2:21 pm
how could i embed a video? I want to embed it even embedding is disabled. Is there a way to do this?
6:28 pm
@kees
Not sure I understand. Where do you want to embed a video? In the comment? If so, then no you can’t embed a video in the comment here.