...and well, I still prefer regular TV.
I started out with MTV.ca. The site allows to watch music videos, music news and TV shows episodes. Great! I decided to check out A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. All went well until one episode after another would freeze after about 2 minutes into it. And never work again. Not fun. I don't know if I should blame my Internet connection for this misfortune (although I have high-speed) or not, but I quickly lost interest in this site and moved on.
Next was Joost. A baunch of shows, videos and even channels. Awesome! Except in order to be able to watch anything, one has to download Joost. I started the download but after realizing it would take quite a while, I gave up. Plus some content is not available in Canada. Moving on.
About Torrent stuff. I did have ABC (Yet Another Bittorrent Client) on my computer at some point in the past. However, whenever I tried to download something, it would never work. Finnally, I deleted the whole thing. I have heard some people using it succesfully, however. Unfortunately, I am not one of them.
I also have LimeWire. It's great for downloading music. But movies or shows... well, I guess I just don't have enough patience.
I really liked TED, however. This great website offers a lot of talks that can be searched by date, topic, tags as well as ratings such as "most jaw-dropping", "most persuasive", "most courageous", "most inspiring", "most funniest" etc. Surprisingly, I was actually able to watch a couple of talks without any problems or slow downs. I definately think this site is good for education and insparation, but not as an alternative to traditional TV.
Then, off course, there is YouTube. A great source for commercials, music videos, political info and funny stuff. But, again, is not a replacement for traditional TV.
There is another website I had success with in the past - http://www11.alluc.org/alluc/. A year ago or so I spent nearly 3 days watching OC and Friends on it. And I definately used it as a substitude for traditional TV. However, that was at a friend's house and I didn't seem to have any connection/speed problems except for few occasions. When I tried to watch full TV shows episodes at home though, I experienced some problems again. Which makes me think it may have something to do with my Internet connection.
A word on advertising. I don't remember seeing any ads at all to be honest. Obviously, if you download stuff, it's commercials-free. On MTV.ca, I saw a tiny clip for MTV while watching a TV show episode. There are really no ads on YouTube (I've read somewhere they are making a point not to saturate the site with advertising 'cause that may drive people away). Haven't seen any ad content on TED either.
The verdict? Not a fan of downloading. Not a fan of staring at a screen waiting for stuff to unfreeze and load. Not such a big fan of watching TV online. With a little more patience and better Internet connection, I could probably spend a little more time watching stuff online. But for now.. for now I'll stick with the good old TV. And even though I only have 4 channels at home, I find it enough and more satisfying than watching stuff online. For some reason, I preffer to read online rather than watch or listen.
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