TV On The Internet

white avenger

white avenger
Joined
Sep 30, 2006
Messages
16,036
Age
78
Location
rome, georgia
Without going into illegal downloads or anything else immoral or unethical, how many people here watch shows on the various sites on the internet? I know that without that option, I would never get to watch "Dollhouse," or several other shows that I enjoy, plus I have found several shows no longer on the air that I had never seen, "The Dresden Files" and "New Amsterdam" just to name a couple.
 
I watch about 95% of my TV online.

For whatever reason I rarely watch things on TV anymore.

In fact, unless I have like a special or something.
The first/last episode of New Who or a Special will get me to sit and watch - however thats because I generally have people over to make a night of it!
 
I watch two programmes online, one is Dollhouse and the other is How I Met Your Mother...other then that i sometimes use BBC iplayer to watch stuff i've missed online...i love Online tv, one of the best things on the internet 😀 After BB of course =P
 
The only thing I don't watch online is Hollyoaks, because me and my flat mates all have dinner & watch it every night at 7, more or less.

DVDs & iPlayer/ITVplayer/4OD is the way forward.

In 5 years time (okay, maybe 10), people won't buy TVs any more - just external screens that they can plug their laptops/computers into (like what I use my TV for) & use them as external monitors.
 
D
DrusillaRox
my uncle has one of those....
I will only ever turn my television on for Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Other than that, I watch TV online or on DVD (as Dollhouse is a US show, I have no choice anyway).
 
Bluebird
Bluebird
Stewart Lee karma
Everything I don't have on DVD I watch online. I don't even have a TV.
If you're not from an English speaking country TV is just really a drag. You have to wait years (and I'm being literal here) for stuff to be finally shown sometimes. I think the last two seasos of Angel were finally premiering on German television towards the end of 2007.
And that's if we get a show at all.
Then there's also always the matter of crappy translations. I read an article online recently about how Germans like me (lol, they didn't mention me in the article) should stop bitching about German dubbing and being all "I'm watching it in English". The reasoning behind this was that good dubbing could be accomplished, according to the author, and that the small things that can't be translated wouldn't be understood by Germans in the original version anyway. These might actually be valid points, but the thing is, only because good dubbing is possible, doesn't mean people actually make use of it. Believe me.
(I would give a link to the article, but unfortunately I don't really remember where I read it.)
 
If you're not from an English speaking country TV is just really a drag. You have to wait years (and I'm being literal here) for stuff to be finally shown sometimes.
Good thing you added the sometimes. 😉 Some shows on the other hand does air pretty close. Sometimes we're about a month (and it can be even less at the nd of the season) behind and one can't complain about that. They do need time to make the subtitles. It's just with todays technology people just don't have the patience. And having to sit down on a special day and time doesn't make things any better. Not eveyone got Tivo... ANd I have to defent swedish tv a bit. Most shows come here pretty quickly nowdays. If they show them at all.


And that's if we get a show at all.
That is definitely true and can be so annoying (or was at least...). What do they expect as to do with those shows? Always by the dvd's without having a clue if we like it or not?

I don't know all that much about watching online but is it always available in all countries? Otherwise we're back to the whole "has to wait for xx months/years before we can watch it" thing as with tv. Good for you that can use it sure but what about the rest of us?

As for watching tv. I do it very rarely nowdays but I do watch some sports (mainly football) and that I haven't found any good site that can match in quality online. Without that I wouldn't need a tv anymore. Even if my couch is way more comfortable than this chair...
 
I watch Dollhouse online but other than that the only thing I've ever watched online was Veronica Mars; but I've had the DVDs for about 2 years now, so I don't bother anymore. So, just Dollhouse these days.
 
Airam
Airam
VM karma!
If I haven't got the show on DVD then I watch the show online, mostly because I can watch them at anytime instead of just a set time like on TV and because most TV shows that I like are aired in America before they are aired in the UK.
 
I watch most of my stuff on TV because I hate the wait times between airing and posting online (for House, it's 8 days). I only watch the stuff that conflicts with other shows I want to see or stuff that's on past my bedtime online--namely C.S.I. and Castle. I was watching Chuck online, but I kind of lost interest in it.
 
I don't have a TV, so I watch most things online. Sometimes when a housemate who has a TV is there, I hijack it to watch QI, or Jonathan Ross, because they are hard to find online because of the BBC policy that everything that isn't on Iplayer anymore shouldn't be available on any other site either. Because, you know, I can't watch stuff on Hulu or Iplayer or 4OD and so on, because I am not in the USA or the UK. Which means that if I manage to find something, it's either on a chinese site or some other dodgy corner of the interwebz.


And oh, on the if-you're-not-in-an-English-speaking-country-you-have-to-wait-ages-thing, in Holland there's a relatively short time between the original air date and when it airs over here, for the popular shows. I mean, Greys Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, stuff like that. In fact, s4 of House was stopped halfway, because they were getting to close to the US, so we had to watch repeats for half a year. However, the Dutch prefer to watch people who suck at singing or national celebrities I have never heard of fooling other national celebrities I have never heard of, so there's practically no time or place for the less mainstream shows. I can wait forever untill they show Dollhouse here. Or any other good show. They do have every single CSI ever made though. In fact, when I still had a TV, I became almost dependent on Comedy Central to see some good stuff (Reaper, the Office US, Psych, things like that).
 
Good thing you added the sometimes. 😉 Some shows on the other hand does air pretty close. Sometimes we're about a month (and it can be even less at the nd of the season) behind and one can't complain about that. They do need time to make the subtitles. It's just with todays technology people just don't have the patience. And having to sit down on a special day and time doesn't make things any better. Not eveyone got Tivo... ANd I have to defent swedish tv a bit. Most shows come here pretty quickly nowdays. If they show them at all.
It's a completely different story if your country uses subtitles instead of dubbing. I've always loved watching Dutch TV back in the 80s and early 90s, when the channels were still available on our cable. Watching US shows in English with Dutch subs improved both my (active) English and (passive) Dutch, and you'd get to watch stuff there that wouldn't air until years later, if at all, on our German stations, where you'd in 9 cases out of 10 be disappointed by the dubbing - right down to the choice of dub voices. e.g., I loved the first season of X Files on Dutch TV - back when only a handful of truly hardcore geeks here in Germany had ever heard of "that freaky show with some FBI alien hunters called Mully and Skuller or something", but I pretty much boycotted the show when it aired some years later on German TV because I just couldn't stand Scully's German dub voice.
 
I
itsxpaperdoll
Well, the quality of Dutch TV clearly has gone down. I doubt they would dare to broadcast the X files nowadays
I only watch tv for sport, mostly football but any sport really. Tv shows I watch completely on the internet, not that many though.
 
The only thing I don't watch online is Hollyoaks,

I'm the same - except I don't watch it on the TV either!

I will only ever turn my television on for Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Other than that, I watch TV online or on DVD (as Dollhouse is a US show, I have no choice anyway).

I just don't get the urgency to watch shows when first broadcast - even Stewart Lees fantastic show (which is one of the few things on TV that makes me laugh at the moment!).
 
B
Big Damn Hero
You think you're SOOO funny, dontcha? :p
Everything I want to watch I do it online, since I don't have a TV signal. I bought a brand new TV just for watching DVDs. 😛
 
I only watch TV online if I can't wait for a new show to start on the Sky, or I've got in to a TV show and want to start from the beginning to catch up. I did this with Supernatural and now Dollhouse, I have to say its a blessing having free streaming and Youtube!
 
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