For those without Cable/Satellite TV....

[TheTman]

I'd like to share a link to http://www.hulu.com/ . This a a great site that stores many previously aired episodes of popular TV shows from many different channels. They did have 2 episodes of Top Shot available, and there are probably other shooting related shows as well. They also have some movies to watch. It streams the content to your computer, and it's just like watching the TV show, even has some dang commercials, although they don't seem to take up as much time as they do when watching on TV. You can also go to the stations web site, and often they will have last weeks episode of their popular shows to watch.
The History Channel's web site had a Top Shot episode as well. Hulu.com is great if you happen to miss an episode of your favorite tv show, you can go there and catch up on what you missed if your show is popular enough for them to carry. All that is free to watch.
For $8.00/month Netflix's "Watch Instantly" section also has complete seasons of some TV shows that have been released on DVD. Plus thousands of movies to watch, I watch a lot of the old westerns and war movies there you can watch on computer, or many newer TVs and Blu-Ray players have Netflix built in, you just need to have an account.
I often use my laptop and hook it up to the TV to watch instead of watching on my computer monitor. Many newer computers will have an S-Video or even an HDMI output on the video card. For my laptop, I had to get an adapter to convert from the standard 15 plug monitor output, to an S-Video or RCA-Plug video out (It has both outputs) , but I see a lot of laptops already have an S-Video out, and some newer ones have an HDMI output jack. The converter from monitor out to TV jack was a $15-20 deal I found on the internet, amazon.com I think. Any TV made in the last 25 years should have a connection to plug into, you can use the DVD or game jacks, or whatever it has.
I hope some of us find this useful.

(I thought I'd posted this earlier this morning, and either I hit the wrong button or it got deleted, if it appears twice or was deleted for inappopriate content I am sorry)

[Jeremiah/Az]

I have Hughes Net & am limited to 350 MB in a 24 hr. period. $69.99 a month. I can't watch videos very long or it will slow down to where it is nonfunctional. What a pain in the a$$! I checked into Verizon & it is even less capacity. I'm out in the sticks where there in no cable.:mad:

[TheTman]

Funny how they never mention the bandwidth limit on those commercials about high speed internet no matter where you live. I have friends not far from here with Hughes and they have the same problem. Their son ate up chunks of mb's watching Youtube and downloading music. He moved out and things improved dramatically.

[Jeremiah/Az]

And worse yet, if you have a problem with the service, you cannot talk to anyone that speaks English!:mad: I talked to one such & asked where she was. The only thing I could understand was India.:mad:

[QuercusMax]

The Hughes satellite service is better than dial-up or no service at all, but only barely. I live in a very remote mountain area, so I had it for a while and it was expensive, slow and unreliable. Every major snowfall (common in winter here) service would blank out, as it would in thunderstorms or any number of other situations.

Have you checked (and double-checked) with your phone company to see if they have DSL available where you live?

I assumed that because I was so far away from the world (nearest tiny town is 20 miles away, and I am on the end of 2 miles of private phone line) that DSL was out of the question for me. By chance (long, interesting story) I happened to ask my small local phone company if there was any chance of getting DSL where I live, and they verified that it was! I now have it out here miles from nowhere, and although it is the slowest DSL they offer (1.5 mbits), it works well and I can even get streaming Netflix with it.

The supreme irony is that one of my best friends lives just outside of a large town in Minnesota and he can't get either DSL or cable there. <chuckle>

Anyway, it's worth asking.

[DLButler]

Hhot, the link to History Culu doesn't really store shows. What they do is link you to the network that it was broadcast on. Like Top Shot, they link you to The History Channel. You can go directly to the network and see the shows also. Hulu acts as a central link site.

[TheTman]

I have friends that work for ATT, and they have told me that the DSL boxes needed to run a DSL line up to maybe 3 miles or so away, cost at least a million dollars apiece, so unless you live in a fairly densely populated area the chance of receiving DSL are about zero.
My farmhouse has a pretty cool high speed solution, a company here puts very powerful wireless transceivers on tall radio towers, and if you can see one from your roof, then they can put a line-of-sight transceiver on your roof, as long as you are within 7 miles of the antenna. I lucked out and am only about a half mile from my antenna and the service works great, with NO bandwidth limit. That works pretty well here in the flatlands, not so well in the hilly parts of the state. Trees and stuff will mess it up too, has to be a direct line-of-sight. I had a different company doing the same thing, with the transmitter about 2.5 miles away, and the newer one works MUCH better. I suppose if you live in flat terrain, there is hope you might see this technology in your area, but not if you're in hills or mountains, unless maybe it was a town where they could connect a few hundred houses or something like that. But if it was a big enough town they'd probably already have DSL.

[Barth]

I'd like to share a link to http://www.hulu.com/ . This a a great site that stores many previously aired episodes of popular TV shows from many different channels.

Been watching Hulu for years.
Also try
http://www.crackle.com/
http://www.the-losthighway.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/crackle.com-logo.jpg

[QuercusMax]

I have friends that work for ATT, and they have told me that the DSL boxes needed to run a DSL line up to maybe 3 miles or so away, cost at least a million dollars apiece, so unless you live in a fairly densely populated area the chance of receiving DSL are about zero.


Well that's AT&T for you - not necessarily the lowest cost or most progressive. It's true that CO (central office) equipment is very pricey and usually requires a building. But for less densely-populated areas telcos can use a remote DSLAM, which can be thought of as an "extension cord" for DSL. These are small devices that can even be pole-mounted at long distance from the actual CO, and if you are within 3 miles or so of a remote DSLAM (depending upon the quality of wire from your house) you could get DSL even in a remote area.

That is indeed the situation in my case, where the main phone line runs out from the CO (about 20 miles away) to a remote DSLAM that happens to be about 2.5 miles from my house. Just lucky. But I didn't know this until I asked the technician who came out one day to repair the phone lines that had been knocked down by cattle. The technicians know everything - unlike the people you talk to in the office.

[Jeremiah/Az]

I have contacted the phone co. & there is no DSL out here. Thanks for the info.