Watch tv from my computer
Have you ever thought to yourself “It sure would be nice to watch TV from my computer”? Well, it’s no longer the province of the super rich or ultra nerds. In fact, watching television on your computer is becoming more and more common. Some, including software giant Microsoft, feel it’s the wave of the future. In fact, they have bet part of their future on it. Your new Vista operating system has features specifically designed to enable this type of functionality.
That’s great, but where do you get the content from? I mean, you just can’t have thousands of channels on your computer directly from the internet, right? Well actually you can. There really are a few ways to have TV on your computer. You can buy a TV tuner card. This essentially turns your computer into a high-tech VCR or personal video recording device (PVR – think TiVO). That’s pretty cool, but there are a couple of downsides to focus. First of all, as noted above, there is a content question. Where did you get it?
With the TV tuner card method, you are limited to what is available with a terrestrial antenna, or you can connect basic cable TV service. Anything beyond basic cable will not work with this method, because the content is encrypted by your cable provider. You need your proprietary cable box to decode the really cool channels or pay-per-view events. So while this method of watching TV on your computer is pretty cool, it definitely has limitations.
You can use a pay-per-download service to watch movies on your computer, such as Cinemanow.com or Movielink.com. While they offer a large amount of downloadable content, it is definitely not live TV. If you are looking for real live TV, you will have to look elsewhere.
Another method is IPTV. TV content is streamed directly over the Internet to your computer or cable box. There are two flavors of this. One is through a major service provider, such as a cable, satellite, or phone company. These are definitely capable of delivering a great deal of high-quality content, but just because it’s streamed over the internet doesn’t mean you’ll simply go online directly to your PC and watch reruns of Sienfeld. You’re basically duplicating the cable box approach, except the content delivery method is to use IP packets instead of analog cable or some other type of digital cable.
There is still another option. You can watch live TV broadcast directly on your computer or on a television connected to your computer. With one of several software-based solutions, you can watch live TV shows such as sports, prime-time network programming, reality shows, and movements. It’s live, and what’s best, there are thousands of channels available all over the world. If you are looking to keep up with world events, or want a different perspective on the news, this is a fantastic resource.
However, streaming software solutions really are great for sports. You’ll find sporting events that are sparsely covered in the US, like soccer, motorcycle racing, and bike racing. Another advantage is that you can get coverage of the same event from different networks. Want to see if the local announcers are a bit biased? You can do it. No matter the sport, if it is on television anywhere in the world, you will be able to watch it.
So there are great ways to watch live TV on your computer. You just have to decide how you are going to do it and have a cold one!