Does anyone here watch TV via their computers? What is the deal?

I recently have seen software you can download to watch live tv on your computer. Now, I live by myself and might opt to do this instead of buying a flat screen and spending a lot of money on Cable costs.

But there has to be some serious catch. Anyone try this? Any thoughts? What to avoid and what not to avoid?

 

The only kind I've ever watched on my computer was Chinese. It was for F1 races that were broadcast by CBS because I wanted to watch live.

 

You're a trader, you should know that screen real-estate is a premium! For $100-200, you can buy a 13-20" TV and leave it running in the background; in the meantime, your PC is doing things that are much more interactive. If you're not working on your PC, then who wants to watch a good movie on a dinky screen? In that case, you want to move to the 40-72" screens with surround-sound and enjoy the experience.

 

Sure is! But I am trying to get the skinny on this whole thing. Like, would I be able to use it on a Saturday afternoon while at a wireless hotspot? Do I not get local channels? Etc..

Very true!

Well, you do have a point, and HD is great!

But how can this be so inexpensive(~$40) and cable can cost over $100/month? Is it that the cable companies are ripping you that much?

 

legal? software... either way i "can", but dont... hook up my satalite cable to my comp, and do some pretty interesting stuff with it...

 

Sorry, I thought you were talking about PC's that had tuner cards and software built-in. That's pretty standard stuff and you just hook up your signal feed to the tuner card. If you're talking about Internet TV (the only way you could get it in a wireless hotspot and also have a much lower cable/sat subscription cost) then there's at least two issues.

The first is a legality question, which goes beyond the hardware or software. Are you getting the stream relayed from your home, which also requires some kind of hardware, through a cable/sat feed that you've subscribed to and paid for; or from someone else's internet server, where you'd have to check whether they are authorized to redistribute legally.

The second is a quality question, video/audio quality will be determined by the available bandwidth to your endpoint and the resolution modes available from the server. You've probably seen how cruddy youtube.com can be and how long it can take to set-up a streaming link. You can get crap at real-time; OK quality after waiting an annoying time for it to download; or great quality after waiting eons.

Edit: Came across this review about PCShowBuzz, doesn't sound too good ...

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6130-0.html?forumID=82&threadID=140787&messageID=1748704

 

I have telvision everywhere. All of my computers (except my laptop) have Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, which I used to help out with. My car has television in it (terrestial, although satellite is available). And my cell phone has live cable television to it too.

You could be referring to something along the lines of PCShowBuzz, which I believe is around $25, but hardly any of the TV available is live according to reviews and it's Internet TV, which isn't the best quality. There are a couple others that do sort of the samething, but I don't think it's really what you're looking for.

If you have any other questions let me know, I'm pretty knowledgable in the area.

 

I used to watch TV on my computer before but then i got satellite. It came with my video card, ATI All in Wonder 7500, even came with a controler too. But you need to have cabel TV to be able to watch TV on your computer with this video card.

It wasn't bad able to watch the news among other things and do my work as well.

 

I used to do it all the time. All-in-wonder used to have a feature where you could play TV as your wallpaper so you could do other things while you watch TV. It would be bad ass to buy a big flat screen monitor and get a programmable remote so it can act as TV and PC at the same time.

 

Keep the info on this coming. Have to weigh out a few considerations...

 

It's possible, all you need is the right video card and cable. You'll be able to use your flat screen as a monitor for your computer and watch tv, would be more convenient if you had wireless keyboard and mouse.

 

I watch most of my shows via computer. But not on a website, I download them using torrents, limewire,etc. The reason I do this is because I don't have cable in my house, so I only get fox, nbc,cbs, abc, and pbs. The shows I download: Southpark, The Office, The Colbert Report, and Family Guy.