Kill Your TV: 15 Internet Video Sites to Beat the Writers' Strike

TV Shows and Movies

A multitude of Web sites offer video clips--or entire episodes--from TV shows and movies. Here are some of the best ones we've found.

AOL In2TV

AOL Television assembles many kinds of online video--including music videos, news clips, movie trailers, viral videos, and full-length TV shows--in one place. You can find full episodes of prime-time shows like Desperate Housewives, Survivor, and Lost from the Big Three networks (AOL has distribution deals with all of them), along with lots of additional titles from the likes of CW and Bravo. Many of the prime-time episodes are free, and the video quality is...good enough. But what I like best about AOL Video is its In2TV, a wide-ranging (and free) collection of old TV shows like Welcome Back Kotter, Alice, and Gilligan's Island. These videos open on your browser immediately, and the viewing experience--complete with new ads--is just like watching a small color TV.

Hulu

Hulu, a joint venture (now in private beta, open to people in the United States) of NBC/Universal and Fox, is one of the best-looking and best-organized video sites on the Web today. The site's biggest draw is its lineup of current, prime-time TV shows like Heroes, House, Scrubs, and The Simpsons; all of its new shows come from NBC or Fox. Hulu also features some episodes of old TV series (Kojak, Night Gallery) and a few old movies (The Blues Brothers, The Breakfast Club), as well as some shorter clips (bits from Saturday Night Live, for example), an array of movie trailers, and a few viral videos. The video quality is surprisingly good, and the interface's navigation and social networking features are simple, well placed, and easy to use.

ABC

Unlike NBC, ABC didn't launch a separate portal for its online content, choosing instead to make much of it available at its own site. There, you can catch up on past episodes of Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and Ugly Betty for free. You can also watch daytime programming like The View and All My Children. Hulu.com may enjoy a higher hype quotient, but ABC's site matches it on the viewing essentials: video quality and presentation. In fact, ABC's interface looks an awful lot like Hulu's, though you do have to install a media player on your browser to make it play, as you do with Fox.com.

Apple iTunes

Though studios depend less on large aggregators to distribute their video online these days, iTunes remains one of the largest and best portals for prime-time TV and A-list movies. Steve Jobs and company lost their NBC/Universal shows because of a pricing dispute that prompted the formation of Hulu.com, but Apple continues to sells TV shows from Paramount, Disney, ABC, A&E, and numerous smaller networks. The selection at iTunes includes some cool oldies like the Mary Tyler Moore Show circa 1970 and, of course, more-recent stuff like ABC's Kyle XY and Army Wives and Showtime's The Tudors. You can also find a respectable menu of sports shows at iTunes--mainly NFL and Major League Baseball reruns. Most of the TV shows cost $2 each, a few cost more, and some are free. And finally, iTunes now has more than 600 movies on hand, from studios like Walt Disney, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures, and Miramax Films; Most of the titles sell for $10 each.

Joost

The latest creation of Kazaa and Skype inventors Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Joost offers you a "TV-like" streaming experience. Now in beta for Windows and Mac, Joost is fast and free, but the quality of the video it delivers is far from stunning--you'll notice a fair amount of pixelation and stuttering. Joost's content resembles what you'd get if a cable service moved onto the Web. It features indie movie channels, news, some sports, and a fair amount of "special interest" content like nature shows and even a silent-movie channel. Joost isn't one of my favorites, because I've already watched the nature shows and Ren & Stimpy there, and I can't find any other compelling reason to go back. But you'll probably find something in Joost's vast video vault that you'll enjoy watching. Did I mention it's all free?

Netflix

Of the online movie rental sites I've seen, Netflix's Watch Instantly is the fastest and most reliable. When Netflix members pick a movie, a media player launches instantly, and they can start watching--no questions asked and no waiting for the stream to buffer (take note, Movielink and Amazon Unbox). Less than 10 percent of the movies and documentaries available through Netflix's DVD-by-mail service are available for free online viewing, but the number of titles in that subset is growing quickly. Though I have just about exhausted the feature films on the Watch Instantly service, the service's broad selection of documentaries keeps me coming back. You can also choose from a modest number of TV series (including both the British and the U.S. versions of The Office) using the Watch Instantly service. Netflix recently announced that subscribers on one of its "unlimited" plans ($8.99 and up per month) can stream as many movies and TV episodes as they want.

PBS and BBC

Both PBS in the United States and the BBC in England have huge video content catalogs, and clear ambitions toward online distribution. And both networks have a lot of news and entertainment content sprinkled about their various Web sites. But finding it takes some searching because neither broadcaster has organized its video holdings in a way that makes them easily accessible. The BBC is moving in that direction with its iPlayer online video service--and I would love to watch all the great BBC stuff--but the service isn't available to U.S. viewers. The network says that its BBC International arm is working on something similar to iPLayer that will be available in the United States, but when it will be ready to go is anyone's guess. Still, PBS should take a hint from the BBC's iPlayer initiative and arrange to make its content available to the rest of the world as well.

Late Addition: Comcast's Fancast

Another contender among Web video players comes from the cable world. The cable giant Comcast recently launched Fancast, a service that offers more than 3000 hours of movies and TV shows. Fancast pulls video content from Comcast's cable and video-on-demand services, from iTunes and Netflix, and from other rich sources. You can watch the video on your computer or on your TV in the living room via an IP-ready cable set-top box. The site also provides voluminous information about TV shows, movies, and the actors in them; and it offers you viewing suggestions based on your interests and on the content you've already watched. Pretty cool. For movies still in theaters, you can buy and print tickets at Fancast. The service grew out of the Comcast.net customer portal, and its information and ticket-buying aspects originated in the old Fandango service, which Comcast acquired last April. Fancast also lets you enter your zip code to find local content, including local news and events; that's something most other Net video outposts don't provide. For its sheer volume of content and for some of its interactive extras, Fancast is worth checking out.