Watch Television on Your Computer

I am currently teaching in Hangzhou China and I fulfill my US TV cravings with a product called Slingbox. It is hooked up to my cable & router at home in Georgia and I can watch Georgia stations during low bandwidth demand here in my China apartment on my old Mac laptop (G4- system 10). (doesn't work well when all the college kids are playing online games or watching their downloaded movies or Korean Soap operas). Only weird thing is that I watch the Today Show at 9 pm and the Evening News at 7am.

I'm a little concerned, Bob, when I see in your piece about watching TV on your computer you indicate that we should know that claims to watch satellite TV on your PC for $49. is a scam yet one of your sponsored links is just such a purveyor. How does that work?!

EDITOR'S NOTE: As I've mentioned before, the Google ads are not under my control, and are *supposed* to be relevant to the content of the page. In an ironic way, even those scam ads are. My hope is that people will actually *READ* the article and understand why they should NOT believe the hype.

Hi Bob. I live in the UK, and simply can't watch US TV on the internet. It seems that most of these websites are IP controlled (e.g., Hulu, and cbs.com in particular), and so only accept US based IP addresses. I'd love to know if there is a way around this - especially now that there has been a big clampdown on P2P file sharing.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I wonder if a proxy site like anonymizer.com (or a free proxy recommended by peacefire.org) would get around that.

Regarding Debbie from UK, If she has family or friends in the Us, she can hook up to Slingbox and view all chanels that are available on her friend/family TV.

Dear Mr Rankin, As you appear to be extremely knowledgeable and up to date on various subjects and the "ins" and "outs" of computer technology, please would you kindly assist in my struggle to convert my 42" plasma monitor into a TV screen to enable me to watch cable on it? I've trawled through the internet and emailed a number of "specialist" outlets looking for information on conversion kits and the likes but as of yet to no avail.

I would be most grateful if you would furnish me with your wisdom in order for me to use this monitor as a television set as my current TV has very little life left in it and alas my budget in todays climate is far stretched as it is.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've never heard of a kit to convert a TV monitor into a full-blown TV set. What you lack is a tuner, the amplifier, and the speakers. I can't imagine it would be cheaper to buy all those components, when you can get a 32-inch LCD TV for under $300.

Mr. Rankin, The U.S. Government delayed (no surprise) the mandatory cut over to digital TV until June 12, 2009. The "blue" information paragraph on your "How to Watch Television on your Computer" page should be updated.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Done. I had already updated that in two other articles, but missed this one. Thanks for the good detective work.

Another website where you can watch many TV shows and movies is www.free-tv-video-online.inf and most of its links work outside the US.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stay away... I checked one link and found a virus.

I just wanted to thank Bob Rankin for his informative articles. I've read several others that he has written and i must say he is quite knowledgeable in everything that he writes about. Much thanks, and Kudo's

Sounds great but where do you get the external gadget that goes in the usb port?? Never heard of them nor seen them anywhere..(guess that would be redundant)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Do a Google search for "USB TV Tuner" and you'll find them.

Dear Bob,
A good article, but you ought also to mention that if you watch TV on a computer then you will need a TV licence (at least, this is true in the UK). Currently I don't have a TV and so of course I don't have a TV licence. If I was to follow the advice in your article, I would actually be breaking the law! So please include mention that if someone wants to watch TV - no matter whether it is on a TV set or a computer - then they must have a TV licence.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A "tv license"??? Never heard of that here in the USA. What if you watch TV at your neighbor's house -- is that illegal in the UK? Do you need a radio license to listen to the BBC? Can you read the Times without a newspaper license? Incredible! I just looked it up, and you are quite correct. You need a TV License in the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, even to watch TV content on the Internet. The annual cost (TAX) is about 142 British pounds, which is US$232. The money is used to subsidize the BBC.