Watching TV on the Internet

All we need is STOp wastin our time and find out the purpose of our lives here in this world
I suppose we are not here to entertain ourselfs

You miss the major point entirely - LICENSE FEE.
I congratulate you, though, on being nice and rich to afford all the latest TV stuff.

Is there anyone that has had the same problem as myself, recently moved home Sky Engineer came out placed sky box in living room plus sky box multi room in my daughters bedroom, have had 3 letters from sky informing me that I have not got the boxes connected properly and from this month they will be taking £25-75 extra each month because I am in breach of of the mulitroom subscription terms and condition. I have not moved the boxes they are in the same place as when the engineer conected them, I spoke with them on the phone today and they say because I have a with held telephone number they can't prove that my boxes are at my home, I explained my number has always been with held and in all the years that I have had sky it's only now you are telling me that this a problem, what are you going to do about it, answer we will still be charging you the extra amount until it can be fixed by a engineer,I now know the engineer should have placed in a prefix in the box but why isn't this explained instead of taking extra money,and it wasn't the Scotland call centre it was England. Not very happy with them at all, I have not breached anything.

I have never heard such a load of uneducated comments from someone who is purporting to be intelligent. I watch TV through my PC it uses a fraction of power compared with a £1000 or a £200 television set. I do not need a desk top box, another saving, I do not need a television licence, the signal comes through my existing aerial or dish, (or even your existing set top box if you have one). Monitor screens can compete with any TV set and it is so much easier routing the signal throughout your home. The PC has its own telly remote for the superior male. The only addition to your computer is a TV card approx 12 quid. I can live video or download whole series as I watch the telly in the comfort on my fake leather sofa, (going green), I can make DVD's High or low Def without having to buy a DVD reader or a very expensive DVD writer. Of course you will have to keep all your peripherals up to date with your big telly mate, for Blue Ray and further developments, while I just download the software free! And finally your gripe was about watching Internet TV, which is only an ADDITIONAL option on a PC, a hundred people can surround you watching all the omnibus programmes going, (for the great unwashed masses), and it will not affect your bandwidth one iota As for shaky or intermittent picture and sound quality that's down to you being rather thick and unable to set up streaming on your PC, I would love to know what type, how old and how much your PC cost, compared with your new wide screen money and power grabbing telly, ( sounds like most wives actually lol)!!!

Harry; it isn't the quality of the dowmnoad I was referring to. It's the quality of sound & picture on a computer that's the problem, for us anyway! They just don't compare to a decent telly. If you could transfer things from a computer to a tv it would be ok. I think this will soon be possible.

grumpyoldwoman - actually the quality of programmes downloaded from the Internet can be very, very good if you know where to go and I don't mean youtube. Even p2p is saturated with a lot of rubbish. If you've got no download cap and reasonable bandwidth (10mb+) then downloading a DVD quality programme (4-5GB) in under an hour is doable. Of course all your devices are on the network so watch it where you want when you want.

Gaz, I think you're perfectly right about future viewing habits. I have a hard drive recorder and find it easiest to just record everything, then we watch it all when we want. It can record two programmes at the same time so we very rarely have to use a video recorder.

The problem with watching stuff on the internet is the quality of both sound and picture; so we do it as little as possible; only downloading or using "on demand" for things we missed otherwise.

The two things need to be combined so that you can have all the "on demand" programmes downloaded to your tv via a hard drive recorder instead of having to use your computer; and everything you want to record will be available all the time over a week; I think this is on the way!
The biggest obstacle will probably be panicking advertisers when they realise that their adverts will be much easier to avoid!

Erm, this is the 21st century, the internet is transforming the way we do almost everything. Do those people who like to buy newspapers complain that you go on the web and read the news for free? Embrace the future my friend. Watching television only at the time it's written in a TV guide is not practical, so if BBC wants to offer it to me at whatever time I want to watch it, then that's got to be good hasn't it? Believe me, in 15yrs time most people will be watching TV when they want to watch it, the only stuff on live will be sports programs, or the odd program reserved for those who want to be spoon fed scheduled TV programs, like you!

Absolutely Spot On. It would appear that BBC is trying to force you to use iplayer and then therefore prove iplayer is a success. How about this. There was recently a 3 part drama on BBC over three nights called OCCUPATION. heavily pre advertised, expensive to produce and starred James Nesbitt. I wasnt interested in it but so saying a friend of mine missed the last episode and couldnt believe it wasnt repeated on TV.(as a catch up) except via...youve guessed iplayer. He does not have broad band so asked if I could get the episode for him. The only way I could find was to place a video camera infront of my monitor and record it. Tried this and the programme stuttered. I then had to resort to downloading it and got it recorded into the camera from the downloaded playback. I then fed it into my HDD recorded and then made a DVD copy. What a pain and so time consuming Its ridiculous. Just as my friend does, I want to watch TV programmes on TV and with friends and family and not in my back bedroom/office as a solitary OCCUPATION?.

Watching tv on the internet or on the box?speaking for myself I find them both very educational.Whenever somebody tunes in to television I go to another room and read a book.

The iPlayer is appealing for many of the reasons YouTube is. It offers a large amount of diverse shows to be watched up to a week after they are broadcasted. There's no need to pre-record it and you can watch/discover new shows which you otherwise wouldn't have watched/discovered. There's no need to pay any money for the service either. All you need is a web browsing device and an internet connection.

Also, the quality isn't too bad.

"You must be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV. It makes no difference what equipment you use - whether it’s a laptop, PC, mobile phone, digital box, DVD recorder or a TV set - you still need a licence.

You do not need a TV Licence to view video clips on the internet, as long as what you are viewing is not being shown on TV at the same time as you are viewing it.

If you use a digital box with a hi-fi system, or another device that can only be used to produce sounds and can't display TV programmes, and you don't install or use any other TV receiving equipment, you don't need a TV Licence."

(http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp)