The only TV and Movie Websites you Need

Lots of websites come and go, especially when it comes to TV show and movie websites. Being a major movie, TV show, news and documentary addict made me try lots of websites over the last couple of years. While many of those sites sucked, some of them were really good. Here are my top four websites for watching my favorite stuff online.

Hulu

Hulu

Hulu is an excellent 100% legal source for TV shows and movies. If you were looking for a website where you could freely watch your favorite movies and shows online this is it. Most of the content come in pretty good quality. No ‘camrips’ here. There is also an option to watch videos in full screen mode. Plus it’s completely free, you don’t have to pay anything.

The site has a rich choice of content including popular TV shows (The Office, The Simspons, Family Guy etc.) and hundreds of popular movies. You won’t be able to watch latest movies here, but there are lots of cool stuff to choose from. You can browse content by network or genre (Comedy, Crime, NBA etc.). If you’re not sure where to start you can also check what’s most popular among Hulu users. One really cool feature is that you can subscribe to your favorite shows or channels and get notified whenever the new videos are added.

At the moment the service is available only within the United States. However there is a way to access it from outside the United States as well. You will need to install a program called Hotspot Shield for that.

SurfTheChannel

SurfTheChannel

We have profiled SurfTheChannel several times before, here and here. It’s been my favorite TV show website for some time now. SurfTheChannel basically aggregates video links (movies, tv shows, anime, etc.) from dozens of video websites, sorts them into different categories and lets you stream them via their branded video player.

SurfTheChannel

The website went through a massive redesign recently and got a lot prettier. Most of the shows and movie pages have multiple links. In case one doesn’t work, you can try one of the others. Although it falls a bit short on quality it makes up by it’s huge database. You will find lots of stuff here. And as I have mentioned earleir it’s also a good source for watching documentary movies.

Livestation

LiveStation

This is what I use to keep up with news. Livestation brings news channels to your desktop. There are only 8 channels at the moment: Aljazeera, BBC World, Bloomberg, Euro News, France 24, iTele, RT, and BBC World Service. What makes it so attractive is the picture quality, it’s just as good as on a regular television set. The audio quality is pretty good as well. For more details see Mark’s Livestation review.

At the moment Livestation is available only for Windows PC’s, though Linux and Mac versions are coming soon. If you’re a Mac or Linux user or simply would like to have more TV channels to choose from then head on to TVChannelsFree (original article) or Inner-Live (original article). Both of the websites lets you stream TV channels online with plenty of channels to choose from.

MyP2P

MyP2P

Here is something for avid sport fans. Using MyP2P you can watch almost any sport game live for free. Whether it is a Football, MLB, NHL, NBA, Tennis etc. usually you are able to watch it live on MyP2P. Sometimes the game can be streamed directly from the browser, in other cases you might need to install one of the listed desktop clients. Usually games are available in different video quality. That is to say, folks with a faster connection can choose a stream with a better picture quality.

Tagged: • •

Aibek Esengulov

The guy behind MakeUseOf.com. Follow him and MakeUseOf on Twitter @MakeUseOf. For more details check out MakeUseOf about page.

Similar Stuff

The comments were closed because the article is more than 90 days old.

If you have any questions related to stuff mentioned in the article or need help with any computer issue, just ask it on MakeUseOf Answers.

  • http://www.holidayunder200.co.uk Diane

    I’ve been ysing locate.tv for finding out when the next episode of a program is on. It’s been really useful several times recently when we’ve forgotten to record some TV.

    • http://freetube.110mb.com TeleVision Leashed

      Well I’d recommend Free Tube for live television. MyP2P is was good, but its become quite slow and not accessible when you’re at work and can’t install the player. With free tube you can at least use common plugins like wmp or flash to play the live streams. It’s good to waste time.

      Hulu and ftree tube are a great mix.

      • Jack

        Strange comment. Im a p2p user and I always watch it there at work using several direct links aka flash links, from for example justintv. At home p2p is good, but not at work ofcourse. So I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you don’t need to install players everytime.

        Thanks alot for the tips of other sites, shame I didn’t find out about them earlier :o

        • Tess

          Jack most require netants or tvu and some businesses block video sites like justin tv and youtube. Plus at home my p2p is capped and I have a strict bandwidth limit so uploading isn’t even an option anymore thanks to my isp. So I prefer download only, I’d like to upload but if its the decision between going over my bandwidth and sharing or just being a leech and download I’m going with the leech. I get charged $10 per an additional gb over my limit. Dial up is actually cheaper since there’s no real bandwidth limits with my isp on dialup.

          Surfthechannel is quite bad go with tvshack its a bit better but all are hosted on tudoo so considerably longer wait time.

        • http://makeuseof.com Aibek

          @ Tees

          Dialup maybe cheaper, but it’s not enough for streaming.

          You also mentioned that STC is bad. Why? I guess a lot depends on the popularity of the content you want to wartch. Most of my fav. shows are pretty and thus have plenty of alternative links to choose from. In most cases I am able to watch the episodes in decent quality.

  • Sound Of Vision

    Hm, I downloaded HotSpot Shiled but I can’t install it :(
    it says “Installer integrity check has failed”

    Do you know of any other softwares for same function? I’d really love to use Hulu…

    Thanks for always good tips! :D

    • http://makeuseof.com Aibek

      Hmmm… I guess you’re on Vista. Despite getting this error you still should be able to complete the setup process. What happens after the error? Does setup terminate?

  • http://www.investorpitstop.com Jared

    I think you should add http://www.investorpitstop.com to your site list.

    This website gives great investing advice and news. Trust me, it’s an up and coming new thing.

  • http://me.malleeblue.com Martin

    SurfTheChannel — This is ok, but I’ve had a lot of videos simply stop and reset themselves whilst watching them (at various stages of play). Others are very VERY slow. Only about 10% of what I’ve watched has been trouble free and at a good speed.

    Livestation — As mentioned in “Mark’s Livestation review” (see link in above article) not all channels are available in all countries. For example, I’m in Australia right now and I only have 3 TV stations available – Al Jazeera, France 24 and Russia Today. Regarding quality though, it’s very good providing you have a fast Internet connection.

    • http://www.livestation.com Jari

      Martin,

      you should have more channels than that in Australia. e.g. BBC World should be available. I can’t remember the GeoIP restrictions for all countries… but if you email support@livestation.com we’ll look into it (this could be a bug). You should have BBC World Service radio too.

      thanks for the comments about quality.

      Jari
      (Livestation team)

      • http://makeuseof.com Aibek

        Thanks for heads up guyz.

  • Fred

    TvShack is way better than surfthechannel, I find STC’s redesign to be very inaccessible and not very reliable. Don’t fix what isn’t broken….

    TvShack has a clean and easy to navigate design, and more videos work imo

    http://tvshack.net/

  • James@STC

    Oh look its the tvshag spammers again…

  • reema

    http://www.sidereel.com/_home

    i have found sidereel to be very good for the most popular shows.. i don’t really know about the less known ones..

  • http://blog.buttermouth.com/2007/06/top-25-places-to-watch-free-movies-and.html Mike

    You can always find the current top 25 movie websites, here;

    http://blog.buttermouth.com/2007/06/top-25-places-to-watch-free-movies-and.html

  • http://googsmart.com googsmart.com

    Find any streaming movie that you are looking for.

  • http://housemdvideos.com Simon Mills

    For house md, try http://housemdvideos.com http://sidereel.com is also very good for movies and tv shows

  • http://www.nosubscriptionrequired.net/ Norman Roberts

    The Internet’s Largest and most Comprehensive collection of Free Movie,TV & Cable Sites on the longest web page.
    http://www.nosubscriptionrequired.net/

  • http://www.khaled.us/ Khaled

    Good list, but Hulu is restricted to one country, call me when they go world wide :)

  • kccollins

    Khaled – if you’re in the UK can find everything through tv.blinkx.com – it includes all the BBC and ITV, and Channel 5 programmes. there’s a US version too.

  • joe
  • John F.

    As a collector of far too many of these links, I appreciate you cutting down the list… but just want to add one more: ovguide.com . It’s the most comprehensive search engine of all the other sites. Including all those you list above. Any time we’re trying to find anything, that’s where we start.

  • http://10starmovies.com marcia shern

    10starmovies provide us free movies on-line .This site provide us fresh content & also have rare videos of black & white cinema.Also documentaries,tv-shows all are available at this site free of cost.On-line movies and all content are available in DVD quality.

  • http://10starmovies.com marcia shern

    This season laugh aloud watching the soon to be released Hollywood movie,watch new movies free at http://10starmovies.com without paying nothing.

  • http://www.watchouseonline.com/ Jason

    I use http://www.sidereel.com/ and Watch House Online to watch House specifically, but also other tv shows and movies.

  • http://www.watchhouseepisodesonline.com mikey

    Great stuff. To watch TV show, try

    ovguide, hulu,

    House, try watch house online