Watching Your Favorite TV Shows On Your PC

There are numerous ways on how you can watch your favorite TV show on your work or home PC. And thanks to technological advances in computing, this has never been much easier.

An influx of new hardware and software solutions has made it possible to turn your PC into an audio/visual dynamo! It is now also possible to customize your PC so that it includes 5.1 surround sound capability and HDTV compatibility.

1. Watch via your DVD player

Having a DVD drive in your PC is the simplest way of being able to watch your favorite shows on your computer. All you will need to do is just go out and buy or rent, your favorite show from your local video shop, slide the disc inside the drive and enjoy the film.

No hassles and no additional installations or upgrades are required.

The only drawback is that, your options will be limited and will be based on the available titles that the store is carrying. If the show you want to watch is not available, it’s either you try another shop or you’ll just have to wait for it

2. Get a TV tuner

From the name itself, it tunes in to available free-to-air programs and shows them on your PC’s monitor. TV tuner cards are relatively inexpensive. They fit into the PCI slot on the motherboard of your computer. And using the bundled software that comes with the card, you’ll be able to ‘channel-surf’ on your PC in no time.

The downside to using a TV tuner card is you will be limited to choose only from the available free-to-air programs. If the show you want is unavailable, then just try another channel.

And in some cases, depending on your location, reception might be less than good since free-to-air signals are often affected by weather and location.

3. Search and download:

Some websites have now emerged that allowed sharing of saved TV shows and movies from one computer to another, some of which are even in DVD format!

All you need to do is search for the title that you want to download and wait for the results. The huge number of PC’s connected to the network means that you have a good chance of finding the title that you are looking for!

This method only requires a fast enough broadband connection, especially if the show to be downloaded is saved as a huge file.