Illegal peer-to-peer sharing utilities are riddled with spyware and trojans, and can make an absolute mess of your computers and bandwidth. Utilities like BitTorrent, while safer than LimeWire, can be extremely technical to use and require some knowledge of what’s available on the web. And, if you don’t know how to restrict the bandwidth, your ISP can easily detect when such things are in use. You don’t want the music cops after you, do you?
Luckily, the prevalence of legal, available and easy to use downloading and streaming video is now at your fingertips. Here are samples of download and streaming sites for every bit of media you can imagine.
Movies: As you may know, iTunes is now offering movies for purchase online for about the same cost as a movie in the video store ($9.99-$15.99). If you have a piece of hardware like iTV, you’ll love this option and likely find it to be the most user friendly. The interface is the same as iTunes, though the files are larger.
Apple also recently rolled out a rental utility, allowing you to rent new releases and standard movies for as little as $2.99. Once you start the file, you must finish it in 24 hours, or apparently it will self-destruct.
Amazon recently entered the online movie rental and purchase arena, with its Amazon Unbox service. Very similar to iTunes, Unbox allows you to either purchase movies for download or rent movies for as little as $0.99. The same deal applies with Amazon as it does with iTunes — watch your rental within 24 hours of hitting play or it will no longer be available for viewing.
Another option for watching movies is to use streaming video players online. This option is great if you want to watch a video immediately, or don’t have the hard-drive space or the patience to download. One of the best sites is Watch Movies (www.watch-movies.net). This site only provides links to existing streaming files, since hosting streaming movies is currently illegal. By doing this, Watch Movies ensures that it is not in violation of any copyright laws, but still provides you with the ability to stream movies online.
Music: Again, we all know about iTunes and its abilities, but there are many streaming music sites that you have at your disposal while slaving away at work. My favorite is Pandora (www.pandora.com). When you log onto Pandora, you’re asked to enter the name of a band or a song that you like, and Pandora creates a station for you that matches that genre of music. I have stations ranging from bluegrass to Johnny Cash to James Brown, all available at the click of a mouse, without commercials or downloads.
You can tell Pandora quickly which music you enjoy and which songs you dislike and it will adjust the station for you. Additionally, Pandora provides an application for Facebook, so all of your friends can see what you’re listening to and what your favorite songs are.
Television: The advances made by network television in streaming its content is amazing. By far the best site I’ve seen is ABC’s streaming site (www.abc.com, click on Watch Now). Each show on the network (including “Grey’s Anatomy!”) is available to stream by downloading a small plug-in on your browser. The quality of the video playback is absolutely amazing and can be streamed over almost any connection speed. Since I don’t have cable, this is the only way I’m able to watch my favorite shows. ABC is even offering up some classic shows in its stream (“My So Called Life” being one of them), which will provide hours of entertainment.
Fox, NBC and CBS offer the same capabilities. Some provide full screen with a download, others are streaming directly in the browser. But rest assured that almost every show is available on every network for your viewing pleasure.
Melissa Harris is currently employed as a technical quality assurance manager in South Portland. In her spare time she plays for Maine Roller Derby, does web and print design and basically never sleeps.