TV when you want, where you want.

Once upon a time children woke up on Saturday mornings, came out to the only TV in the house and watched cartoons.  Why?  Because that’s when the cartoons were on.

Since then, television has gone crazy with specialty channels, 24 hour cartoons, 24 hours sports, 24 hour extreme salad shooting, etc.  Cable companies have been able to tier packages to combine different channels and make a little money.  OK, a LOT of money.

People recorded their shows on VCRs and now DVRs so they can watch them later.  We began watching TV on our terms, not based on what the TV execs thought was the best timing for the program.  We could just schedule a recording of the program, but that is almost becoming a bit more work than some folks want.  What if all the programs were available all the time.  Sort of like a 24-hour TV channel?  That’s where the internet comes in.

The big networks (and some of the smaller ones too) have joined up and began placing their past shows online at sites like TV.com (http://www.tv.com) , Hulu (http://www.hulu.com), and Joost (http://www.joost.com). Here you can search for the shows and individual episodes you desire to watch.  Miss that last episode of Grey’s Anatomy?  No problem!  Don’t have cable at all, but need to feed your Family Guy addiction?  There you are.  TV on the internet.  As these sites grow, you will start to see more and more integration between the computer and your TV.  Hulu already offers a free application (Hulu Desktop) to give you a more TV-friendly experience.

At home, you could connect HDMI or DVI from your computer to your TV or, go a little more old school with an S-Video cable from a laptop and a cable with RCA on one end and a plug for the earphone jack on the other to port sound to your TV.  Put a wireless keyboard and mouse on it and set your TV input to the right source and you will be watching the internet on the original Boob tube.

iTunes is another possibility.  This way you can purchase episodes for $1.99 each or season passes to your favorite series and then watch them on the go via your iPod or iPhone.  This is a super simple way to watch your shows without being tethered by a cable to anything.  Plus you can always hook your iPod up to your TV to watch the shows that way.  Apple does sell a cord to do that.

Lastly, I give you the Slingbox.  This is a nifty little contraption that hooks up in your house, connects to your existing cable, cable box and the network via Ethernet and allows you to log in and control your cable box over the internet.  Watch shows, flip channels, etc.  The Sling website even has some shows streaming from their site.  This is the ultimate tool for a road warrior who longs to watch their familiar local news every night, or for that downtime in a hotel and you can watch shows you’ve already recorded on your cable-provider DVR.

What this all boils down to is that we now have even more options when it comes to What should we watch, honey?  Hopefully this increasingly level of access to programming will mean an increasing level of quality content provided by the networks.  Still all of these options may still hear the phrase uttered, There’s nothing on!, but hopefully it will be uttered less often.