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Tech

Hack This: TV Is Dead, Long Live TV

h4. "Hack This":http://motherboard.tv/search/posts?keyword=hack+this&commit=Search is Motherboard's weekly guide to doing technology better. There's probably some reason cable television still exists, right? Something technological and not -- "like...

Hack This is Motherboard’s weekly guide to doing technology better.

There’s probably some reason cable television still exists, right? Something technological and not — like record companies — just some desperate clinging to the old? I dunno, but last time I was paying for internet service, Comcast was forcing me to pay for a basic cable set up too. It’s pretty irritating and not because I don’t like watching some stuff on TV, just that it seems so unnecessary.

In any case, I’m gonna offer here some pretty straight-up "news at 11" basic information on watching TV on the internet, inspired 100-percent by me wanting to watch TV on the internet. Then again, I’m always surprised about what people don’t know. If you’re not one of those people: pat on back.

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Netflix/Hulu/Amazon

I’m not going to go through the nitty gritty of each of these, OK? They’re places you can pay for TV shows and movies and such. Pretty remedial. I pay for Netflix and use Hulu to watch "this week" kind of TV, like /30 Rock/ and that’s about it.

Actual TV network websites

Cartoon Network makes a lot of stuff available, and so does Comedy Central for all your Colbert Report needs. TBS posts random Seinfeld episodes, but not nearly often enough.

Watch Simpsons Online for Free

This site is baffling. The _Simpsons_keeps itself off of Netflix streaming presumably to to protect more-lucrative DVD sales but this, the first hit for "simpsons streaming," is a gold mine. I don’t get it. What other shows have their own pirate site like this that aren’t, like, having things pulled constantly? I don’t mean that rhetorically: I want to know.

Streamick.com

Justin.tv, the internet’s reigning repository of anything and everything streaming content, is way too much of a mess for my attention span to parse. Streamick does it channel by channel, fortunately, aggregating streams from Justin.tv and elsewhere into a regular ol’ list of links minus all of Justin’s life-logging junk. Also, it has its own ads so note that you’re getting double-dipped in that respect.

And, of course, if you’re outputting to an actual television—watching television on the internet on the television—it’s going to look horrible. The cable companies have got us there.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.