The internet today has become a wonderful entertainment resource. All over the internet there are places to watch full movies and episodes of your favorite TV shows, even ones that have been off the air for quite some time. We’re going to take an in depth look at some of the great and not-so great hosting and link sites out there for videos.
A link site is a Web site full of links that lead to hosting sites where you can watch a TV show or movie. Link sites don’t actually host any movies or shows, they’re just directories of where you can find them, and with one click they’ll take you there. A hosting site is a Web site that hosts the videos. Users upload movies and TV shows to this site where you can stream them online and sometimes download them. You might think it would be easier to head straight to the source and go directly to the hosting site, but often times it’s hard to find the exact movie or episode you’re looking due to the lousy organization systems where you can usually only search by file name and not by the title of the movie or episode.
First we’ll take a look at Veoh.com. Veoh is one of the better hosting sites. To be able to stream videos, you’ll first have to download the Veoh web player (which is very safe and won’t download any viruses onto your computer so don’t worry). With the Veoh web player you’ll be able to stream any online video they have and can safely download videos to your computer. If you have a converting program you’ll then be able to put them into your iTunes where you can watch them on your iPod later. Unlike most Hosting sites, Veoh lets you search by episode, series or movie title and will give you decent results. You can also search by episode in number form such as 1×01 for season one, episode 1.
Next we have www.alluc.org. This is a link site, and one of the lesser quality ones. They have an easy to use search and directory where you can manually look up what you’re looking for, but their selection is limited. They only have a few handfuls of episodes so you won’t be able to go there to watch an entire series.
Tudou.com is another hosting site. This is generally a pretty crappy hosting site and I prefer to stay clear of it. It’s Chinese, so all of the videos will have Chinese subtitles and usually have loud obnoxious ads before each video. They also have limited size per video, so if you’re watching a 40-minute show, it will have to be divided up into two parts. Their videos are usually blurry and bad quality. Their search system is also bad because like most hosting sites you can only search by filename and not episode.
Surfthechannel.com is probably the best link site out there. They have a wide variety of TV shows and movies and have many links for each episode/movie so it’s usually guaranteed you’ll find what you’re looking for. For most shows, they usually have every single episode listed, so you can sit there and watch every single episode of Heroes without having to jump all over the internet.
Megavideo.com is one of the best hosting sites. Their videos are always great, clear quality without subtitles or other annoyances. Their videos also load the fastest. The drawback is it’s not free. You can only stream 72 minutes of video per day for free. They offer 1 month memberships for $10, 3 months for $20, 1 year for $60, 2 years for $80 and a lifetime for $200. I myself paid for the lifetime membership because it’s really well worth the cash and is much cheaper than spending $70 a month on cable where you can only watch certain things.
By now you’ve probably already heard of Hulu.com. The great thing about Hulu is it’s always a guarantee that the video will load and will be there. You won’t end up with any dead links because they don’t get deleted for copyright infringement because they’re in cahoots with the networks. Their search also works really well and you can search by TV show or episode. The bad thing about Hulu is they only have 5 or so videos up for one TV show at a time, so they have a very small selection. The other unfortunate thing is you’re stuck with ads, either a long commercial before the video starts or a bunch of little ones in between.
After reading this you should now have a pretty good idea of where to go and where not to go to watch your favorite shows and movies. I hope you enjoyed my article and happy video streaming!
