Netflix, CraveTV, Shomi, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube are all websites where people can watch television anytime they wish without having to sit through many commercials, waiting impatiently for their favorite show to continue. Most recently, HBO has joined this group, announcing that it is beginning a standalone streaming platform of its own called HBO Now, which is set to launch next month ahead of Game of Thrones’ Season 5 premiere. Television has certainly come a long way, from having its viewers sitting on a couch and staring at a TV screen to sitting in a chair and staring at a computer, laptop, tablet, or even a phone, just as long as the people who are viewing it have access to the Internet.
I suppose that all these online streaming websites have, in a way, created this unique connection and trust between the audience and the creators of the content, and if that content were to become just purely network and cable television (taking all these streaming sites out of the equation), then the element that made these sites interesting and special would be lost forever. People want to watch the best parts or highlights of a show, and they certainly don’t want to sit on the couch for an hour, hour and a half watching the whole thing on a TV screen while they are forced to sit through endless commercials. Unless, of course, the show is really good or well-made like The Flash, Arrow, Suits, Criminal Minds, Person of Interest, Elementary, Sherlock, Castle, or Sleepy Hollow (but those are just some of my personal favorites).
Yet with the rise of Internet television, it seems that regular television is starting to become a thing of the past to some people, who don’t have cable subscriptions or even television sets in their homes, as they watch their shows through the Internet on their laptop or monitor screens. Even with all the advancements made in the quality of television sets that you can purchase, from size to picture quality to special features (such as the ability to directly connect to the Internet via your TV), there’s just something about online television that draws people to it.
The few good things about watching TV on the Internet are that you can watch shows on your own time and not on the TV’s scheduled time which means that you can pause, restart, rewind and fast-forward to your heart’s content and enjoy full seasons or even past season of your favorite shows in their entirety. Don’t want to watch those 30, 60-second commercials? Internet television takes care of that by cutting the commercial time in half, or even by removing the commercials altogether so that the show will just keep on playing.
The downside to Internet television is that the video quality might not be as good as it is on an actual television (though on most sites like Netflix or YouTube, the video quality is pretty much just as good as television), and the video can sometimes be grainy or slow in terms of buffering speed, and can even freeze up to the point where you can’t continue watching your favorite shows.
I watch both regular television as well as Internet television, and aside from the latter being almost commercial free and available to watch pretty much whenever you want, there’s really not much of a difference. However, price and variety are two key factors when considering which type of TV watching is best for you. With television on the internet, I have the opportunity watch shows that air on channels that don’t necessarily come as a part of my cable package; the possibilities are pretty much limitless for what you can stream on different sites. Additionally, watching TV via the internet and using certain subscription-based streaming sites, such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, can sometimes be cheaper than having to pay extra money to add more channels to your cable subscription. With HBO Now set to launch next month, it will be very interesting to see how this new development affects the ever-evolving world of television.
Which way do you prefer watching your favorite TV shows? Do you still have a cable subscription, or have you become a “cable cutter”? Let us know in the comments section below.
Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
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