When I started writing this post, I was going to name it something like “where to find free TV and Movies online,” but changed it to make sure I added “legal” in there. It turns out that a whole lot of what I was finding wasn’t legal. I saw a link on one site to “Marley and Me” and I thought to myself, “isn’t that still in the theaters?” Sure enough I was right, as the video started, I noticed that I could actually see the theater seats in the recording. I guess someone recorded it directly from the theater – I am going to assume that isn’t legal. 
But, it is amazing to me how much free legal television (and movies) is out there. I first started watching TV episodes online about a year or so ago and it has been going on for a while. There are really a ton of sites, in the article I just focused on a few of the bigger, better, and cleaner ones that I found. So, let me also mention that from what I have seen of each of the mentioned sites, I think they are pretty clean. That said, I haven’t thoroughly inspected each site and advise you to use caution when checking them out.
Amazon’s “Video on Demand”
Amazon’s program has a few free options, but most of the movies and TV shows will cost you a few bucks. That said, they have a huge selection of shows and movies that you can watch from the comfort of your own home – and many in HD. So as an alternative to driving out to rent a movie, I think it is great.
Hulu.com
This was the first online TV watching site I found. It also seems to be the most well-known, and for good reason. They have a well laid-out site, that is user-friendly, pretty to look at, and simple to understand. I watched my first movie on Hulu this last weekend when we didn’t feel like going out to rent one and I think we will be doing this a lot more…
They have a wide variety of classic and some fairly new and popular movies that you can watch. All for free and without downloading anything. Isn’t technology great?
Hulu also offers most popular TV shows the day after they air on the networks – TV as we know it is soon to be obsolete. 
These are just a few of the television shows you can watch on Hulu…
- The Office
- Family Guy
- Saturday Night Live
- American Gladiators
- Prison Break
- The Simpsons
- House
Fancast.com
This site is similar to Hulu and offers a lot of the same content. Another good place to look for free movies to watch online. We watched an entire season of Arrested Development on this site.
TidalTV
I like the layout they have. It is fairly easy to navigate and find tv shows or movies that interest you. There is no need to download anything to start viewing either.
TVchannelsfree.com
It is a little overwhelming and not laid out too well, IMO, but there are an abundance of options… They say that they have 3,839 Online TV Channels from 60+ countries. Most of the channels worked with Windows Media Player, so I couldn’t get it to work on my Mac.
4TV.com
This place has a bunch of genres that all contain different channels within them. The problem I was finding was that each channel I tried didn’t work. The one channel I did get to work had a horrible picture quality. They might have free tv, but I wouldn’t recommend them.
Other legal online TV resources
Individual network sites
If you miss your favorite TV show, you should check the network website. Most of the major networks have the shows online for viewing.
Watch regular HDTV channels on your computer
I wrote a post a while ago about how to watch HDTV on your computer. You need to buy a little gadget for about $70, but it does open up lots of possibilities.
iTunes Video Podcasts
There are a ton of video podcasts on just about every subject imagineable that you can access via iTunes.
Bringing it all together
Since this technology has not matured, things are still a little bit messy and not yet very streamlined. Bottom line: watching TV online just isn’t as simple as flopping down on the couch and grabbing your TV remote – yet.
Boxee and Miro are trying to solve that problem. Both of them offer a interface that allows you to make the whole online movie/tv watching experience a better one. Rather than having to go to each site to watch your favorite shows, you can do it through their interface. I haven’t used either of them yet, so I don’t know all the details, but if you spend a couple minutes on either of the sites you will learn a lot.
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I became aware of Hulu (and more recently Fancast) a few months ago and have enjoyed watching a movies and shows with my wife and with my family on a few occasions now.
I hadn’t yet taken the time to see the depth of what other sites existed. Thanks for listing a few of the popular sites and listing your thoughts on them.
In light of my own online TV/Movie experience I’ll offer the following comments.
Like any use of the internet or browsing television it’s disappointing and frustrating to have to sort through family friendly and not-so-family friendly shows and movies. I find that particularly true on Hulu. A lot of the “Popular” movies probably belong in an Adult store. While I like the search on Hulu, I hope that Hulu at some point implements an alphabetized list like Fancast has to easily scan through their movies or shows without browsing through a handful of thumbnails at a time.
I enjoyed being able to hook up a wireless laptop to my father-in-law’s HDTV over the recent holidays and being able to watch some of Hulu’s content on a larger screen. The only problem was initially getting the sound from the laptop to the TV speakers. I think it would be great to have set things up so that you can feed your computer video and audio to your entertainment setup. My one friend does this already.
It’s amazing how things change.
Wow! Thanks so much for all these sites! I knew about Hulu but not the others! Awesome!
fife,
I know what you mean – I get frustrated at at how few movies I can actually go watch – I use a site called Kidsinmind.com to get a feel for how much junk is contained in the film.
Also, I guess I should mention ChristianTuner.com – they have a directory of Christian channels, that is not very user-friendly, but some people may be interested…
My husband and I have even hooked up a cheap computer we got at an auction for like $20.00 to our 52 inch screen tv. For Christmas my husband got a wireless keyboard for it. So we sit on the couch with the computer turned on. Turn on the wireless laptop-with built in touchpad. We have made shortucts to all the major networks as well as hulu, and fancast. We simply cick and play and it looks just like TV. But it is way more enjoyable then watching it on a small computer screen.
We love it! It has made our tansition from expanded cable to basic cable so much easier. We also watch instant movies on netflix too. People think they have to buy those special boxes to do that, but you don’t, just need a computer attached to your tv.
Also it is pleasing to the eye. It is a tall black tower for the computer sitting unknowingly behind the TV.
Thanks for this list. You found a few that we were not aware of.
Thanks for compiling this list. My family loves tv but we are definitely trying to scale back our cable subscription costs.
One suggestion for those who are concerned with family friendly issues – it is very easy to look up ratings through IMDB.com. I know that ratings do not always reflect what we might not like our kids to see, but clearly something rated R will be a warning, whereas something rated PG13 might be worth doing further research on. I just suggest it as a baseline from where to start. My family has also sent a feedback email to Hulu, and the more people who do, the more responsive they’ll be.
Excellent! Thank you for all this links – I didn’t knew about single one mentioned here.
We use Hulu when we miss an episode or our DVR doesn’t record it. I don’t know anything about the others but I’ll be sure to check them out. Thanks!
youtube.com is also starting to put more legal content on the site. Also, I always go to the networks site such as nbc.com. They always have free shows to watch and in excellent quality.
For those of you who already have an Xbox 360, Watching TV shows/movies/etc on your TV is as easy as streaming them to your Xbox. Here’s how we do it:
1 computer with mediamall “playon” software installed
1 xbox 360 attached to TV
1 network connection
With the mediamall playon software installed (about $30) we are able to stream tv shows and movies from hulu.com, netflix, CBS, youtube and a couple of other services. The only caveat is that you have to watch many shows a day or so later than they air. Small price to pay!
We’ve found the quality of the tv shows and movies to be excellent – no stuttering or jumping – and we don’t pay for cable tv – we just use playon with our xbox. seamless!
Thanks for this awesome round-up! I’ll be using it, for sure.
I’ve watched movies and programs at my son’s house, but until recently haven’t figured out how to get at them myself; besides, my computer screen is a little small and an office chair is a bit uncomfortable for extended viewing. That’s about to change, though: now that I’ve figured out how to use Hulu and I’m about to figure out how to get my favorite PBS shows on the computer, my son plans to hook up a refurbished MiniMac to the TV screen, which will put me back in business.
I sure do hate the HTDV thing. The stupid box provides yet another piece of clutter to have to dust, and the antenna doesn’t bring in the channels I want to watch consistently–every now and then it’s “No Signal,” and whenever a neighbor turns on a microwave or the guy across the street who runs a shade-tree mechanic business starts using a piece of shop equipment, my signal breaks up. Attaching a computer to a monitor that’s big enough to see from an easy chair across the room will get around that, but I imagine that once everyone is doing that, it will mean the end of traditional broadcast channels, including, I expect, PBS.
@Funny
since you brought it up, I should mention that monitor prices, like all technology, continue to drop – the last computer monitor I bought was a 22″ and it was about $170 – just some food for thought…
I just hooked up a spare computer to our 37″ basement TV last night. Streaming TV shows – and Hulu – just got easier! Of course it was already pretty easy with the Xbox setup.
Hi, thanks for the shout-out to Fancast!
Fancast does have a TON of great free TV programming from every major network – current hits and classics in every genre, from sci-fi and sit-coms to drama, reality and animation.
(BTW, we also have a great collection of feature films too.)
TV library at http://www.fancast.com/full_episodes
Movies at http://www.fancast.com/movies
Cheers,
Jim (for Fancast)
I tried watching TV using Fancast and Hulu using a wi-fi connection while traveling in Mexico, and they don’t work outside the U.S. Do any of the sites work outside the U.S.?
Judy, that is a bummer! I am not sure where you can go to watch it outside the US… hopefully someone else does…
I knew about hulu and watched all 3 Karate Kid movies on there, which are one of my favorites. I thinks I’ll check some of the rest out that you’ve found. What about you tube? I love survivorman but you tube is the only place I can find anything decent. It’s usally not the whole show but maybe about 1 to 3 ten minute segments.
i couldn’t get any of these to work….they all told me the videos were not available in my region. i guess cause i’m in canada??
Someone who went by the name of moviemadness included in the forwarded email to me a link that went to a pornographic site. I didn’t exactly appreciate it but thank the Lord this person wasted his time. Why? Because once I was looking for free christian music and I clicked on a free christian mp3 link and it opened up to a porno site. Since then I downloaded a free program that automatically will block any sites like that. That’s why this person wasted their time with me the program blocked it so I didn’t actually have to see anything. If you have any children that have access to your computer it’s a great program. It also blocks gambling, violence and other anti-family sites.If you would like the program it’s called K-9 and can be found here http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
I know God loves them and so do I but you have to protect yourself from people like this until they believe the truth. Keep your kids and yourself protected from these porno pimps who have admitted to going to various sites like you tube and actually making other sites to look family oriented when all they are trying to do is their version of evangelizing so they can make a buck
Dan, I apologize for that – I deleted the comment – I try to stay on top of comments as best as I can, but the amount of spam this site gets is ridiculous… But either way tools like you mention are very helpful because there are lots of people trying to cause others to stumble…
Hi Bob
No problem. I hope you know I don’t hold you responsible, I thought I would try to pass on some info that could help others. I guess it’s the nature of the beast right now on the internet since there is no police help we have to be proactive in protecting ourselves and families on the net.
I’ve seriously thought about doing the same thing as these pornography peddlers do, but I don’t think I could stomach that and I’m not sure how scriptural that would be
I think I’ll just stick to praying for them to see Christ and other human beings as being created in His image.
Blessings to you and thanks again for this site it’s a real blessing
Ooopppsss ! I need to clarify that when I said I was thinking of doing the same as the porno peddlers I meant set up links or site that would lead them to a christian site instead of what they wanted. I think I’ll stick to what I’m good at
Awesome post! My husband and I have been contemplating how to continue to enjoy the television shows that while scaling back our spending. We purchased an external hard (400 GB) for an awesome deal. We plan to hook it up to an extra PC and use it with hulu.com. I will certainly take a look at the other suggestions you have listed here.
I found several illegal sites out there too, but a lot of those illegal sites are virus, trojan, and worm infested. I have had to perform a many system recoveries, therefore, I stopped accessing those sites. Be careful!
Those are nice but you missed out on two of my faves http://freetubetv.net really good live tv streaming site better than tvchannelfree because they actually remove the dead channels. and they have the premium religious channels on here like abn that I watch now and then. My friend really liked the smile network remembering some cartoon shows he used to watch in bible camp in Milwaukee.
oh and second is ninjavideo.net – they got flash videos for tv shows and films.
I would add these two for sure.
Here is a site that contains older public domain tv shows, films and movies that might interest some of you.
http://www.archive.org/details/movies
There is a large selection there and you can watch online or download as they only post those which are no longer in copyright.
Here’s also some article about how to get movies and videos legally from the internet: http://audials.com/en/blog/article/34/3-ways-to-legally-download-movies-and-videos-from-the-internet.html
Seems to have some good tips as well.
Hi
Beware and very careful when watching movies on Hulu and Fancast.
Although there are some good clean-cut family movies on these sites,
there are also some movies with very vulgar, disrespectful, cursing and sex
in them. And just like some of the T.V. movies and programs–these too start
off good and clean-cut– but later you get the SHOOOCK of the filty stuff.
So just a warning to be careful and use caution when watching Hulu and Fancast.
If you want good clean-cut Christian movies go to http://www.TBN .com
(you can watch these free too.)
GOD BLESS YOU.
hey all just put up a site to watch all your favorite show free at TopFreeTv.info let me know what you’ll think.
Hey, i was just wondering if anyone here has heard of “movie hulu” it is not the same as regular hulu and i was wondering if anyone knew if it was a legal website. There is no downloading required, but i figured it would be better not to risk it. Any thoughts?
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