Watching live TV online

There are many ways to view videos on the net these days. Everyone is familiar with flash-based video sites like youtube, blip.tv and metacafe. The quality's not great but most of us just need to be able to make out what's happening and usually it's good enough.

Then there's video streaming that stutters like hell. Unlike youtube you can't pause the video and wait till the payload's finished downloading, you got to sit there and watch it suffer.

Some prefer to download the whole file in avi, mpg or in whatever the video format the file is in and watch it on their local the player. Now with torrent, people think nothing of leaving the PC humming for days while it patiently downloads the entire season of Grey's Anatomy and Top Gear.

Out of these, I hate video streaming the most. It jerks too much and none of the control works. With the exception of RTM's excellent but now defunct streaming service, the experience is not great.

I was late to discover this other alternative. I came across it while figuring out away to watch Live TV of the Internet for free (We were going for the Olympic Gold and I wasn't sure if they were going to air the event on terrestrial TV).

The Technology is P2PTV. And the program I downloaded was Sopcast.

Sopcast allows you to watch live broadcast of popular channels like ESPN and Discovery channel via the Internet. Whether it's legal... It's as legal as downloading most of your torrents is legal.

The picture quality is better than regular video streaming. That is to say the quality is still pretty shitty but smoother. If you need to watch a live football match and a decoder is nowhere in sight, this could be an option for you.

Keep in mind that you're not going to get a HDTV experience here. I mean, the ball looks 2 pixels wide and you can barely make out those tiny jersey numbers.

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