Choose And Watch TV

As inflation continues to soar, you can rest assured that thankfully there's alternatives to expensive products that we want, but don't necessarily need - entertainment and cable subscriptions being one of those things we cherish, even if our wallet doesn't.

Fortunately, FreeTube, a site from 2006 that we thought had disappeared has come back with a renewed platform offering a host of legal and free-to-watch cable TV channels you can enjoy from your browser. A lot has changed with technology, and you no longer need to have flash or operating system-based video players, like WinAmp or RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, to watch these live tv streams anymore.

The streams load very fast and channel changing is now simple with the categorization made more static than the site previously had featured nearly 2 decades earlier. I was able to watch CNN before flipping to MSNBC and then watching Discovery Channel and even other independent TV channels dotted across the continental USA.

I would love to see more International channels and the library build-up to 1000s of channels, as Free Tube had previously boasted in the early days of the web 2.0 streaming era. However, this is a great start and I can't wait to see more.

Show Diversity: (5/5) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Based on the mixture of television shows available on the site.   
Loading Speed: (5/5) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The time taken to navigate the site and load videos.  

Great site, can't wait to see more live tv channels. Works on mobile, as well as desktop which is a nice perk in the 16 years since we first featured it.

Watch Series is another TV and Movie site that lets you watch a number of TV shows and movies that have been collected and uploaded to popular video hosting services. As possibly one of the largest sites, it operates as you would expect - ads are a plenty - but fortunately are not too obtrusive. As a precaution, many of the episode links will take you directly to the video streaming service's site, which is a welcome change, but requires far too many clicks before you're able to start watching an episode.

Some of the episodes I came across were mislabelled presenting episodes out of order, but that's to be expected from what looks like a user-cultivated list of TV shows and links. What remains to be seen is how long WatchSeries will last and whether the spindly tentacles of Hollywood and it's copyright laws will take down yet another video site.

Overall, Watch Series is a good and somewhat reliable source for your favourite shows, movies on the other hand are mixed bag and Watch Series pales in comparison to other sites out on the net, but the again as the title of the site notes - their focus is on tv series and shows, not films.

The Overall Ratings for Watch Series:  
Show Diversity: (4/5)
Based on the mixture of television shows available on the site. 

Loading Speed: (4/5)  
The time taken to navigate the site and load videos.  

Ease of Navigation: (3/5)
How easy is it to use and navigate.  

Advertisements: (3/5)
Based on the annoyance level of advertisements on this site, the amount of ads, and the volatility of ads appearing on the page.   The lower the rating, the less annoying the ads are.  

Total Score: 15/20

Watch Series is a solid source for TV shows and entertainment, but you may want to invest in ad block software as some of the video sites it links to can have racy ads or contain popups. All in all, it's a good place to catch up on your latest dramas & tv shows.

So it doesn't have the most inventive name, but That Video Site delivers a mix of funny, comedic, accidental and inspiring videos from around the web. There's a good diversity of videos on here and most are pretty fresh and you likely haven't seen. The one downside I found on the site is the videos were really large in size so it sometimes lagged on my slower-end machine. Also the ads at the top of the page were a bit annoying, but didn't get in the way of using the site.

The Overall Ratings for That Video Site:

Show Diversity: (4/5)
Based on the mixture of television shows available on the site.

Loading Speed: (4/5)
The time taken to navigate the site and load videos.

Ease of Navigation: (3/5)
How easy is it to use and navigate.

Advertisements: (1/5)
Based on the annoyance level of advertisements on this site, the amount of ads, and the volatility of ads appearing on the page.
The lower the rating, the less annoying the ads are.
Total Score: 16/20

That Video Site is a fresh experience in what could be an over-saturated market of funny video sites. What makes That Video Site unique is the fact that it doesn't contain the same old videos you would have seen years ago or found elsewhere, and seems to keep slightly fresh. The site could still be improved (such as lowering the overall size of the video), but the loading speed of videos and amount of content helps the site stand out amongst the pack.

http://www.thatvideosite.com

The Overall Ratings for Muzu TV:

Show Diversity: (4/5)
Based on the mixture of television shows available on the site.

How easy is it to use and navigate.

Advertisements: (2/5)

The lower the rating, the less annoying the ads are.

Muzu TV doesn't do a lot - but it's in not trying to be the everything to everybody that it succeeds. Muzu.TV offers music videos, and only music videos! It doesn't offer interviews or behind-the-scenes shots, just music videos and it offers in high definition video for those want a higher clarity and quality picture. Asides from the pre-roll ads, Muzu is a good place for anyone looking to catch up on the top music currently in play on the international billboard charts (America and Europe mostly).

Show Links TV is another directory of video links to tv shows and movies. The site is fairly straightforward in theory, select a show and select an episode and start watching. However, navigating within the show between episodes was very slow and it took a few minutes to get the episode list loaded between each season.

Fortunately many of the episodes have multiple links / sources so that you can try to find a host that works best. Many of the links I checked (MegaVideo) were deleted, so the list doesn't appear to be regularly moderated or cleaned.

Not having much success with TV shows, I decided to switch over to movies to see if I'd have more success with it. But unfortunately the experience was worse - as I wasn't able to expand the categories. So back to watching TV shows it was, and a quick search on Bob's Burgers revealed many links for season 1- but they were all broken or deleted. Sigh!

The Overall Ratings for ShowLinks TV:

Show Diversity: (3/5)
Based on the mixture of television shows available on the site.
Loading Speed: (1/5)
The time taken to navigate the site and load videos.
Ease of Navigation: (4/5)
How easy is it to use and navigate.
Advertisements: (3/5)
Based on the annoyance level of advertisements on this site, the amount of ads, and the volatility of ads appearing on the page.
The lower the rating, the less annoying the ads are.

Total Score: 10/20

Show Links TV simply didn't work. In the 30 minutes I spent surfing the site, I was unable to find a working link for a show that I wanted to watch. I tried nearly seven different TV shows, but to no avail.