The past couple years or so major TV networks have posted full episodes on their websites for public viewing. It is such a great service for people who don’t have time to watch their favorite shows on the scheduled times. We can just go online anytime to watch. Of course having a TiVo is great too because some shows came on at the same time and you can record one and watch the other. While we were home in California we used TiVo but now that we’re here in Germany we were counting on watching streaming video to keep up with our shows and new ones. The most disappointing thing hit us when we went to the websites and they all denied us the service, saying it was only available for US residents! What kind of crap is that?

There are so many Americans living overseas and we’re denied entertainment that remind us of home. So we resort to drastic measures, looking for websites like Surf the Channel, Quick Silver Screen, and Project Free TV that offer links to streaming videos. So many people like us go to these websites to watch TV shows, most of them are free but of course we rely on people to upload the show to share to the rest of the world. What the TV networks refuse to realize is that if they open the service internationally less of us would go to these pirate websites, which by the way make money from ads. Isn’t that what TV networks do? Get money from ads? If only the offer the service to everyone they could gain some revenue from us instead of giving it to the websites who pirate their shows. If the networks don’t want people making pirated copies why do they limit the free service geographically? It’s not like that rule stops piracy, it just makes it worse. Then they say there are my ways to get the shows overseas; subscribe through iTunes or Amazon’s Video on Demand; this is crap because we have to pay for these subscriptions like we’re paying for the actual DVD set! If we were back home we’d get it free but since we live overseas we have to pay for it? That’s crap!

So to all of you who live overseas here are the links I’ve collected. And by the way you can now download these videos by installing Real Player, it has a feature that allows you to download almost any video posted online. Here’s an article online that lists 40 Free Sites to Watch Movies and TV Online.