I've come to the conclusion that I hate television service providers. This past Thursday I was all hyped for the new episode of "The Office" because it was set in Canada. (It's a big deal here; almost every national paper ran a story on it for some reason.) To the point, though, I was all involved in the episode when---six minutes from the conclusion!!!---the fucking cable goes out! It's all digital here, so I figured it may have been the connection box. Everything seemed to be working fine. So what could the problem be??

I got pissed enough to call the 24-hour "help" line and (after ten minutes on hold) was informed that yes, the cable did drop in my immediate area due to unforseen problems with extensive customer use. So, basically, if too many people are watching, the TV goes out??? Fucking Canadian providers! I've tried Bell Satellite services in the past, but they suck even worse than Rogers cable!

My solution: I will now stream or download everything I watch. This has an unforseen upside to it. It will be like having my own personal DVDrecorder at no real extra charge to me. One of you very helpful Americans told me that sites like NBC.com or CBS.com offer free, watchable video on the site, or sites such as Hulu.com which offer a ton of episodes of everything. Sadly, here in Canada we cannot access these sites. So, for anyone thinking of taking this route, I found a few sites that will be of use.

Type "project free TV" into a standard google search and check out the site it comes back with. (It'll be obvious.) It links you to every show your could possibly think of, plus has movies of various quality. I actually watched a decent copy of that new James Bond film....not bad for a bootleg.

Next, go to channelchooser.com. It's like having a satellite at your disposal, but without those pesky bills for using it. These links are okay, but a lot of crap is mixed in with the awesome. It takes a bit to locate the real gems.

Lastly, there is always "old reliable" thepiratebay.org for torrent downloads. I generally only have to wait ten minutes to download a one hour program. If you can dedicate a bit of download time to it, its well worth the time spent. This site also has a ton of music, books, magazines, video games...you name it, its there.

So fuck the TV providers! Choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it. Its like having every show known to man on DVD at your disposal. I've been able to watch a ton of shows that we normally have to wait months to see here in Canada. Maybe this could be helpful to you too.

Thanks for reading,

-The Big Bad