I love it when a plan comes together!

The A-Team was a favorite show of mine as was MacGyver. Unfortunately, for years I have been limited to the episodes that my pop still had on VHS. It has been very exciting to see these great shows start showing up on DVD, but even more exciting than that is seeing them show up online for free. Yeah, FREE - my favorite word.

Surely, some folks will not be quite as excited as I am by the various networks making shows available online because:

1. They just never got why MacGyver's first name was Angus; or
2. They'd rather buy stuff on DVD than sit in front of a computer.
   

Ok, watching online is not perfect, but you can watch full screen and CBS has all the seasons of MacGyver available for streaming!

Aimee and I will probably never pay to get television programming (unless doing so is somehow cheaper when bundled with an internet connection than the internet connection alone) because all the shows we watch (which aren't many) are available as streaming video from their corresponding network.

Our favorite streaming video sites:
ABC (Lost)
CBS (MacGyver, Star Trek, Family Ties, The Twilight Zone, and loads more old and current shows.)
FOX (Nothing we watch, but you might so I included the link)
Hulu (Various TV shows and Movies, including Monk, Jonah: A Veggie Tale's Movie, and many others)
NBC (Heroes, The A-Team, and many more.)
(Are we missing anything? Let us know.)

The Inconvenience Factor
There are two main inconveniences we've run into. One inconvenience we've run into is that the media player (usually Adobe Flash Player) embedded into the network's web page won't recognize shortcut keys for play, pause, yada, yada. That means that the remote control we have for the computer can't control them, so you have to use a mouse and keyboard. Some remotes can act like a mouse - ours does too, but it is way easier to just use a mouse than to try to maneuver the cursor with the arrow keys on the remote.

The second inconvenience is that you can't skip commercials. In a world were DVRs are taking control of most peoples television viewing experience, it may be hard for some people to consider returning to watching commercials - most people with DVRs happily skip through them to get back to their show. Well, online viewing has commercials, but the commercial breaks are 30 seconds long. That's right - 30 seconds. That is one commercial each commercial break. I can handle a 30 second commercial break. Sometimes each break during a show has the same commercial - that can be rather annoying. Sometimes (usually) the volume is louder during commercial breaks - that can be really annoying.

Two final notes:

1. While writing this up and adding hyperlinks, I ran across this note at the bottom of the Wikipedia page for the A-Team:
   "A feature film based on The A-Team is planned for release on June 12, 2009 in the United States."
   All I can say is, "I pity the fool who doesn't go see it." The A-Team may have only lasted 5 seasons and most of the shows followed the same formulaic plot, but it's still fun.
2. I also ran across this and thought it was funny since it very much applies to shows like The A-Team and MacGyver - Principle of Evil Marksmanship.