You know about Netflix and you know about Amazon.com or the Apple iTunes Store, right? All of these places have different models but basically you can subscribe or purchase various television (and movie) episodes of your liking.  Netflix usually has older material but has been adding newer stuff as of late.  But what about if you want to watch TV online for free? No, I’m not talking about downloading illegal torrents from Pirate Bay or some other “file sharing” site. I’m talking about a way to watch your favorite television shows online, every day, for free. So let’s take a look at the good, the bad and the downright ugly when it comes to watching television online.

Aggregation Sites

Hulu.com – Arguably one of the better quality sites out there, rumor has it that they are planning to charge for premium content in 2010.

Would it be worth it to get rid of the commercials? Only if they change the delay on their most popular shows, like House, which doesn’t get posted to the site until eight days after the episode airs on television. C’mon Hulu, lighten up!

Fancast - Fancast has a lot of the same content as Hulu as far as current shows go. However, I have found that sometimes Fancast has material that simply can’t be found anywhere else, like the pilot episode for Gilligan’s Island. That was one of my personal favorites growing up. As long as Fancast doesn’t switch to a paying model, they will be in the same ballpark with Hulu.

Veoh – Veoh is a different kind of site. They have a specialized player that you will need to download in order to watch full length shows or movies. It’s not a big deal really, but it does irk some people. Again, they have some of the current shows but the real allure for this site is in the archives of past shows, like CHiPs. Yeah, that’s the motorcycle cop show with Eric Estrada from the late 1970s. If you haven’t seen this before, it’s definitely worth browsing the site to discover a few treasures like this one.

YouTube Shows – Without any fanfare are bit promotion (or if they did, I missed it), YouTube launched a shows section on their website where they carry some syndicated material from various rights distribution partners. You won’t find many current shows, although there are a few. However, this is a treasure trove of old favorites and should definitely not be passed up.

Clicker.com – Clicker just launched into the public beta test and is a very interesting site, to say the least. They do embed as much material as they can directly onto their site, but in the event that they cannot, they link to the source. The downside to Clicker is that they also list material from Amazon.com and Netflix. These are both premium sites and while it makes Clickers index numbers look good (they say they have 40k shows indexed), it’s kind of a sham if you ask me because the numbers don’t reflect both free and premium content.

TVGuide My DVR – TV Guide has a new section on their site that they recently launched called ‘My DVR.’ While it’s not really a DVR in the true sense of the word, it does present the user a chance to subscribe to updates of their current shows and get notified by TV Guide when there are new episodes available for viewing. They aggregate content from all major networks as well as Hulu and Fancast.

Network Sites

NBC – Although they have a primary stake in Hulu, they don’t share all of their videos there.  Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.  However, you can find clips and shows on NBC that you won’t find on Hulu.

CBS - They don’t share any of their content with other sites, with the exception of some previews that they post on their own YouTube channel.  So if you’re into the myriad of TV police crime investigation shows driven by CBS, you’ll have to come to their site to find the latest episodes.

ABC - They just started adding their material to Hulu, and it’s only the most popular stuff.  So lesser known or lower rated shows will only be found on their website.  Be forewarned however, they have a proprietary viewer that will have to be downloaded in order to watch videos here.  It’s decent, but it’s no Hulu.

FOX - FOX only shares selected videos with other sites like Hulu, which is a shame.  FOX also gets marked down because they don’t provide any way to embed videos from their site.  Apparently they haven’t caught on to the whole Internet trend yet.  Maybe one day they will join us in the 21st century.

Syfy - Some of their shows, like Stargate Universe, are available on Hulu.  Other popular shows, like Ghost Hunters, are not.  For the life of me I can’t figure out their rationale, but at least you can catch the other shows on their site.  And yes, they do allow you to embed them as well.

Specialty Sites

Specialty sites don’t usually share their material, even online.  Cable networks such as HBO and Showtime will occasionally include full episodes of shows they are trying to promote, but normally they only post short preview clips of their most popular shows.  On the other hand, CW Network doesn’t share their shows with other sites, but they do allow some viewing of popular shows online.  They also post clips to their own YouTube channel as well.  Warner Brothers and Crackle have a wide-ranging variety of online offerings, most of which are shows (and movies, of course) from the past.  For example, Crackle is the only site I’ve found that has the original animated film Heavy Metal.  Yeah, you know the one … it’s classic.  That’s why they made the list, period.

Grey Area Sites

Finally, let’s close out this colossal post by mentioning three sites that are, to say the least, controversial.  While the sites themselves do not host any of the videos, they do embed them onto their site using a variety of methods.  These sites have current-run shows and movies which you can stream to your computer, commercial free.  They are Fast Pass TV, NinjaVideo and TV Shack.  One of these sites, NinjaVideo, even made the PC World Top 100 Products of 2009 list, despite it’s operating in the grey zone.  Technically the material they stream is protected by DRM laws, but since they don’t host the material, these sites are still operational.  It’s a legal loophole that I’m sure will be closed one day, but for now this is an option, especially for those who can’t watch the majority of the sites listed above because you aren’t in the United States.  Who came up with that idea, anyway?

OK, ’nuff said.  Tell me what you think about the list and share your favorite site for watching television shows online.