Special to the Director's Cut
By Brian Curtis
Josh Gilbert was tired of paying for the TV programming he wanted so he dumped his cable TV service and connected his television to his home computer. At electronics giant Best Buy, experts said more consumers than ever want to know how to do the same thing.
"I have at least five to ten customers on a daily basis asking how they can hook up their desktop computers to the Internet," said Anthony Gomez of Best Buy.
Connecting a newer model television to a computer is usually a simple process. There are several ways to do it, but one of the easiest is by using an HDMI cable. One end plugs into the computer, the other goes directly into the back of the TV.
There's plenty of content online.
For TV shows Gilbert said he likes Hulu.com, which is partially owned by NBC Universal. For movies he uses an online service called Vudu. Blockbuster and Netflix also have online movie services. Pandora.com is a music Web site.
Gomez said the quality of Internet video is excellent.
"It's great quality, actually. It streams smoothly. There's no waiting for it to buffer out," he said. Of course, consumers can have it both ways. It is possible to connect a TV to the Internet and still keep traditional cable or satellite service.
But Gilbert said there's only one way he'd do that: "If they made it free, too."
