Today, many college students do not even own a television. It is seen as a kind of distraction from work, friends, and extra curricular activities. While not having a television is not completely necessary, at some times it could definitely come in handy when friends want to watch that big football game, hear about a breaking news story, or check out a new reality show on cable.

While Brandeis students do have access to IPTV, one can only access it from a secure connection, and not via wireless Internet. One thing that many students do not yet know about is the great things that Internet TV can provide, from anywhere, and with a great deal of selection.

This summer I lived in a dormitory where I was unable to get many of the key cable TV stations, such as ESPN, TBS, or TNT. What I did instead was head over to a very useful site called 30minutelunchbreak.com, which allowed me to watch the Yankees-Sox game on ESPN, the NBA finals, or a number of other programs.

In the past few weeks, numerous students have told me that they were not watching a program simply because they didn't have access to a television set. One student was abroad, and wanted to watch the Red Sox game, so naturally they went to a bar in order to do this. Another's boyfriend was sleeping in the room with the only television in the house, during the same series against the Cleveland Indians.

I simply told both of them to head over to this site, hit the “FOX 5” station, which broadcast the game, and watch. Not only that, but the way that the game was broadcast online meant that they could stream the broadcast and even skip the commercials. If I had missed the game, I could have loaded it up on my computer, left the room, and come back and watched the entire thing without commercials if I had wanted to. To an extent, I was able to Tivo the game without the TV.

There are several other places that one can go to do this in the same manner. I was even able to watch my Minnesota Twins on a local Minnesota affiliate back in September when I did a simple search and found a link.

Not only that, but often times the links provided are from other regions. The aforementioned “FOX 5” link was actually a Las Vegas affliate, so I could watch a completely different football game than the one that interested me less that was being broadcast in the New England area. Channels like the “Baseball Channel”, the “Sci-Fi Channel”, or even the “Indie filmmakers channel”, are all available for free online

Or for students who are here abroad, they can watch the foreign channels simply at the click of a button. And for those of you who like to watch the more mainstream shows that appear on network television, watching full episodes is even more easy than ever, as NBC, ABC, and FOX among other networks all have their own episode players. Owning a television is still nice, but nowadays is really quite uneccessary.

Many students may already have a good idea about the plethora of places one can look online to view television. For those who aren't aware, it is both a chance to save money and a chance to branch out and possibly explore channels from another country (for example, there are 87 channels from the UK on wwitv.com). And for those who enjoy multitasking, online television can be viewed in an unlimited amount of windows. Not only do we now have YouTube, we have YouChannel.

Here are a few other links that provide several television stations for free:

Beelinetv.com

channelchooser.com

craftytv.com

live-online-tv.com