1 Drama on demand
Channel 4 is at the forefront of the web television explosion, offering downloads of the latest episodes of Lost, Hollyoaks and nail-biting instalments of Deal or No Deal as they are broadcast (www.channel4.com/livetv). If you like your drama glitzy and American, then www.peekvid.com may well become your destination of choice. Here visitors post their favourite shows for others to watch, and these range from the compulsive Prison Break to Desperate Housewives. As with the video jukebox YouTube, the quality of many clips is decidedly dodgy, and it’s likely that they sit here without the permission of the copyright holder — naughty, naughty. The web also acts as a superb archive of classic material not to be found on broadcast channels, such as Ordeal on Locust Street, one of the finest episodes in the spooky Sixties series One Step Beyond (tinyurl.com/h77xo). Amateur producers are thriving online and the offbeat slice-of-life drama about a couple’s ups and downs, with episodes released daily at www.chasingmills.blogspot.com, is compelling.
2 Sports world
Sports fans can fuel their adrenaline rush at the wonderful www.247.tv, where live and highlight coverage of niche interests such as the world championships in women’s rugby and underwater hockey sit alongside international squash tournaments and events from the world bowls tour. While excited cyclists can watch live races from around the world at www.cycling.tv, sailing fans should head to www.sail.tv to savour the splash of virtual spray; even anglers can land a decent catch at the Fishing Channel (tinyurl.com/ftsa5). For football nuts, www.uefa.com is a premier destination offering live Champions League games, priced from £1.99. The picture quality of much of this footage is surprisingly decent. However, faster-moving sports, notably football, are often blurred when viewed at full screen.
3 Essential news fix
Increasing numbers of us cherry-pick our news online rather than wait for television bulletins. Yet why search through news websites when you can head to www.blinkx.tv? Like a Google for news clips, this archive will scour 4m hours of web video, including content from the BBC, ITN, Sky News and Reuters — simply type in your search terms.
While these clips have all been shown on television, the superb hotzone.yahoo.com is a news service available only online. Here, the foreign correspondent Kevin Sites visits the world’s conflict zones from Tikrit to Darfur, pursuing unreported stories for surfers to follow by way of stunning multimedia packages.
For the web’s biggest homegrown news channel visit the the irreverent and charming www.rocketboom.com. This daily three-minute news magazine from the US touches on the big current-affairs stories and then focuses on topics of interest to the connected generation, such as blogging news, electric anti-mugging jackets and what happens when you microwave soap.
4 Digital music junkie
Video may have killed the radio star but now the web is giving music television a sound thrashing. At www.video-c.co.uk you can watch a huge selection of videos from stars such as Pink and Justin Timberlake, whenever you choose. The websites of many bands also offer multimedia treats with videos, interviews and other intriguing material. The brilliant www.gorillaz.com s one of the best such sites. However, perhaps most exciting is the Dutch website Fabchannel (www.fabchannel.com). Here you can watch recordings of dozens of live concerts from a venue in Amsterdam and, while you may not be able to smell the sweat from the mosh pit, these live recordings add a compelling new layer to the music experience — the punky Irish music of Flogging Molly is more exciting when you can see a delirious crowd, and Andrew Bird is even more brilliant when you watch him playing both violin and guitar on the same track. Big names featured include Tricky, Madness and Arcade Fire. You can also watch concerts as they happen here, and I will be watching the Pipettes play live on Wednesday — see you at the front.
5 Comedy central
The web has become a hub for comedians, professional and wannabe alike, and current gems to be found include full-on streamed episodes of Ricky Gervais’s Extras (www.bbc.co.uk/extras). However, this medium comes into its own with all the other extras you can find. See Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat discussing how he’d like to meet western women at www.myspace.com/borat, or watch sketches and a long interview with the stars of That Mitchell and Webb Look at their site, tinyurl.com/hhf. Sketches are perfect for watching on the web because the variable picture quality offered by many sites is often more suited to watching short clips in small windows. You can create your own pick and mix at www.peekvid.com/comedy. What about a little Goodies, followed by Dylan Moran, the Pythons and Chris Rock? The American station Comedy Central (www.comedycentral.com) also has well-chosen clips from shows such as Scrubs and the satirical Daily Show, which should have you in stitches.
6 Documenting the world
Current.tv is a classy American web television network full of great documentaries, many made by budding filmmakers — from an insider’s guide to how young people party in Muslim countries to the social art experiment that saw Lausanne in Switzerland lit by 127,000 candles. Closer to home, www.channel4.com/fourdocs, showcases short films on all manner of subjects, including stories about veteran blues masters as well as odder pieces such as a mesmeric, grass-eye view of a herd of cows. You can also see a stunning film from the celebrated docmaker Nick Broomfield about Eugene Terre Blanche, the far-right South African. Less glitzily, any search of the big video sites such as Google Video reveals riveting clips that are too low-key to televise, such as conference footage of David Attenborough discussing why he doesn’t want to go to the moon, how Hollywood sentimentalises animals, and how to video a mouse (tinyurl.com/pkqc4). From the sublime to the truly ridiculous, the web has it all covered.
