If the TV show or video is played while it downloads from the Internet then it is streaming. This is different from downloading a file to your computer first before playing it. Nothing is stored on your hard drive. The benefit of this is that you can watch very long movies immediately without having to download a huge file.

A video stream can be either live or on demand. If it can be viewed only at a certain time (the videos follow a schedule), then it is a live stream. If it can be accessed at any time of your choosing, then it's video on demand.

Note that you should have a broadband Internet connection when viewing streaming TV. It really makes no sense to try this on a dial up connection since you may be waiting around for hours while it buffers up. Your computer should be reasonably up-to-date.

You should have downloaded the most recent versions of "Macromedia Flash" and "Windows Media Player". Another good free player is "Real Player". Be sure to disable your pop-up blocker.

There are many more media players available than the two above. More often than not, you will be prompted to download a required player if you don't have it. Be safe, don't immediately download the player. Instead, record the name of the player and do some research on Google. You want to find out if the media player is a well known product. If it is, then go to the product's main web site and download it from there. Right click the download link and do a "save as" to your hard disk.

Scan it with a good anti-virus/anti-spyware program. After you have done this, it should be safe to install. Try this free online service which will scan a single file that you upload to it against 30 commercial anti virus applications. It won't scan your computer, just the file that you upload. You might have to wait some as other people may be using it. I believe that the file must be less than 1 MB.

No one single anti-virus/anti-spyware program will catch all the bad stuff out there, so it is a good idea to check your file against multiple anti virus programs. The 30 or so used by the above mentioned service should provide plenty of overkill.

Free Streaming TV

There are thousands of sites that provide free streaming TV. The obvious upside to these sites is, of course, that they are free. Here is one decent free site: http://freetube.110mb.com/. In general though, it can be a real challenge to consistently find a good movie or TV show when you want it. Some of the issues that I have encountered are:

1. With many video on demand type TV streams, it isn't unusual for some of the videos to have been uploaded to the site illegally. While you aren't likely to get into trouble for viewing illegal material from these sites, they tend to have very short life spans. Another frustration are 'problem links'. The odds are better than even that when you click on a link it will either be dead or the stream will download too slowly to be watched in real time. Often, a link is 'dead' because the site that is actually hosting the video, removed it.

2. Small or low resolution images are very common. A three inch square video screen just doesn't do it for me.

3. You will have to acquire a big list of free sites so that you can quickly hop around until something decent turns up. This takes a lot of time, effort and persistence.

Software

If you'd rather be watching instead of chasing free Internet TV then this proprietary software that gives you access to satellite TV channels over the Internet may be worth your while. You can rapidly zero in on a streaming TV show that you want to see right now. Any useless or illegal channels are simply not accessed by the software. Whatever it is that you're looking for, let the software do it for you.

After a one time purchase of the software, you will always have free access to live satellite TV. You will also get customer service whenever you need it. Over a million people are using it now.

Check it out here: SATELLITE TV for PC