After years of being confined to the corner of the living room, television has arrived on your PC. With a computer and a broadband internet connection you can now view dozens of live channels, catch up with shows from the previous week and pull up archives of classic serials of yesteryear.

Traditional broadcasters are rapidly developing their online presence; for instance, an average of 250,000 downloads are now made of shows through the BBC’s iPlayer service every day. As well as familiar broadcasters there are hundreds of other sites that host TV material and films. It is important to remember that although many of these sites have the relevant copyright permission, some do not.

While simply watching illegal clips online is unlikely to land you in trouble, downloading or sharing them is technically a breach of copyright laws. But that hasn’t harmed their popularity. For example, the file-sharing website the Pirate Bay (www.thepiratebay.org) recently announced it had more than 10m users, despite continuing attempts by prosecutors to shut it down.

As with everything on the web, the sheer number of sites can be confusing. However, if you know where to look you may never go back to conventional TV’s prescribed schedules again.

TUNING IN

Before you pull the sofa up to your monitor, swap your remote for a mouse and settle down to an evening in front of the PC, it’s important to understand how and what you’ll be watching.

As is the case with almost anything concerning computers, the more powerful and up to date your equipment, the faster and smoother your net TV experience will be. In particular, a fast broadband connection (anything above 2Mbps) will reduce annoying delays and help to prevent stuttering images. Even with the latest kit, though, don’t expect net TV to look as good as Freeview, let alone the high-definition broadcasts from Sky or Virgin Media.

There will also be restrictions on how and where you can view the programmes: some can only be watched live, others can be paused or rewound and a few can be saved and watched later. Transferring shows to portable players such as iPods – unless you’ve bought them online at iTunes (or downloaded them illegally) – is rarely possible.

STREAMS V DOWNLOADS

There are two main types of net TV: streams and downloads. Streams are more like traditional broadcasts, where the programme plays direct from the broadcaster, over the internet, to your computer. Streams can often be paused and rewound (unless it’s a live show), but they aren’t saved to your computer.

Downloads, on the other hand, are video files you save on a computer’s hard drive. They can be watched whenever you want, although many have digital rights management (DRM) protection that locks them up, say, after a day or a week.

While streams are sometimes available worldwide, most download services are geographically limited – so you won’t be able to download BBC shows when you’re on holiday abroad.

There needn’t be any quality difference between streams and downloads, except that you need to remain connected to the internet to watch a stream. In reality downloads are often better.

BIG BROADCASTERS

Most of the UK’s main broadcasters offer streams of some of their shows on their websites. While www.five.tv has only clips from programmes for webcast, the player at www.itv.com streams the lion’s share of shows for up to one month after airing. This is a boon for those eager to catch up on missed episodes of Echo Beach.

The BBC’s streaming is restricted to news and sports, but the quality is poor – Peter Sissons’s face on News 24 looks like it’s melting, and football goals are difficult to follow. You’re better off watching Virgin Media’s goal highlights on Times Online at tinyurl.com/ 29ryy3 or at www.virginmedia.com/ football. For a directory of web broadcasters worldwide, see www.watchtvnow.co.uk.

WATCH WHEN IT SUITS YOU

Despite some gremlins when it launched, the BBC iPlayer’s downloads (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer) take online TV to the next level. Once you’ve installed the BBC software, you can download a huge array of programmes from the past seven days, across all BBC channels. Its innovative (and legal) file-sharing software (which shares material between users) works better the more people are using the service and gives good download times. In tests carried out by The Sunday Times the latest episode of Never Better, 30min of programming in a 155MB file, arrived in 15 minutes.

Although Channel 4’s 4oD service (www.channel4.com/4od) uses the same technology as the iPlayer, you’ll need to install its player software separately. It seemed slow compared with the iPlayer – 45min of TV took 90min to arrive, and despite the larger file size of 300MB there was no real improvement in picture quality. That said, the layout and design is bolder and easier to use.

Quality reigns over quantity at Channel 4, with a judicious selection that allows you to revisit Desmond’s hair salon or the second world war drama The Camomile Lawn.

Sky uses the same technology for its Sky Anytime download service (anytime.sky.com) which is free to its subscribers, although again you will have to install more software.

SHOP FOR YOUR SHOWS

Programme-makers have woken up to the fact that most of us don’t want to wait for a DVD release of our favourite shows. Many are now treating episodes of hit shows just like music tracks, making them available to rent or buy online. Sky’s online store at videostore.sky.com is a plus for viewers who don’t subscribe to the satellite broadcaster but want access to its wide range of premium shows.

However, at £2 an episode (for 23 episodes), watching season three of Lost is more expensive than buying the DVD from an online retailer such as Play.com – and you don’t get all those extras, nor the quality.

Apple’s www.itunes.co.uk has expanded its music download store to incorporate TV and film, and sells series from mostly US studios. The online shop is easy to use and more competitively priced than Sky: season two of Ugly Betty is currently available at £1.89 an episode (£13.23 for the whole series) when it’s not yet released on DVD, and even the DVD of season one costs at least £20.

CATCH THE NEW BROADCASTERS

Internet TV is often at its most exciting where pioneers are experimenting with new ideas developed specifically for online viewing. One such is www.joost.com, run by the founders of Skype, although it’s frustrating that so many of its innovative shows are still available only in America.

The ease and low cost of running a web channel has created a glut of niche sites dedicated to diverse hobbies and interests. Narrowstep (tinyurl.com/28lamc) powers dozens of web TV sites, including the Sci Fi channel, Land Rover TV, Watch India and the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin FieldHockey.tv.

Run by Al Gore, www.current.tv describes itself as “the world’s leading peer-to-peer news and information network”. While it can be a bit patronising at times, it’s a rallying point for user-generated news and comment from all over the world that might not be aired anywhere else.

Content-hungry social networks are increasingly being used as platforms for cyber shows. The turbulent world of Kate Modern (tinyurl.com/32fd6f), the “student” uploading her spooky videoblogs to Bebo, is one of the first professional online TV dramas. At www.myspace.com/e4skins you can see how TV shows – in this case E4’s Skins – are building communities online. The site has many other uploaded streams of popular shows.

WALK THE LINE

If you hanker after long-defunct television shows, you still can’t beat www.youtube.com. Do all the clips have legal permission to be there? Probably not, which is why copyright owners are constantly asking the video-sharing website to remove clips (most pop up again in a matter of days). Many other sites operate at the fringes of legality: www.alluc.org has links to many streamed TV shows and movies (as long as you don’t mind Asian subtitles and annoying pop-up ads).

File-sharing websites such as the Pirate Bay, www.joox.net and www.tvunderground.org.ru have links to all kinds of download material, often illegal. If you want to explore this grey area, you’ll need to install file-sharing software such as Azureus ( azureus.sourceforge.net/), and take care to watch out for viruses and the like when downloading files.

It’s also worth noting that although you don’t need a TV licence for downloaded or most streamed web TV, you do need one for watching live online broadcasts such as news, sport . . . or even the Parliament channel.