Virtually there - February 2010

The renovations drag on. We coped just fine cooking on a camp stove in the conservatory and doing the dishes in the bath. We managed to share a bathroom with the children (just). We faced drainlayers, tilers, joiners, painters, plasterers, glaziers and roofers with a smile. But this week we hit the wall. Due to a fatal combination of floor sanders and wiring, our multimedia empire came crashing down. No TV connection, no MySky, no wireless network, no music, no internet. There we were, huddled each evening in the bedroom under teetering piles of tables, sofas, shelves and takeaway cartons, reduced to talking to each other.

 

But then we rallied. The fight-back started with the internet-capable phones: we could at least surf and read email. Then, in desperation, I fired up a laptop and managed to hack into a nearby wi-fi network. (Sorry, unknown neighbours, but abcd1234 is simply not a secure password. Neither is QWERTY09. But thanks for saving us.) Back online, there was a world of internet entertainment awaiting us.
There had been an ugly scene when my daughter missed her Glee fix, so first up was TV On Demand at TV3. TV3 didn’t have the news, however, so we had to go to TVNZ for that.

At this point it became apparent that it was not sustainable for an entire family to get its media fix by squinting at a tiny screen all night. So we dragged the large-screen TV out from under the drop cloths and plugged it in to the laptop as a second monitor. Sadly, I can’t give you specific instructions on how to do this because it depends on the gear you have. Are you Mac or PC? Windows XP or 7? Is the TV high-definition? Does it have an ethernet connection (in which case you can dispense with the laptop entirely), or merely S-video? If these questions seem unanswerable, take a photo of all the holes in the back of your TV and take that photo, together with the laptop, to your friendly computer shop and tell them you want to use the TV as a monitor. The nice salesperson will sell you some kind of cable or PC-to-TV converter and you’ll be away.

There are all sorts of TV treasures to find online. Delicast.com has TV channels streaming from Lithuania to Lebanon. Watchtopgear.org has all 14 seasons of the eponymous motor show. Watchdoctorwho episodes.com and watchallfamilyguyonline.com are self- explanatory. I hope you are picking up the pattern by now. YouTube Channel Classic TV lets you wallow in nostalgia with Greatest American Hero and Lancelot Link Secret Chimp, as does the Monty Python Channel. More US shows than you might care to contemplate are available on CastTV.com, from As the World Turns to WWE Raw. Nice.

What is less nice is the rather unattractive look of a laptop plugged into your TV. A better option is to permanently connect an Apple MacMini to your TV, with wireless mouse and keyboard so you can loaf and surf.

My prediction? Internet TV is going to be huge. This is your chance to be an early adopter and impress all your friends with a casual oh-yes-I’ve-been-doing-it-for-years attitude. Accept that you may have problems with resolution (high-definition this is not), pop-up adverts, download speeds and geographical restrictions on some content. But, for Catherine Tate and Lucille Ball, MTV India and the Elvis Channel, that show you missed last night and your favourite reruns of all time, it’s worth a try.