Boomers, Want to watch TV online? Try a video search engine.

Like many other Boomers, I've begun watching some television online on my PC instead of on my TV. Maybe it's the lure of watching shows I've forgotten to record or the desire to try out a new show that leads me to want to watch in what I consider non-optimal conditions. Truly, watching on my computer screen isn't as satisfying an experience as watching in High Definition in my great room.

However, I think I have a problem that many others share. It's very hard to figure out where online you'll find the show you want to watch. And once you've decided what you want to watch, you may find you have to pay something to watch it. Not all television programming is available online either, so you may be out of luck all together.

I started my journey towards watching TV on my computer when I was having trouble with the cable signal for the channel that carried Lifetime. I wanted to watch my guilty secret (not any more) program, Project Runway. To find Project Runway episodes, I decided to Google the show.  Google wasn't much help.

Unfortunately, Project Runway used to be on Bravo and they are still carrying full episodes of past seasons. To find the NEW episodes I had to know which season this was and what network carried the show. With a little help, I figured out that season 7 was the current season. The website for the Lifetime network is called MyLifetime.com, which is not immediately evident.

Once you arrive at mylifetime.com, you can catch up with the last 5 episodes. I don't know why Episode 1, was unavailable, but it wasn't. Once on the site, was easy to start the video going and to use the controls to make it appear in  "full screen" mode. Lifetime includes some commercials in its replays, but they are not as long as the commercial breaks when you watch on TV.

Until this week, I had never tried to watch live TV. However, I thought it would be fun to see how to connect to the Olympics online. Of course, I knew that the Olympics was being broadcast by NBC. I have to say that going to the NBC website was a nightmare. I thought it was too busy and I was unable to locate "live" programming. Here is a screen shot of the website. There was lots of information on the web page. It just wasn't organized very well.

A friend of mine told me that I should look for old TV shows on iTunes, and sure enough there are plenty of TV shows for sale from Apple. You can download them, free or for a fee, and you have 24 hours to watch them.

Also, there are many episodes of TV shows available on Hulu.com, including five episodes of the popular Burn Notice. YouTube also features TV shows. If you know what you are looking for, you can search for it through YouTube's search feature. It may or may not be there. And that's the problem.











No one knows how to find these shows online. Supposed you want to watch the latest episode of American Idol on your computer. If you type into Google something like "American Idol 2010 episodes online free" you'll get a lot of answers, but none of them are very good.

Finally, I decided to try to find a video search engine. That led me to "Clicker," which seems to be an easy to use way to find the TV shows you want to watch. A quote on the website from Readwrite Web calls this "the TV Guide of Internet Television."

You may be disappointed to find that you'll have to pay for some of them, but at least you'll know  where to get them. For example, Big Love, an HBO product, has to be downloaded from Amazon, YouTube or Netflix. Each has a different pricing model.

Another video search engine that seems to work for TV is called Truveo.

Yet another good site for video search is Blinkx.

Some of these search engine sites look clean and easy to understand on the first page, but once you click through, you think "this is more trouble than it's worth." Give these TV search engines a try and see if you agree with me. Or perhaps you know some better TV search engines I could try.

Boomers are starting to watch TV on their laptops and computers, for sure. Now we have to ask for the tools that will make this easy to do!

Do you like Audio Books? Many Boomers do.

I'm not a big fan of audio books, but I used to be. When my kids were young, we'd put on classic books to entertain us during long car rides. Now I prefer shorter formats. In particular, I like to listen to NPR's Selected Shorts Podcasts. This PRI (Public Radio International) program features actors reading short stories, and I find it riveting.  I signed up for Selected Shorts Podcasts in the iTunes store and download these stories for free.

I have several baby boomer friends that use audio books while they commute to and from work. They'd be lost without them. Some of these friends check out audio book CDs from the library, but many get their books online and download them to an MP3 Player or iPhone.

Now many libraries offer an option, through a company called Overdrive, for patrons to "check out" and download audio books from their public library's web site. I'm sure many boomers who have grown away from using libraries were unaware of this new service.

An  article at Babyboomer-magazine.com in 2009 discusses why boomers like their audio books so much. The author, who isn't named, suggests audiobookstoreportal.com as a good place to go to find audio books. According to that website, once you pay for your book,  "you'll be taken to a page to download your new audio content. Once the files have been downloaded to your computer you can listen to them whenever you want, transfer them to a portable player (yes you can get your audio book to your iPod!), or burn them to CD to enjoy on a conventional home stereo or in-car audio system."

I decided to investigate Audiobookstoreportal.com's website to see how it works. The one thing I noticed right away was that audio books vary widely in price. Take a look at the website, and you'll see one book for $1.50 and another for $29.99. While you can download many of the books as MP3s directly to your computer and then load them onto your MP3 player, it appears that the way to get these audio books onto an iPOD is to download them to your computer, burn them to a CD, then upload the CD to iTunes. After all that, you can transfer the audio books to your iPhone. One advantage that Audiobookstoreportal.com has over its more famous competition Audible.com, is that the pricing structure is straight-forward. You pay the price listed, with no membership fee.

Audible.com is probably the best known website to look for and purchase audio books for download. It is similar to Audiobookportal.com in that users also have to download the items to their computers, and then transfer them to a CD for upload to iTunes. Audible also makes users download a software program to facilitate the processes. One of my objections to Audible is that the service uses a complicated system of payment. You are enrolled in their website for a price ($7.99 for 3 months with an introductory offer, and then $14.99/month). For that amount, you get one audio book a month and discounts if you want to buy more.  If you are sure you are going to listen to that many audio books, by all means use Audible! It'll save you some money. However, it could be a bad deal if you are just an occasional listener.

I also took a look at the iTunes store, to see what their audio book selection looked like. Here is a page from the iTunes store. These books are downloaded directly to your iTunes account and then to your iPOD or iPhone when you sync with the computer. They are usually expensive options that cost about the same amount as a hard back book.

Of course the public library is the least expensive way to give audio books a try. If you want to use your public library's Overdrive program, you may have to download some software from the library's website. After that, you will have access to your audio book for a predefined "lending period." You may prefer this if you are able to complete listening to books in a timely fashion. It certainly is the least expensive way to try out audio books!

So, fellow boomers, I'd like to know if you are listening to audio books and if you are, do you find them difficult to find, download or use? Please feel free to comment. Thanks.