URLs4TV: The Best Web Sites To Watch On TV

by Jim Mikles
Summer 1998

The Alternative Entertainment Network
www.aentv.com

The Alternative Entertainment Network is a Web site by Cummings Multimedia that promotes streaming media on the Internet as the next generation of mass communication. Content channels streamed with RealVideo include drama, comedy, history, talk, reality, games, news, specials, business and Hollywood.

Sony Pictures Entertainment
www.spe.sony.com

This is the home site for media giant Sony Entertainment and houses links to entertainment sites galore, including television shows, blockbuster movies, international productions, theater locations, home video releases, interactive pages, a virtual studio tour, and a game show network. The most lively areas of the Sony site use Flash Animation and can be enjoyed by WebTV and other Net-top box users.

Streamland
www.streamland.com

Music video aficionados will love Streamland, an online music video channel that uses RealVideo to feature the latest music videos in a variety of music genres, including rock, hip-hop and . Streamland houses more than 100 full-length music videos.

Spectacle
www.spectacle.com

One of the most intricate and offbeat entertainment Web sites we've seen, the Spectacle site is "devoted to innovative, engrossing content that breaks the rules." You'll need plenty of processing plug-in power to enjoy the "hypernarratives, experimental work and games" with the Spectacle blend of "wit and wonder,' but if you've got it, it's worth it.

Berkeley Systems
www.bezerk.com

Home to the online versions of You Don't Know Jack trivia, YDKJ Sports trivia and Acrophobia word games, this is one of the best online gaming site on the Internet. You Don't Know Jack is famous in disc-based gaming circles, and the online gaming site is TV-friendly in both design and content.

Lonely Planet
www.lonelyplanet.com

The popular travel pages on the Net should be more TV-friendly than they are. If anything lends itself to sound, motion and graphic images its traveling, and the popular travel pages on the Net should be more TV-friendly than they are. Lonely Planet is the most image-rich of the bunch, featuring slides from countries and regions around the world at its OpticNerve home page link.

Bill Nye, The Science Guy
nyelabs.kcts.org

Bill Nye the Science Guy is a favorite with kids, and adults can learn something too from the popular science personality. Nye's Web site is structured similar to his PBS program: easily accessible, imminently informative and ultimately fun. Includes Nye TV, video clips streamed with Vivo of some of the Science Guy's favorite experiments.

MSNBC.com
www.msnbc.com

Everyone knows there's a lot of news on the Net, but MSNBC is one of the best at aggregating it in a format that's TV-friendly, including pages that don't scroll, large text and strategically placed images, which makes sense considering the significant interest that partners Microsoft and NBC have in making the Web a more TV-friendly place.

Film.com
www.film.com

For big-screen movie aficionados, film.com is an outstanding TV-friendly site, with plenty of RealVideo streaming clips of both mainstream and independent films and insightful, independent cinema news and opinion.

ITV.net
www.eyetv.net

Claiming to be the first Internet television network, ITV.net offers "webcasting," services to the entertainment, broadcast and financial industries with Netshow streaming technology. There's a menu of live events on the site, along with an archive of past favorites, including the National Storytelling Festival and a forum on Improving America's Schools.