 |
|
| How can I safely and legally download music, films and TV progs to my computer? Find the answer below. Get live help from 8am to 9pm Atl. Call 1-866-631-0985 or 506-386-6824. |
| How can I safely and legally download music, films and TV programs to my computer? |
A) Music: how to safely download music, now that is question that is often asked by customers. Approximately 70% of computers we work on have a peer-to-peer file sharing program such as Limewire, Ares or some Torrent program. We've already covered why you shouldn't use those programs. If you haven't you can read the answer to the question 'Is downloading music or movies for free on my computer dangerous?' that actually points to this question How do viruses and spyware find my computer to infect it? If you're like a lot of people, you will want to use your computer to discover new music. To do this, we would recommend that you stick to streaming music stations of which there are 1000s on the Net. Many of those stations will let you customize what music you want to listen to and even rate songs as they're played so that they will be either played for you again in the future or never again. One streaming music website that we thought of being particularly original is Amazon.com's Musicovery page. When you find a song that you would like to purchase, you can check out some of the websites in the table below, if you wish, that offer either pay per downloads, or subscriptions for unlimited downloads, or both options:
|
Go back to computer question index.
B) Films: As of this writing in mid-2008, there was only one legal movie download website for popular movies, i.e. theatrical releases, in Canada: the Bell Video Store. We're pretty sure that its competitor, Rogers, will open its own version in the near future. Because this is an ever-changing field, doing a websearch today with the terms 'download movies in Canada'* may reveal something new. For years now, we've been told this would happen, but it is evolving slowly even in the huge US market. If you enjoy independent films, you will stumble upon some websites that offer them for free download on the net using the search terms 'download movies in Canada'*. *Please be careful if you do carry out this search on the web, because of the large amount of illegal and fraudulent websites. Before you download anything or subscribe, carry out a search on that company. For now, your other options are either 1) continue to use brick and mortar video rental outlets, 2) subscribe to Canada's only Internet-based video rental outlet Zip.ca or 3) our favourite option: the Personal Video Recorder. With a PVR you can record all the movies you want for free and watch them when you want and even bring them with you on a laptop or external hard drive.
Go back to computer question index.
C) TV: Television streaming has been around for several years, mainly because the networks aren't worried that you will steal, copy and circulate their programs. You can 'stream' it to your computer or output the video signal to your TV to watch it there, but remember this is not what is known in technical jargon as 'broadcast quality'. In other words you can get the show for free, but you will usually have to put up with the much lower video quality. The exception that we know of is iTunes, where you can buy high video quality programs. In the table below, we're proposing the main television networks in North America. There are 100s of other specialized television stations that stream their content. Again, before clicking on this search, Streaming TV, be careful what you actually download to your PC. Streaming does not usually pose a problem. However if you are required to download a viewer, before you do so, carry out a search on the name of the station and the name of the viewer with the words added 'have any viruses or spyware?' E.g.. 'Does the Insert Name Here viewer have any spyware or viruses?'. As well, when you are installing the program, make sure to dis-allow any option to have the program activate itself at startup. This will unnecessarily use up your precious RAM memory, not to be confused with your hard drive space, of which most people today have tonnes of.
|
|
8th Year of Operations