How to watch TV when TV sucks

I'm not a big TV watcher. Sure, I'm a sucker for Mythbusters and all those Discovery Channel geek shows but the only show we watch with any regularity is Lost. Of course if I'm around when the Daily Show is on, I'll watch that. Even with Satellite TV, we couldn't ever find anything worth watching. I've bought a number of movies and TV shows on iTunes, but never really watched much TV online until recently. A couple things changed that. First off, Netflix announced that its "Watch Instantly" is available for the Mac. Secondly, I discovered a new show called Fringe. The Netflix player uses Microsoft's SilverLight Technology and requires a quick download to work. I went through the same process on Windows through Parallels and the Mac install was painless compared to the download, install, reboot loop I had to go through with Windows. The quality is pretty good, although it's not quite as good as my Satelite TV. In fact, in watching one episode of CSI: Miami, the audio was a good 3 seconds in front of the video, which made it look like we were watching a foreign film dubbed in English. That experience may have been an anomaly, as the sound sync on Mad Max was perfect. They other thing I don't like about the Netflix player (and this is almost a deal breaker) is that there is no support for an external monitor. So, when I hook my laptop up to the TV, I have to either mirror the displays, or make my TV the main monitor. The problem here is that gmail notifications and other things pop up over the movie if I don't turn them off. I also noticed that the computer goes to sleep. The one thing I really do like about the Netflix viewer is the fast forward/rewind interface. Instead of the typical scroll bar that moves you through the content. There's three windows, one big with two smaller ones on each side. As you scroll through, you see a few seconds before and after where you are. This is extremely helpful in knowing when to stop. The other day, I was browsing iTunes and saw a show called "Fringe." I checked out the reviews and it turns out that the show is created by J.J. Abrams (Lost) and it's really similar to the X-files. Although instead of dealing with aliens and paranormal activity, it deals with Fringe science. Instead of buying the episode site unseen, I decided to see if Fox had it streaming - it does! I'm really impressed with Fox's streaming video. The fullscreen option is incredibly clear. In fact, on my HDTV I don't think I can tell the difference between the stream and regular TV. Occasionally, the stream will stop, but it starts right up again. The other annoying thing about Fox On Demand is that you have to watch the same commercial over and over again. So now, I'm seriously considering upgading to Wireless-N and buying an AppleTV and hacking it to run Firefox so I can more easily watch TV online. Who knows, Maybe I can cancel my Satellite TV, too!