… has been somewhat challenging. You can get just about anything these days over the internet through YouTube, iTunes, CBS, XBox Live, NBC, ABC, CinimaNow, MySpace Video, etc. Good luck trying to play that on a TV. There are a huge variety of unusual formats, decoders, DRMs, etc. Your best bet is buying a computer simply to play on the TV. Even ultra cheap $50 video cards have an SVideo or RCA Video port and many computers have as good a stereo decoder as a $500 Reciever (with less power of course). This moves the problem of playing videos to the computer. A modern operating system does not look good on a TV. 640 x 480 is the minimum resolution left over from 1993 VGA monitors and typical is 1280 x 1024. But a standard TV is 600 x 480. The new HDTVs range from 720 x 576, 1280 x 720, 1920 x 1080. They would be easier to look at, but I’m unsure if you could run an RCA cable at these resolutions. Notice how thick the VGA computer cable is vs an SVideo or RCA cable. Anyway, I digress.
The Tech companies have made some recent anouncements that seem to resolve some of these issues. One is the SlingCatcher, intended to prodcast any video played from a computer to any TV. Another is Windows Home Server, which has a “ground break” feature of being able to add harddrives every so often and the OS simply accepting the additional space without assigning drive letters, splitting size, or other annoying issues. AppleTV is wireless micro computer for displaying downloaded content from iTunes on TVs. Microsoft is looking at provide TV service through XBox 360s and an add-on product called MS TV IPTV Edition. Finally, AMD/ATI are showing off their CableCARD addon for approved computers to play HDTV cable through a computer to a TV.