Streams of popular TV Series

Am I the only one who is seeing a massive increase in websites that offer TV episode streams for free? I'm not sure about the legality and to be honest: I don't really want to find out. If they want to offer free TV episodes of popular series like 24, Prison Break or Desperate Housewives - so be it, especially if the shows do not air in my country, or if they air, do so years after they have aired in other countries.

A week ago I introduced Peekvid (now defunct) which offered lots of TV series as streams on the Internet. Today Channelbreak emerged which seems to be using the same source that peekvid is using. Both are streaming videos that are hosted by Guba. And Guba is more or less a Usenet provider that is making available files uploaded to the Usenet on its website.

The funny thing is that I'm not able to find out how they finance their service. There seems to be no paid service whatsoever. You have to register at Guba but that registration seems to be free. I tested it out and was able to register without problems. There is no sign of  subscription fees, the faq and the terms of service do speak of fees for premium content for example but there are no traces of premium features or sign-up options available anywhere on the site.

I'm still very cautious about this service, my advise would be not to sign up for it as it looks questionable at best.

Update: Peekvid, Channelbreak and Guba are all not accessibly anymore. Some return a 404 not found error, while others an unrelated site that has nothing to do with what had been offered before on the sites.

If you are looking for an alternative, I suggest you try out Channel Chooser which has been around for a very long time as well. You find TV streams on the site that you can directly watch without the need to install plugins or register an account.

You can also check out Can I Stream It which helps you find out if a show or movie you are interested in is available on a site on the Internet, the browser extension Media Hint which provides you with access to media sites that may be blocked in your country and out guide that covers the best streaming TV and movies sites of 2012.

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