The film industry is one of the most thriving in the world. This is because movies seem to be one of the most popular choices of people all over the world when it comes to entertainment. It’s hard to find a person who doesn’t like watching movies. There are a number of genres available these days that cater to viewers of different mindsets and ages. Movies can be seen in theaters and on television. Movie discs can also be purchased or rented for playback on players or computers. However, websites that allow you to watch movies online are becoming more and more popular. This is because you can get a lot of content on the World Wide Web and pretty much any movie ever produced. You also have the option to watch them whenever you want. You can’t get as much content from an offline record store, though the discs allow you to watch movies whenever you want and it’s not feasible to build as large a personal collection either.

To watch movies online, there are a few things you need besides a good computer with enough hard drive space and memory and a high-speed Internet connection. However, these are the things that are absolutely essential to watch movies online smoothly because movies tend to get stuck when viewed from computers with poor performance and slow internet connection. You will need at least a broadband connection as dial-up connections are not sufficient and your movies will not load or play properly. It is always better to have high resolution flat panel monitors for the best viewing experience. Movies today have a lot of high quality effects and can be completely lost on low resolution screens, while screens that are not flat will give movies a distorted or unsatisfactory appearance. Among flat panel displays, a TFT monitor is always better than LCD monitors as they have wider viewing angles and are better for viewing by a group of people. They are also glare free. What you need next are good audio and video drivers and speakers. You can opt for 5.1 surround speakers and those that reproduce dolby sound for a great audio experience.

You also need some basic software loaded on your computer to watch movies online. You need some video playing software like Adobe Flash Player, Divx, Windows Media Player and Video Lan or Vlc. It is recommended to add the streaming media players Quick Time and Real Player. Streaming media is media that is played on a viewer’s computer while being delivered from the server where the database is stored. Almost all movies that you can watch online without downloading to your computer are streaming media. There are a limited number of sites that stream in two formats that can be played exclusively with Quick Time and Real Media Player. Also, these two players have their own networks, whose movies can only be played on them.

Now the only thing left for you to do is find a good site that streams media for free. There are certain sites that carry out surreptitious activities such as data spying and spamming by infecting visitors’ computers with spyware and malware. Do a Google search and check out online forums and social networking sites to find out which sites are safe.

Online video is really a great way to watch movies.