I HAPPILY turn into a couch potato most evenings.

I might have the Best Job in the World but it's still work, and by the time the time the family's had dinner, homework's done and the kitchen's hosed out, it's time to relax… usually in front of the box. But now, it needn't be a diet of crappy TV.

Although my TV doesn't have an ethernet port (many TVs, especially big ones, sold in the last year or so do) it does have HDMI, which I plugged an old computer into.
It doesn't really matter how you connect your television to the internet, once you do there's a world of viewing closer to what you really want to watch than being offered by Free-to-Air or Pay TV in Australia.
You can subscribe to MotoGP or the Superbike World Championship and watch their live feeds rather than through Foxtel or Channel 10.

There are ways to access motocross, supercross speedway and trials, too.
Connecting a TV to a computer is something of an expensive hassle though: it's not a job for your average luddite. Apart from the expense you also need cordless keyboards/mice or a fancy remote control, sometimes endless patience getting the video output to match the TV's inputs and even when it's all done you're often defeated by bandwidth as your ADSL connection slows down when your next door neighbour starts playing Modern Warfare III.

I think I've found a better way, at least for lots of internet-based video: the AppleTV 2.
This tiny black box about the size of a small external hard drive connects to your TV via HDMI and is controlled by a little remote supplied in the box, or by your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.It connects to the internet and shows YouTube videos in glorious High Definition - the Cycle Torque videos (search for cycletorquedotcom) look fantastic, even 42 inches wide.

Vimeo and Flickr are also supported.AppleTV 2 also lets you rent movies from Apple and tie-in with a lot of the latest Apple gadgets and technology – Photostream, for example, seamlessly uploads the photos you shoot to the web and an Apple TV2 will show them on your TV as a slideshow or even as your screensaver no more uploading, downloading or transferring.

Movies, photos, music and videos can be streamed from your computer or many Apple devices to the AppleTV2.
Shoot a video of your ride and show it up on the big screen when you get home.I would be even more impressed with the AppleTV 2 if it had a web browser so you could access any website, but at $129 maybe that's too much to ask.

Go to www.cycletorque.com.au/more for links to many of the websites in this article.

Nigel Paterson