These are some helpful hints for those who are not especially knowledgeable of how to find Television shows on the Internet.

During my days as a college freshman, far away from home, I often was stuck with a lot of free time (Especially on the holidays). It is then I discovered youtube. I found it amazing I could watch all these television shows I just loved back home(where I had Satellite)! Of course, eventually youtube merged with google and took down many of these beloved shows. Therefore, I looked elsewhere: Where might I get my next fix for X-Files, Smallville, or The Office, or watch Lost season 3 after it already ended? I did not have a lot of money to be spending on DVD Season box sets.
The result is a wide library of video sharing sites and the methods to find what I’m looking for. So let’s start at the beginning:

Television Shows

How do I word my search?
If you are searching for a Live-action show (that is, not cartoons or anime), this method is suggested:

First, remember these common video-sharing websites:

www.youtube.com
www.sidereel.com (A website where people place links to episodes from many sources)
www.dailymotion.com (Lots of French subs)
www.divx.com (a lot of Spanish and german subs - high quality videos)
www.veoh.com
www.movie6.net/tv/
link

(Fanpop is also a great place to find videos!)

Now how to word your search. Say you are looking for Smallville Season 1 Episode 2 : Metamorphasis. This might seem like a logical way to search. However, there are several different ways the people who upload these videos will word the titles and tags.
The other common ways are this:
Smallville 1x02
Smallville S01E02
Smallville 102
Metamorphasis

You may think you cannot find a particular video, but sometimes you can only find it by wording it correctly.
**File-Hosting Websites**
Now, some television shows simply are too old or not popular enough to be found on these video-sharing sites.
Another method I have found very useful is going to www.google.com and typing in
‘Smallville 1x02 Megaupload’
Adding megaupload brings up several results that include megaupload links of this episode. However, you will have to download the file instead of watching a stream.
You may also try other file-hosting sites such as sendspace or rapidshare instead of megaupload.
****
Anime-

Finding anime is tricky, because it comes in many formats (Japanese dub or RAW, English subbed and English dub).
Good video-streaming websites to find anime on are:
www.anime6.org
www.veoh.com
www.sidereel.com
www.divx.com
www.youtube.com

Download websites:
link

There are many others I’m sure but these are the ones that I’ve used.

While anime have ‘seasons’ typically they are labeled by the total episode number. Even if an anime is in its second season, episode 2, it will often read “<Anime> Episode 28”

Example: Death note episode 2: Showdown
Terminology to search with:
Death note 2
Death note 02
Death note Showdown
02 showdown


*Depending on what type you are looking for, also add : RAW, Eng sub, Eng dub. Sometimes this is not necessary as the anime only comes in 1 or 2 types.
*You can also use the megaupload method to find episodes.




Some new sites i've found since writing this article:

www.livevideo.com
www.gofish.com
www.surfthechannel.com
www.videostored.com
www.megavideo.com <--This is a great one!

I have found that sometimes it is difficult to find videos of movies or tv shows because the user who uploaded it masked the video name by putting gibberish.
My advice is to try less obvious tags (Such as Will smith to find the movie "I am Legend", or IAL --the abbreviation of the movie name) and then sort your results by LENGTH.
If the full movie is on the website you will see it near the beginning. This also works when looking for anime or tv shows--most are around 22-24 minutes long. Hour-long tv shows are 41-44 minutes long.
---UPDATED--- 01/16/08


**If you need help finding a particular show/anime feel free to send me a message and i'll see if I can help :)