HAVE you watched anything new on the telly lately? If you find yourself mindlessly flicking through channels on a Friday night, then maybe it’s time to try something new.

On the Web today are several new video channels with regular programmes that appear week after week.

A recent study by In-Stat shows favourable acceptance by the mainstream of Internet TV.

The research found that respondents feel that online video will become more mainstream and that social networking aspects play an important part on how the newer generation wants to watch and interact with TV. But this will depend on download speed, user interface, cost and video quality.

The Internet can be your latest channel and no longer do you have to rely on regular TV broadcasting to entertain you night after night. The best part of this deal is, since it is on the Internet, it’s pretty much available on-demand.

So, you can watch it whenever you want and even watch archived episodes.

And it doesn’t take long to be able to view the videos once you’ve clicked on the link. A decent broadband connection will do.

The most convenient ones are those that download in the background, much like how YouTube or Apple QuickTime videos work. This allows you to pause the video, wait for it to fully download and then watch it without any interruption.

It also allows you to open more than one Web browser, each with different videos to view.

One of the best places to find programmes is the Revision3 Web site (www.

revision3.com), which offers many shows for immediate viewing or downloading. DL.TV (www.dl.tv) and Channel Flip (www.channelflip.com) also have entertaining programmes.

Locally, videos are available online as well. BlueHyppo has its HyppTV (www.hypp.tv) with free and premium channels.

The latest channel, Aniworkz, showcases various animation videos from university students. TV3, 8TV and ntv7 offer some of their shows for online viewing at each of their Web sites (www.tv3.com.my, www.8tv.com.my and www.ntv7.com.my respectively).

Among the shows that you can catch online are TV3’s Melodi, 8TV’s Kami and ntv7’s Celebrity Cookout.

And recently, entertainment content portal Gua.com.my launched a made-for-Web drama, Kerana Karina, with 20 four-minute episodes. All episodes of the series will be available for download in

December exclusively on GUA.

So now, there are plenty of “channels” that can supplement your regular TV channels.