The CW has some great programming. Between Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl and the long-running Smallivlle, my TiVo is kept pretty busy recording shows all week long. But what happens if another show bumps my season pass or if I'm spending a few weeks away from home and need my fix of the Winchester or Salvatore brothers?

Thankfully, I can watch most of my favorite CW shows online. The only thing that stinks is that since they are not airing on Hulu, I have to go to the CW website to see them. If you go to either Hulu.com or Fancast, it may look like you can watch various CW tv series on those sites, but in actuality, they both just redirect to the CW's official website.

The CW hasn't quite gotten with the program of making things easier for viewers so they require that you download a proprietary video player plug-in in order to watch full episodes of CW tv shows.

The player that the CW uses is the Move Media Player. While it is certainly easier as a viewer to just watch a video stream of your favorite shows just like you would watch a clip on Youtube, the player does have a few advantages that might make it worth the download. The big two are picture quality (which is quite excellent) and buffering time, which is non-existent. Well, technically you should never see it buffer. I never have, but of course your mileage my vary.

So what CW TV shows can you watch for free online? All my favorites! And hopefully yours too. Basically all of the CW series have at least a couple of full episodes online. You will not be able to go back and watch an entire season's worth of episodes. For that you will need to download from either iTunes or Amazon.

From those alternatives, I would go with Amazon for its Video on Demand service which is pretty nice, featuring all episodes in HD. You can start watching episodes immediately. Episodes cost $1.99 each or you can buy the entire season and that usually entails a discount. Most of the CW shows are available on Amazon.

And you can still download to either your TiVo your your Windows PC with the Amazon service, so it's up to you, whichever is more convenient.

Here's the list of the current list of CW series that you can watch online.

• 90210
• America's Next Top Model
• Gossip Girl
• Melrose Place
• One Tree Hill
• Smallville
• Supernatural
• The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries is the latest show from the CW and it already looks like a bit hig. So if you aren't watching it yet, be sure and catch up with it online.

You will find all of the available episodes on the CW Video Page.

Also, as usual, everything only works in the US. For an explanation of why this is the case, see my hub about Hulu.com.