Oh, no, dude, you don’t want to watch that.

If you’ve tried to watch very much video online, you’ll know what we mean when we say it’s a pain. Your computer’s not opposite a comfy sofa like your TV is; it’s on some kind of work desk with a hemorrhoid-inducing “task chair” or something. And that’s fine for killing some downtime at work by watching a couple minutes’ worth of cute kitten antics. But when it’s time to settle in and binge on the plug-in drug… Well, you’re going to need a bigger butt.

Alternately, you could pick up a spare computer to serve exclusively as your media center PC. Might we suggest the Eee Box? It connects to your HDTVs and projectors via HDMI, comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse for easy control from the couch, and boasts an SD card slot and USB ports for playing media from all kinds of sources.

Its 160-gig hard drive is small if you’re downloading movies, but plenty good enough for streaming. And you can add an external hard drive to one of the four USB ports if hard drive space is something you’re worried about.

And no, it doesn’t have an optical drive, but we assume you already have a DVD player or Blu-ray player hooked up to your movie-watching screen, don’t you? This isn’t for movies you got from Blockbuster. It’s for watching movies you got from the Internet.

And let us tell you: There’s a whole lot of freaky stuff online that you’re never, ever, ever going to see available for rent at Blockbuster. Not even at a Blockbuster in some kind of porn-saturated dystopian future like the one envisioned in IDIOCRACY. There are videos on the Internet that defy description. Videos you can’t un-see. It’s a horrifying Web 2.0 freakshow online, all day, every day, featuring an endless parade of the most grotesque amateur acts seen anywhere since the Roman coliseums closed.

You’ll laugh. You’ll wince. You’ll weep for the death of your innocence. You’ll lose all faith in humanity. You’ll be powerless to look away. You won’t believe how many idiot teens think it might be a good idea to try to launch bottle rockets from their butts.

And then, eventually, you’ll be so desensitized to the most sensational acts of depravity, that no real person or experience in your actual off-line life will be capable of eliciting any emotional response whatsoever.

So that’ll be a nice perk.

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