Yesterday I managed to get something called ppstream running. It is like kazaa/emule for Chinese videos. It is really cool and I definitely recommend it! It has lots of Chinese video content. It also has English movies with Chinese subtitles. I found things like the new Karate Kid movie, Salt, Smallville, Project Runway, Yip Man 2 (cantonese), fei cheng wu rao (the Chinese dating show).

PPTV is a similar program. I tried that first but it caused my internet connection to stutter (probably opens too many sockets or something).

To get ppstream running I used the tutorial with screenshots here:
http://dolores.pinoyexchange.com/forums/showthread.php?t=452878

I am still trying to figure out getting these videos to my tv using my xbox. This should be possible using Windows Media Player. Right now everything is played through ppstream's internal player though so I can only watch from my computer.

As to legality and copyright and such, check your conscious :-)

Yeah my wife loves this. Just be careful with the Chinese subtitles of English programming; they can be less than accurate.

For those who don't know. The Chinese equivalent of YouTube is youku.com or tudou.com. Lots of great Chinese content, though some of it isn't accessible outside of China.

I think my favourite bad subtitle was in Raise the Red Lantern (大红灯笼高高挂). At the climax - with murder, death and misery all around - two of the main characters are standing gazing soulfully over the courtyard contemplating their general misery and unhappiness. Then one says something like, "Don't be so groovy!"

Don't have the video to hand, so I can't get the original Chinese, alas.

Linux users - I think there is a PPStream plugin for totem, so you can access it directly from your media player.

http://code.google.com/p/totem-pps/

But what's the legality of all this, given China's - how should we put it? - somewhat relaxed attitude to intellectual property law.

Ah - update on ppstream for Linux. totem-pps seems to have fairly comprehensively stopped working. Which means that we Linux users don't even have to worry about the legal questions I raised above, as we can't use it...