Busy on Sunday night? "Desperate Housewives" can be downloaded to an iPod for $1.99. Or the hit ABC show can be watched online for free -- but with commercials -- at abc.com. Click photo for larger image.

So, what did you watch last night -- "The West Wing" series ender? The final tribal council vote on "Survivor"? Or the latest episode of "The Sopranos" or "Desperate Housewives"? Maybe you watched one and recorded others -- will you try to avoid water cooler chatter about them this morning?

TV talk around the office isn't what it used to be. Both technology and a boom in the options competing for our entertainment time have thinned the ranks when it comes to Monday-morning TV quarterbacking.

"I have to purposefully distance myself from [some TV discussions]," said Tim DeBacco, 41, of Oakmont. Between watching TV shows on DVD and recording shows to watch later on his digital video recorder, Mr. DeBacco said he and his wife rarely watch anything live.

That leads to situations in which they try to avoid overhearing conversations that will spoil their favorite programs, particularly "24." Mr. DeBacco and his wife finished watching the show's fourth season on DVD late last month, and he had planned to catch up on the fifth season, now finishing up on Fox, when it comes out on DVD later this year.

"I have to be careful how I read the Life section of USA Today. That is a downside."

Mr. DeBacco's wait may be over sooner than he thought. Last week Fox made several series, including every "24" episode from the current season, available for download from Apple's iTunes for $1.99 each.

Fox isn't alone in wanting to make its programs available as widely as possible. The entire industry is chasing the next change in how viewers "consume" their TV, and almost every day new content distribution deals are announced.

For years viewers exhibited an appetite for syndicated reruns. More recently, viewers bought millions of boxed sets of TV series on DVD. Then came downloads from iTunes, on-demand viewing via cable and satellite, and, now, distribution has spread to the Web.

CBS posts "Survivor: Panama -- Exile Island" for download from CBS.com for 99-cents per episode. In a test scheduled to run through June (but widely expected to continue indefinitely), viewers can watch replays of recently aired ABC series for free at ABC.com.

"The majority of people will still be consuming their television through TV," said Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at the Disney-ABC Television Group. "That may differ between generations. We find younger people actually looking at video through Internet. But on the whole, TV is still the majority platform."

The reason for making TV shows available in so many different ways is simple to content providers: "You need to be where the eyeballs are," said David Katz, head of Sports & Entertainment at Yahoo! Media Group. "That goes for network television programmers as well as any other product or service that you're trying to get out there. Clearly, there is a shift of usage and time spent [on entertainment] moving to the Internet."

But a November 2005 study by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society found TV is minimally affected by time spent on the Internet -- about nine minutes less TV per day per respondent in the study. Face-to-face time with family took a bigger hit -- 22 minutes less per day due to Internet usage.

Despite declining ratings due to the vast number of viewing choices, the amount of time Americans spend with TV continues to rise. Nielsen Media Research reports that the average American watches four hours and 44 minutes of television per day, up from three hours and 59 minutes per day a decade ago.

Owning a TiVo DVR has increased the amount of time Erin Kelly is tempted to spend with TV.

"There's really no reason to turn off the TV or even get up," said Ms. Kelly, 39, of Regent Square. "There's always something good on [your DVR]."

The problem for television networks is that viewership is more fragmented than ever. This has an impact on how the networks approach their product and how TV fits into American culture.

"There are so many shows available, it is hard to find someone who regularly watches the same show as you," said Stephen Sikon, 25, of Greenfield. No one he knows watches his favorite program, "The First 48," a docudrama about homicide investigations on A&E. He ends up talking about the series with other viewers on the A&E network's online chat board.

"I can remember being in high school and having everyone talking about last night's 'Seinfield' episode -- I mean teachers, administrators, freshmen, seniors," Mr. Sikon said. "Now when I come to work on Friday, I ask people their favorite part of 'The Office' [the night before], and the replies range from, 'I haven't downloaded it on my iPod yet,' to 'Is that a reality show on the Food Network?' "

Phillip Swann, a TV industry consultant and author who runs TVPredictions.com, noted that although recording TV shows for viewing later has been possible for 25 years with VCRs, DVRs have made regular recording of programs more likely.

"DVRs make things easier to record, but it's more of an evolution than a revolution," he said. The bigger change will come, he thinks, when Internet connections are available on TV sets. "Over the next few years we'll see this all shake out. Some devices will be dropped, some technology will be modified. There will be a mix of advertising-supported programming and programming that is free but will have some kind of advertising included with the show. It won't be one size fits all."

One of the new technologies being tested is TV on cell phones. Cyriac Roeding, vice president of wireless for CBS Digital Media, said such platforms offer yet another alternative for viewers on the go. He pointed to "CSI," the biggest hit on Thursday night, which regularly attracts 22 percent of the TV audience.

"In other words, there is 78 percent of people that have not watched the show, although they watch television on Thursday," Mr. Roeding said at a January press conference in Pasadena, Calif. "There is a large untapped audience that we can actually reach through other media. ... So they have a chance to catch up with it ... on a cell phone or on the Internet."

In the past two weeks, CBS and Warner Bros. announced new ways for viewers to see their programming. Some CBS shows (and some original programs created for online viewing only) are now available on CBS.com via Innertube, the network's advertising-supported broadband service. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced plans to make movies and TV shows available this summer using the BitTorrent delivery system for prices ranging from $1 for many shows to the price of a DVD for some movies.

"We want to bring our content to users in every medium," said Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, in making the Innertube announcement. He cited the increase in broadband usage -- which allows for high-speed downloads of video -- as part of CBS's decision to stream more video.

"We're closing in on 70 million homes with a broadband connection, and everybody has it at work. A major factor now is the fact that the advertising community has firmed up its interest in doing video advertising on the Web," Mr. Kramer said.

Even as what was once television-only content becomes available elsewhere, that does not mean the end of traditional, scheduled TV viewing altogether.

"There are people who do want to have this gathering at a certain time to watch TV," said Mark Glaser, who writes the blog Mediashift for PBS (www.pbs.org/mediashift). "But as people get used to having TiVo and having new technologies and ways of watching on their own time, why would they not want to watch it at the time that's convenient to them?"

That's certainly become the approach of Oakmont's Tim DeBacco.

"Everybody is way too busy now" to adhere to network schedules, he said. "It's insane. I said to my parents, 'Were you this busy when you were my age?' They said no. So it's great to have these choices."