Seated on a comfortable leather couch at Bend’s Volcanic Theatre Pub, Mark and Lisa Williams waited for a movie to finish up on the screen in front of them so they could watch the fourth episode of this season’s TV drama “Mad Men,” which aired April 21.

“The quality of this show is one where we want to experience it on the big screen,” said Mark Williams, who has a special connection to the show about a 1960s advertising firm on New York’s Madison Avenue because he knows one of its writers.

Thanks to the rapid spread of high-speed Internet connections and the development of new technologies, people across the country have been changing where, when and how they watch their favorite television shows so that the experience fits into their schedules and takes place on their terms.

Volcanic Theatre Pub and the Tin Pan Theater became the latest Central Oregon businesses to jump in this quickly changing landscape by showing two popular television programs — “Mad Men” and HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — live every Sunday night.

“There’s a lot of options out there,” Mark Williams said. “We don’t watch a lot of TV, but when we do, we choose it.”

What’s out there

A few dozen television sets, Blu-ray players and DVD players line the back wall of Standard TV and Appliance’s showroom on U.S. Highway 97 in north Bend. Many of these devices have a built-in wireless card that connects directly to a home network so people can download movies or television programs from the Internet or stream the content from a paid subscription service like Hulu or Netflix (see “What’s Out There” on D5).

A recent report by The Nielsen Company estimated that more than 5 million American households — less than 5 percent of the country’s total households — watch movies, television programs and other videos exclusively through the Internet using these wireless-capable television sets, computers and handheld devices. These viewers do not have a cable subscription nor do they use a broadcast antenna to watch programming when it airs.

But while the number of these households has more than doubled since 2007, when it was only 2.01 million, their presence has yet to be truly felt in Central Oregon, said Justin Shaffer, the store manager at Standard TV and Appliance.

“It’s more of a supplement,” he said, adding most people, especially those who are 35 to 45 years old, use these services in addition to their traditional television service that comes through a cable or satellite subscription or broadcast antenna, not as an alternative to it.

Shaffer explained most of the interest he sees in Internet-based services, in addition to the video-on-demand services offered by many cable providers, comes from people who want to use them so they can watch a television program at a time when it is convenient to them and not when it normally airs.

“People can watch programming on their time,” he said, “and not the cable provider’s time.”

Breaking the schedule

According to the Nielsen report, the average adult household used these video-on-demand services and digital video recorders to watch 1.5 to 3.5 hours of television programming or videos each week.

BendBroadband spokesman Shelby Little said about a third of the cable provider’s clients use a digital videorecorder to save television programs they can watch at a later date and 30 percent use video-on-demand services to watch movies, television shows or sporting events outside their scheduled air time.

The Williamses fall squarely into this category of traditional television supplementers that Shaffer was talking about.

Though they have cable service and an HBO subscription, the couple does not subscribe to the Showtime Network and cannot watch “Weeds,” a favorite drama, when it normally airs. They’ve solved this problem by using Netflix to watch the program’s episodes at home once they’ve been released on DVD.

They also missed the episode of “Mad Men” that preceded the April 21 show they watched at Volcanic Theatre Pub because they were out of town. But because they have an on-demand-service, the Williamses could watch the episode they missed and be caught up with the plot before the new episode aired.

But there is one problem with all of this technology: “You have to wait,” Lisa Williams said.

‘Black-out’ mode

The Williamses had to wait about a year to watch the most recent season of “Weeds” on Netflix because its episodes first had to be released on DVD before the 300 million-subscriber-service could get the rights to start streaming them over the Internet.

They also had to wait about a week for AMC to release the missed “Mad Men” episode over its video-on-demand service.

And these waits can be painful, said Micah LaVoy, an avid television watcher and the owner of Tin Pan Theater.

Because his theater shows “Game of Thrones,” an HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels, on Sunday nights, LaVoy can’t watch the most recent episode of “Mad Men” until a day or so after it has aired. LaVoy’s problem with this situation is that his friends are able to watch “Mad Men” when it normally airs and start discussing it right then and there.

“You have to go into black-out mode,” said LaVoy, who has to avoid his friends’ “Mad Men” discussions until he’s seen the episode for fear they will ruin the surprise. Some of his friends are aware of this fact, he added, so if they do talk about an episode they use vague terms to avoid spoilers, and the resulting discussion “can be pretty generic.”

LaVoy sought to combat this problem, at least with “Game of Thrones,” by showing its episodes live on the big screen when they air, much in the same way that Volcanic Theatre Pub shows episodes of “Mad Men” and other AMC shows, such as “The Walking Dead.” People can watch these programs on the big screen, he said, and they can keep up with their friends who are able to watch the episodes at home when they normally air.

“Everybody is talking about what happened on a TV show at work the next day,” said Woody Beverly, who shared a large leather couch with four of his friends when the Volcanic Theatre Pub showed “Mad Men” last week.

He plans to come back Sunday for the next episode.

What’s out there

Here’s a rundown of the options people have when it comes to watching television programs on their own terms.

* Traditional TV services — Almost 284 million American households watch television programming through a traditional cable service or a broadcast signal they get from an antenna connected to their television.

* Time-shifted TV services — Digital videorecorders and video-on-demand services operated by cable providers and certain cable networks let people watch television programs after they have aired.

* Online TV services — Hulu and Netflix are the two most popular online television services. Hulu’s 3 million paid subscribers can watch certain television programs after they have aired on traditional TV, while Netflix’s 300 million subscribers can watch TV programs once they’ve been released on DVD.

* Zero TV households — The Nielsen Company estimates 5 million American households watch television programming without using a cable subscription or a broadcast antenna. Even though 75 percent of these households have a television set, they are known as zero TV households because they do not fit the company’s traditional definition of a TV household.