I was lucky to catch mtv at a mates house as my parents didn't have it , only freeview for a period of the 00s but I remember a music channel on freeview would show repeats of some shows and that's how I got into the hills and only saw snippets of laguna beach
The hills was still running then so had to try find newer episodes on dodgey websites
I didn't actually watch laguna beach fully until it came on netflix
Also saw some episodes of made and other programmes mentioned on the music channel (can't remember what it was called , maybe it was vevo they were on?)