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A fan writes:
Mark,
You seem to watch a lot of television. I too would like to enjoy all that primetime and premium television, but my busy schedule of homework, partying and getting laid prevents me from the clear time commitment you’ve made to quality TV. How can I be more like you but still enjoy the thrill of human contact?
Sincerely,
A Cool Person With Friends
First off, I have plenty of time to have a life on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays—nothing is on anyway. Second, I’d venture to bet nearly everyone reading this is familiar with the concept of time-shifting—the whole idea is that you watch TV on your own schedule, allowing ample time for mating pursuits at the Drinkatorium or wherever you kids are going these days.
The obvious example is TiVo, but I’m going to assume you don’t have the cash for that, since you probably use it to buy stupid things like a college education or Doritos. I’ll also assume that, like me, you’re too good for streaming video—if you want to sit in front of a computer and watch quality television at low resolutions, enjoy your buffering hell.
Admittedly, Hulu and Adultswim.com put the flawed technology to excellent use—if you just want to watch a bit of something you missed on Conan or three hours of continuous “Robot Chicken,” you’re good to go. But many shows must be viewed on a TV, not at a desk.
If you have cable, pay the extra $15 per month to get a digital cable box. Charter gives you OnDemand editions of most of the best primetime shows around—“Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and the NBC Thursday night lineup for basic subscribers and all Showtime and HBO shows if you pony up the cash for premium channels.
Otherwise, you could invest in a Netflix account. Ten dollars per month nets you a single disc at a time and unlimited streaming, both from their website and from set-top devices including the Xbox 360 and (soon, anyway) the PS3. While this isn’t the fastest way to get brand-new shows, it is a good way to get quick access to old ones—complete series runs of “Dead Like Me,” “Lost” and even a few seasons of the original “Star Trek” are available for viewing on Instant, and everything else is available on DVD.
I’ve heard a rumor that there’s a technology known as Bit-something that some Internet rapscallions use to distribute recordings of TV shows over a series of tubes for download to anyone with an Internet connection. I even hear you can watch these files on your TV through an Xbox 360 or PS3 if you put them on a portable hard drive.
However, watching TV in glorious HD on your comfy couch without annoying ads or buffering means you are not paying the companies that own the copyrights to these shows. More importantly, networks have no way of measuring fans who watch their shows on illegally downloaded recordings—you can’t complain when “Dollhouse” finally gets cancelled if you never even watched a streaming version.
If you are too cheap or wussy to exercise any of these options, you could always watch some of these shows with your friends. It’s kind of like being at a bar, except the drinks are free and there’s usually a laugh track.
Mark doesn’t have any idea what an MPEG-4 container is, but his current running theory is that it’s used to keep ice cream cold in extreme temperatures. Send your possible explanations to mriechers@wisc.edu.
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