My television spontaneously stopped working one day last week. They finally stopped broadcasting analog TV. I knew this day was coming for over ten years now, because way back in the 90’s I worked in a place doing R&D into futuristic interactive digital media, and it was on the slate way back then. Still, it had already been delayed more than once, so I never thought they’d actually go thru with it. In fact Jeannie put on Conan just so we could see the Snow Crash at midnight, but it never came. “Ha! See?” I said, but they quietly went dark the next day when no one was watching.
So now if we want to watch real time TV we need a weird little box that doesn’t properly turn off, only goes on “standby” with a sinister red light like the Eye of Sauron. For the most part this doesn’t bother me and I usually just unplug the thing, as I’m not a big fan of TV news, talks shows or watching sports on the tube. In fact, it’s been about two years since I watched much of anything on TV.
But TV has been creeping back into my life in form of internet TV. We’ve been getting into watching streaming shows from Netflix and Hulu. I thought my kids didn’t watch alot of TV until he first time I tried streaming from Netflix and saw a whole stack of Hannah Montana in the recently watched bin. It turns out TV can still be pretty entertaining and a good way to turn off your mind when you don’t have to suffer thru all those ads, and you can watch it whenever you like, which for me means late at night.
First we were getting into the classic 60’s show Star Trek, and worked our way thru about half of season one since coming back from New Mexico in April. Also we were turned on to 30 Rock after seeing it on the flight from Hell on the way back from NM. It’s a smart and wickedly funny sitcom, and always has one Star Wars (or other geek show) reference per episode. We had borrowed The Godfather from Netflix, and because it’s such a long movie, it sat on top of our DVD deck for about six months before we finally had the time to watch it. So then we got The Godfather II, and now that’s been sitting there for four months. One Saturday night not too long ago, we decided we could watch 12 or 13 episodes of 30 Rock in the time it would take to watch the Godfather II, so now we’ve basically burned our way thru 30 Rock. We also watch The Daily Show on Hulu from time to time. Usually catch up on the whole week on a Thursday night. Two minutes of ads per half hour is alot more tolerable than ten or twelve.
So you heard it hear first. This is the golden age of Internet Television, a.k.a. a reasonable value proposition for the viewer. In a few years when it becomes popular in the mainstream it’ll become as loaded up with ads and filler as cable and broadcast TV, and they’ll start charging two or three times for the same thing (like I don’t already pay for an ISP, etc.). And then I’ll have to give up watching TV again or go underground. Ah well, might as well enjoy it while it lasts.