TV

Technology is wonderful, I'm sitting here right now watching the Sunday Night Football game over the internet. When I realize the NFL could do this with every game if they were so inclined, I get pissed about the monopoly the NFL has granted to Direct TV that denies me the opportunity to see the Raiders week in and week out in the comfort of my home. ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook has been bitching about this for years.

We decided not to get a TV while we're out here in Fargo and for the most part I don't miss it. With the advent of Hulu we can easily watch a lot of TV online and if we're really jonesing we can get stuff like "Mad Men" on iTunes. The only time I really miss having a TV is on Sunday afternoons when football is on.

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Hulu? Who Knew?

So I've been on TiVo's tip for a couple of years now. I've seen the Comcast DVR and the new DirectTV DVR, but the interfaces aren't as smooth and even though I don't spend a lot of time rating programs to take advantage of TiVo's higher brain functions, I still manage to get some good recommendations out of it. In fact, I almost never look at the suggestions my TiVo makes for me, but one of the few times I looked at the list I found a show called Mad Men.

While we're out here in the middle of nowhere, WifeRat and I decided to roll TV free. We didn't bring one with us and turned down the numerous offers of TV sets as well. When our young cousin came to stay with us last week I thought he was going to have a stroke when he realized we didn't have a TV.

I was talking with one of my teammates before I left town and he told me that he and his wife didn't have cable, but still watched TV over the internet. I knew that networks had started showing streams over the internet, so when I was jonesing for some TV the other night I watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock that I had missed during the season.

Then the other day I was reading Wired (which alternates between brilliant, insipid, and a collection of press releases for the Silicon Valley flavor of the moment) and saw their "Wired, Tired, Expired" list that contained Hulu, TiVo, and Blockbuster. Blockbuster is most assuredly expired, that one I get, I haven't set foot in a video rental store in at least four years. But calling TiVo "tired" and WTF is Hulu?

Not that I live my life according to lists in magazines, but I just spent almost $1,000 on a new dual-tuner HD TiVo (upgraded with an additional 500GB of storage, natch) with a lifetime subscription less than a year ago and the technology is being declared obsolete? Fuck me gently with a chain saw.

After posting to the other blog I'm contributor on I wanted to watch some TV so I took my stinkin' ass over to Hulu. Interesting stuff, they have a lot of TV shows over there. In the Summer when shows are off the air and the entire previous season is available it seems like a good deal for the low, low cost of free. But this seems awfully forward thinking for companies like News Corp and NBC/Universal. Anybody reading this on the Hulu bandwagon?

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