Following up on my comment from this post, about not seeing American Idol last night, I realized that there are very few TV shows for which I actually make an effort to see every episode. I do like the tryout shows for American Idol (and none of the episodes after that part), but I don’t go out of my way to see them, or even bother to set them up to record on the DVR, which just goes to show that I really don’t care about them.
Probably the only shows I will make an effort to watch (or at least record on the DVR) are Lost, the Office, and Survivor (when it’s on). Even the Office I forgot about last week. I could set up the DVR to just always record those shows weekly, but I haven’t even bothered to do that.
For any other TV watching I do, I will just see what’s on at the time. If there’s a poker game, I will probably watch that. Otherwise I’ll check to see if there’s any other shows I like and if not just turn it off.
I guess my point is that the DVR is supposed to radically change your TV watching habits, but for me it hasn’t much. Maybe part of it is that I’m not that into TV in the first place. I always mean to sit down and set up recording for the shows that I would like but don’t watch often (Letterman, etc.) even if I never get around to watching them (just setting them to delete if there is no more free space), thereby making full use of the DVR by being able to watch something I actually want to see at any time of the day I choose to watch it, but it’s just not a big priority for me.
Also, I think with the availability of shows on bittorrent, it makes it easier to not even worry about planning to record the shows, because if you miss them, it’s no big deal because you can just download them that night or the next day.
14 Comments
bittorrent is way slow to download stuff… im downloading some lost episodes and its only .3% downloaded and it has been like 4 hours!
I guess it depends on your internet connection. When I first got into lost I downloaded the whole first season pretty quickly. I don’t know exactly how long it took since I started it in the morning and when I checked that night it was finished, and I didn’t check to see how much time it took.
Season one is on DVD, so that would probably be the way to go for that one (I think Dan has it, actually, or you could rent it).
The funny thing about this post is that I just realized that I missed Lost last night, and I didn’t even think about it until now, even when I wrote this post earlier. I also missed the last two Office episodes.
Jason has my DVDs then Jared W. is going to borrow them.
Instead of talking about how you rather not bother setting up the shows you should set them up. It doesn’t take that long, you can set it to only record first run episodes of lost, office and forget about survivor in about 4 minutes. It’s the only reason to have a DVR.
Granted you do have the worst DVR UI I’ve ever seen.
I know, I didn’t say I’d rather not bother setting it up; I just said that I haven’t yet because it isn’t that important to me.
You are correct in pointing out that part of the reason is that the software on this DVR we’ve got now (through Avenue Cable, which is now Wave Broadband) is pretty lame.
Once I get my MythTV box set up, this will all be a different story. I wasn’t really complaining so much as noticing that I don’t really use the DVR as much as I would have thought I would.
In the end, I think that DVRs (or at least free-as-in-freedom ones) will move towards bittorrent style downloads instead / in addition to preprogramming & live recording.
Are you not contradicting yourself by saying you rather “not bother” but it’s “not important”?
I don’t care.
Good luck with your myth box.
Or should I say in your case a myth’ical box.
i saw all of the first season cause i now have it on dvd. i downloaded the first show of the second season (i now know what is in the hatch!) i’ve been downloading esp 2-5 and its only at 10.4% and ive been downloading since 12 yesterday!
I don’t think that’s a contradiction anywhere. I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply about the MythTV thing, unless you’re just commenting on my delay in getting around to setting it up. I think you’re just jealous of the freedom it will bring to my “DVRing” that things like Tivo will never have….
Cynthia: While I hesitate to recommend anyone using iTunes, I’ve heard that you can buy the episodes on there for like two bucks, which may be the way to go for simplicity and consistency. Otherwise, you could just hope that someone you bump into this weekend may happen to have a DVD with the episodes on it and give it to you. You never know.
You could just buy them on the iTunes MS. That’s what JasB did.
The things that you won’t use because you won’t bother doing?
That’s funny that we commented at the same time about itunes and shows.
Yeah, I typed mine and then got distracted doing something else before I submitted it, then went back to the page and posted it, and then I saw yours. So I adjusted the time on mine to make mine not look dumb.
Even I have to admit that the iTunes thing is a pretty decent option for people in this situation, as long as they’re willing to only watch them using Apple products.
Cynthia. The problem you are having with Bit torrent is you are downloading shows that are not in wide circulation any longer. The shows that aired in a 4 week time frame are normally very fast to download. I had this same problem. Itunes, for $1.99 an episode, the dowload completes in 15 minutes or so is awesome. And was a welcomed solution to LOST addiction. I recommend it.
But Cynthia, you still might just want to wait to see if someone may have (hypothetically) downloaded them all overnight last night and might burn a DVD and give it to you tomorrow. Just in case that could happen…