Well, thanks to Channel 7's new FASTTRACK scheme, the other night I... ah, a, ah, a... friend of mine, yes, that'll do... a friend of mine watched a TV show on TV without downloading it first! New Earl was on, he hadn't seen it, so he plonked himself down in front of the box and watched. Ads and all! Sure, the ads were on mute, (an experience my friend tells me even made him feel a little nostalgic), but there they were, beaming into his lounge room, bouncing off his retinas, and making him wait until they were good and ready to let the show go on.
And during one such ad break (as if there hadn't been enough disruption for one night), he saw an ad for an upcoming episode of Heroes he'd not yet seen! Scrabbling frantically for the remote, he flicked the silent box to another channel to avoid any spoilers and again sat and pondered, trying to think of the last time that had happened...
He's not sure if he'll make a habit of this dancing to the networks' tune, but if it's on (within, you know, twenty minutes of the advertised starting time), and there's nothing else he needs to do, why not?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
why not?
ReplyDeleteYou mean, besides the Heroes spoilers?
I would say because the phone might ring during the show.
James
Yes, you're right, of course. There are undeniably many advantages to downloading TV, but there was still something nice about watching network TV that I can't quite put my finger on. It felt... spontaneous? Like heading out for a Sunday drive on a whim. Like, there was no preparation involved (queuing up torrents), and no setup required (plugging MacBook into TV)... you just pushed a button and sat down.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm just being lazy? Or maybe it's just a change in behaviour that draws the contrast into sharp relief?
I hear you. And I appreciate what you're saying. Although, since I am firmly ensconced in the world of Foxtel Digital with its dozens of channels and Live Pause, it's more of a theoretical appreciation.
ReplyDeleteI do often channel surf and stick with something that catches my eye - just last night it was Bester explaining the entire plot of Season 4 to a catatonic Garibaldi (Man, that show was good TV!) - but channel surfing on 5 channels is significantly less fun than channel surfing on 100 or so.
As for downloading, I'm frightened by how easy that's getting. I use a program called tED now, that downloads new episodes of shows automatically. I still have to copy them to the DVD or external hard drive myself; but if I had a media centre PC - or an external HD that ran cool enough to be permanently powered up - I wouldn't even have to do that.
But even while agreeing with you, watching a show like My Name Is Earl without, as it were, a safety net in case the phone rings or the cat chews through the antenna cable just as it gets to the good bit (of the show, not the cable) is too much of a risk for me. :-)
JJ
(Yep. As I suspected, this was sitting here in preview mode.)