Thanks to TiVo and Comedy Central showing Tosh.0 all the time, I’ve watched a bunch this week, even ones I watched this season. This is the one video I think I’ve referenced this video the most since I saw it. I don’t get those family stickers and dislike the flip-flop version just as much.
Living without a DVR this summer has been moderatly difficult. It’s a good test to see if it’s possible because while I can’t ditch cable (sports!) it might be possible to ditch the DVR, which would save $10 or $15 each month. It’s also a good time to ease into such a transition as there aren’t as many shows on during the summer. Still, there are some important ones. I haven’t ranked my favorite shows in a while but Breaking Bad is #1, Curb Your Enthusiasm is somewhere in the top 5, and Louie and True Blood are must sees as well.
I’ve survived the summer using Hulu, HBO Go, channel sites, and iTunes in case of emergency. For the most part I can watch most of what I want. It gets to be a pain having to go to a bunch of different places and keep track of what I’ve watched. Only Hulu has a decent queue system, HBO has a watchlist but it doesn’t seem to update quickly or remove things I’ve watched. Some of the channel sites are pretty awful. Actually, all except Hulu and HBO are pretty awful.
Not all shows are online. It’s frustrating how even some networks pick and choose what is available. What makes even less sense are the shows that they decide to put on, but not for a month after it originally airs. Tosh.0 and The Car Show are the ones airing now, and I’m pretty sure Real World was like that on Hulu as well. The Real World makes some sense because it was available on the MTV site. MTV makes their own money from streaming it for a month and then makes it available to a wider audience to make a few more bucks. The others aren’t available on their channel’s site (Car Show’s site just embeds the Hulu player).
Ok, it’s helpful that the shows are available eventually, but what are they trying to accomplish with this delay? I can think of two types of Hulu users:
Catching up with Hulu – People don’t see the start of a show or miss a few episodes. Hulu is great to get back on top of a show and then start watching again on TV. I’m assuming the top goal of the network is to get people to watch a show on TV. Delaying posting for a month means you never have the option to go back to TV until the next season starts.
Online Viewer – Maybe some people just live online and watch everything online. They are fine waiting the month, because they don’t really know any better. But there is no reason to make them wait. All that’s being done is splitting these people off from the people who are up to date. This kills off talking about the show.
The other option is iTunes but paying $2-$3/episode to catch up or buying a seson pass that costs more than the DVDs will cost (and don’t give you the DVDs) is not something I’m willing to do. The only show I bought on iTunes this summer is The Soup. It wasn’t available for streaming and I thought $6 for 8 episodes was a very fair price.
I don’t know how to solve this exactly. The Hulu Plus model should open up more options of how this can be handled by having their free and paying users. How about this method. Just post every show the next day. For the free viewers only leave the show up for a week or two. Then everyone is on the same page. No reason to have a large catalog of more than one or two episodes. The network obviously doesn’t care about the catch-up audience. Paying customers can get more of the old shows. Even a day or two window that only paying customers can access is valid. The rule the network needs to follow is that everyone should be able to watch the last episode before a new one airs on TV.
For me, I’m just going to put these shows in my Hulu queue and then forget about them until a new episode shows up. I won’t be able to talk about them with people who watched them live or the week they aired. I won’t share clips from something like Tosh.0 because they will be stale by a month.
One more thing I need to menion are ads. I’m ok with the 30-60 second ads. However, TBS has started 3 minute commercial breaks on Conan. I’m watching on my computer. A 3 minute break and I start browsing and forget what I’m watching. I’ll mute it and play something else and then forget I was watching until the show is half over. Now when I watch Conan I just watch one segment.
Instead of trying to figure out how to ditch the DVR, I’m trying to figure out how to ditch Hulu Plus. The DVR is so much easier to deal with than this online mess of varying rights. When I get back home, I’m swtiching to Tivo, which will hopefully get my season passes in order (something Comcast couldn’t handle very well). Still, not having Daily Show and Colbert on a non-Tivo TV (using my blu-ray player) or my iPad will be difficult.
I just put together Emmy Pickem over on Ice Cream Helmet. This is the first time I’m doing an award show other than the Oscars.
I picked the major categories and if you create your own group, you can set point values for each category.
The nominees were announced this morning. The awards are announced on September 18th.
Make ICH Picks or head on over to the site to create a group and invite your friends.
I’d love suggestions of other award shows to consider doing on ICH.
| Sports Show with Norm Macdonald | Tuesdays, 10:30/9:30c | |||
| Wait What? – Stick Horse Rodeo | ||||
| www.comedycentral.com | ||||
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Wait, What? is by far the best segment on Norm’s Sports Show. I like that now they don’t introduce the segment so you figure it out while watching. I’m not even looking for it. When you hear these stories it’s so obvious that you just say it to yourself.
Netflix needs a way to share things on Instant Streaming. I’m not saying a video embed, but some sort of FB/Tweet/Blog button to quickly share links. I’d say half my friends have Netflix, and that might be a low estimate. I’ll just have to drop in a Tweet.
The Benson Interruption was on Comedy Central a few months ago and it was really great. You’ll like it too, if you can deal with the premise, of Doug interrupting his stand-up friends. The main reason it works is that Doug has a lot of funny friends. The better friends he is with someone, the better the set.
I remember next to nothing about the show. All I really remember is that they were my favorite toys. I wanted all of them. I even mentioned it in a Fives about childhood cartoons.
They were sort of like Transformers, I guess. Except that there were people driving the vehicles and they’d put on a mask and the vehicle would transform.
The point is, the series is coming out on DVD, in August. And I’m excited because I want to at least watch an episode and figure out why I liked it so much.
MASK DVD news: Update about MASK on DVD | TVShowsOnDVD.com.
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That reminds me, I should do something about my pile of expired Lunchables in the corner.
These are real shows????
Ok, E!’s embed is unbelievably awful. Auto-play on an embed. Ugh. So just the links now.
At least someone is looking out for the hairless puppies.
Loved this, even without the Donkey Kong bit, which was the best part.
Online Home of Tosh.0′s Funny Viral Videos hosted by Daniel Tosh | Tosh.0 | Comedy Central.
Parks and Rec was excellent. By far the best part was the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. He was only able to cover some of the boxes during the episode. Thankfully, they put the entire Pyramid online. In face, I think the quality might be good enough to print it out in full size. If I had the capability. I think I’d put it on my wall.
So so so excited for Parks & Rec to be back tonight. The Season 2 premiere was jaw droppingly good. Yes, jaw dropping. Cause Season 1 wasn’t very good. So when the Season 2 premiere was good I was confused. Luckily Megan had the same reaction so I didn’t feel crazy.
Need to get ready? Here is Aziz’s remix of the opening credits …
Aziz Ansari Presents: Parks and Recreation – CollegeHumor video.
