I’ll Watch… If It’s Convenient

As I've probably mentioned before, we don't watch a huge amount of television at our house. There are only 5 or 6 shows that we watch on a semi regular basis and maybe 2 or 3 more that we will watch if they are on and we happen to be in front of the television without the remote. One of the reasons for this lack of television viewing is that we lead fairly busy lives and between work, running kids about and our preference for reading, television sometimes gets pushed aside. The other reason for this is that we don't have cable or satellite service. Not that it isn't available where we live, we just don't choose to pay for it. That and let's face it, I'm cheap. The good old rabbit ears on top of the t.v. are good enough for me.

If I do miss a show that I want to see I just head on over to the internet and watch it online. There are several things I like about this option. I like that I can watch when I want to watch, no set schedule to follow and be hampered by. There are fewer commercials to sit through. I realize that programming has to be paid for but when you figure that 1 hour of television is actually made up of about 18 minutes of commercial time… Let's just say that I have better things to do. That leads directly to the fact that watching online takes up less time. I can watch what would be an hour long program on television in about 45 minutes online. One thing I have noticed is that the few commercials that do appear online seem to load, buffer and stream faster than the show I am trying to watch. Not always and not all the time, but enough to notice. If you can get the commercials to play that way why not the show itself?

I have to admit that in this case the old way might actually be better than the new. Remember when you had to set your VCR to record the shows you wanted? Obviously this assumes that you managed to get the clock on it set right in the first place. You had to make sure that it started and stopped at the correct time so that you didn't end up with an episode of (insert sarcasm here) Melrose Place instead of the vastly superior 90210. Although it did have it's drawbacks and problems, at least when you watched what you recorded it played from start to finish without the annoying 'Buffering' message. You could still watch the program faster than on television by fast forwarding through the commercials and you could stop it and start it at any point in the program to go and get another slice of pizza. The other main benefit to the old way was that the show was longer. Yep. Only 12 minutes of commercials in the late 80s and early 90s. Ah, the good old days.