The ways we acquire video...

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From: "John M. Stafford"

However, P2P downloading makes users pay in other ways. Finding and downloading particular movies or TV shows is time-intensive and often fraught with frustration and failure. Problems include being unable to find the desired show or movie, download times measured in days or weeks, ending up with a foreign-language dub, poor audio or video quality, and more.

Uh, no. There is a Mac OS X app called simply TV Shows that makes downloading a show easy peasy. Just subscribe to the shows you want to watch and probably within 3 hours after the show has aired it's already downloaded on your Mac. Always Hi-Def (if available). Always in English (though you could be getting the UK, Canada, or Australia versions). Always the desired show. Always commercial-free. And quick (as long as you're talking about the current episode).

Why do I need TV Shows? It's called Thursday 8pm. While my wife is off at grad school I watch Smallville on The CW. On Friday night we watch the previous evening's Survivor on Comcast InDemand. Yet, I love My Name Is Earl. It is not available on iTunes (since it is produced by Fox and shown on NBC), so TV Shows is my only option for seeing the show.

The only drawback is that since the hackers use the stupid-ass DivX format. Meaning that I must either watch the shows on my Mac, not uncomfortable on my 21" monitor and plug into my stereo system, or convert (slow...) the file to Apple TV or iPod to watch on the appropriate device.

Or rather, it's possible if you have an iTunes Store with video in your country

Also not true. People who live outside the USA merely need a PayPal account with a USA address (ask PayPal about the number of people whose address is 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA). This little subterfuge gives clever, English-proficient foreigners full access to the entire USA iTunes Store.

As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to record these video streams for later viewing on a video iPod.

Again, not true. You just need Firefox and the right Flash-snatching extensions. Oh wait, you said "easy" and "iPod". For the ABC shows it is so much easier to just buy them from iTunes than to snatch and convert because that takes as much time as watching.

Apple just announced that YouTube content would become available on the Apple TV by way of a free software update later this month, but the video quality doesn't appear to be improved - in fact, you're taking highly compressed Web video and enlarging it for a widescreen TV, so the quality is going to be less than ideal.

I don't know for sure, but I got the impression that starting June 15 all YouTube content would be encoded in H.264 and that the back catalog would be re-encoded as time permitted. Dunno if that is all H.264, all the time. Or dual H.264 for Apple TV and Flash for the web, but I do expect that better quality will become available.

since we don't own a standalone DVD player

Glad to see I'm not alone there.

What About You?

I'm definitely TV-involved. I have 15 shows I watch regularly, I love documentaries on the History Channel, Discovery-networks, and PBS, my wife loves HGTV and DIY, we sub to HBO/Cinemax, Starz/Encore, and Showtime/TMC/Sundance for about the same price as a Netflix subscription, and I couldn't do without the NFL (though I have a Sirius Satellite radio in my car if I can't veg at home on Sunday).

I pay Comcast $124 per month for Digital TV, the movie channels, and my broadband Internet (which accounts for $42 of the above price). We never rent movies and rarely go to the cinema. And I use Comcast's InDemand service and TVShows to time-shift my viewing.

Enjoy, John M. Stafford

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From: John Burt <jtbchem.csustan.edu>

Good review, very good - and this is coming from someone who has been a very *active* viewer for 40 years. The only thing I do that you did not mention is I transfer selected shows recorded on my DVRs to DVD so I can watch them again later, years later, multiple times - the ultimate time shifting. (The DVRs have built in DVD recorders and editing software so I can delete the ads and transfer at 8x speed.)

Most of the things I transfer are the exceptional shows like B5, SG-1, selected Trek, BBC-PBS, selected movies and selected Sitcoms. It's the same as buying DVD sets (which I also do when I can get them on sale for under $2 per "hour" - you got those prices correct also - my compliments), but it is less expensive and unfortunately less video quality. If we didn't have those archives to watch, there wouldn't be enough material to give us even the small two hours a night we want to watch together.

I have not yet figured out what I am going to do when the digital conversion takes place.

JohnB ---------------------------------- http://www.SciFiOne.com

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From: James Heartney <jheartneyearthlink.net> Subject: One other TV-watching option

Responding to your June 4 article on video acquisition methods, there's another possibility that you didn't mention, namely borrowing DVD's and tapes from your local public library. Availability of this varies by area, of course, but even in our not-terribly-advanced St. Louis County location, the local library system has a large selection of movies and (some) TV shows on DVD and VHS that you can borrow for nothing. Even better, the whole system's catalog is online, and so you can browse every branch's collection, and have what you want delivered to your local branch.

One of my main TV-watching venues is when I exercise (I have a treadmill in the basement), and using the local library's collection I went through the entire run of Buffy, Angel and even Firefly without spending a dime. In addition I've been able to watch any number of both older and newer movies, again without charge. Newer and more popular stuff may have a long waiting list, but you can easily put yourself down for a good sized list of stuff and have something coming available on a regular basis. Plus you can interleave it with less scarce things and always have something to watch.

We had cable for years, but recently, after looking at the size of the fees and the paucity of anything we actually wanted to watch, we dumped it and invested in an antenna. As we get ready to buy our first HDTV, the antenna has the advantage of offering HD programming without the additional fees the local cable operator charges for that. And, like you, the money we aren't spending on cable we can redirect to buying stuff that the library doesn't have.

Anyway, good article, just thought I'd add in my 2¢.

Jim Heartney Heartney Studio, LLC

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From: Ted Stoffers

Adam,

You aren't alone. 9 months ago we had our management remove the dish
off of our apartment building, and instead of arguing about it, I
decided to just forget about TV. My wife didn't want to, but then
decided that would be a good idea. We had DSL so I said that I could
get any TV programs we _really_ missed off of BitTorrent. So far we
have only been following Lost (downloaded, not watched yet...) and
Heroes. I only have watched 2 CSI Miami episodes and a Pimp My Ride
(with my daughter.)

Otherwise there is a wealth of cool video out there. My daugher can
get her Nickelodeon fix or Disney Channel fix, but she tends to watch
much, much less TV. She's read almost every book she has, and tends
to reach for books to keep her entertained. I feel good about getting
off the coax nipple ;-) We do rent movies when we have the time to
watch them. For awhile we had a MVP rental at Hollywood video
(unlimited movie rentals for $25) and that was fun because we could
rent _anything_. It will be interesting to see what my 2 year old
thinks about no TV at home (there is a BIG TV at the sitters...)

BTW how many Joost invites did you get?

Ted Stoffers
<mailto:mcsquashgmail.com>
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And no, I haven't received any Joost invites yet! Clearly it isn't
going to be a big thing... :)

cheers... -Adam

On 7-Jun-2007, at 08:30, Adam C. Engst forwarded what John M.
Stafford wrote:
> Uh, no. There is a Mac OS X app called simply TV Shows that makes
> downloading a show easy peasy. Just subscribe to the shows you want
> to watch and probably within 3 hours after the show has aired it's
> already downloaded on your Mac. Always Hi-Def (if available).
> Always in English (though you could be getting the UK, Canada, or
> Australia versions). Always the desired show. Always commercial-
> free. And quick (as long as you're talking about the current episode).

Interesting. I've ben using torrents (and mldonkey before that, and
ftp sites before that) and I've never heard of this application, nor
could I find it doing a Google search. I did find it at
macupdate.com and I have to say, it looks very interesting. I did
spend a lot of time this last year archiving some shows so that my
wife could watch them over the summer. She just caught up on Ugly
Betty and is moving on to Lost next.

> Why do I need TV Shows? It's called Thursday 8pm. While my wife is
> off at grad school I watch Smallville on The CW. On Friday night we
> watch the previous evening's Survivor on Comcast InDemand. Yet, I
> love My Name Is Earl. It is not available on iTunes (since it is
> produced by Fox and shown on NBC), so TV Shows is my only option
> for seeing the show.

I have two Tivos, so there are never, or practically never, those
sorts of conflicts. My issue is in storing an entire season of a
show (or in reality, 5 or 6 shows) for summer viewing.

> The only drawback is that since the hackers use the stupid-ass DivX
> format. Meaning that I must either watch the shows on my Mac

Well, if yu have a Mac witha DVI port, you can connect it to your TV
with a DVI->s-Video converter. Not a big issue. However, I simply
use a cheap PC (it was a $99 Lindows box) and have that hooked up to
my TV. All my video files live on my Mac and I use SMB mounts on the
PC to access the video and play it on the TV.

It works great, although recently I find some videos are too good for
that little wintendo to play, so I will probably replace that machine
with an Apple TV.

> , not uncomfortable on my 21" monitor and plug into my stereo
> system, or convert (slow...) the file to Apple TV or iPod to watch
> on the appropriate device.

Remember, the Apple TV can quite easily be modified to play divx/xvid
files. Also, if you have a dock for your ipod, you can connect it to
the TV as well. I've watched a couple of movies this way.