They sit through all the crap shows, the being tied to a schedule, the annoying commercials, the waiting a week (or more) for the next episode. In the end, they (usually?) sort out the crap, and the ones that are good filter down to me. This is how I’ve come into contact with Lost, Spaced! (best TV comedy ever), and The Wire (the best TV program ever), all of which I watched via DVD and other ahem methods.
Thank you, TV watchers. You perform a valuable service for us.
Sorry I didn’t read the thread, but I’ll just come on to add that I am that guy. I don’t watch a lot of TV, baseball games and that’s about it. But I do like a lot of television shows.
To me DVDs are easier. I control the convenience of having the ability to watch them at my pace. Whether it’s an episode of Frasier here or there, or an entire season of The Shield in 3 days. Also, some shows I don’t have access to; no HBO, so I just buy every season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Another example is my recent purchase of Firefly. I had never seen the show, but incessant doper recommendations caused me to take a chance on it.
The “watching at my own pace” thing also prevents me from using Netflix for TV shows. I can’t finish a disc of Deadwood and have to wait 2-3 days for the next one. NEED NOW! But that’s just the way I am.
I’ll do one better than that; the computer I watch movies on is a Powerbook. Not only is my DVD drive on my computer, but I can pick it up and take it in the bedroom, the kitchen, or the study; wherever I feel like watching something. I’ve been comtemplating putting together a large LCD screen with a small dedicated multimedia node to act as a central network hub/DVD player/web browser/head node for the hypothetical render farm I keep meaning to build, but right now the convenience factor of a laptop weighs out.
Oh, and almost everytime I actually watch a random program on television, I find it a waste of time. There’s too much crap on t.v. for me to spend time filtering through it. I’d rather pop in something like Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy, or Veronica Mars if I want to burn 45 minutes rather than flip back and forth through hundreds of channels trying to find something vaguely entertaining. But I’m also not a sport fanatic and have a progressively-growing stack of unread books, so I’m not all that drawn to television to begin with.
Yeah, this seems fairly straightforward to me; No comercials, no waiting around for a week, watch them whenever you want… I mean, I can go up to my living room right this second and watch some Curb Your Enthusiasm right now, in the afternoon. There is no “wait until after the nine o’clock watershed” with DVDs.
Count me as one of the people who just isn’t in the habit of watching TV so cable just isn’t worth it. Once in a while I like to watch one show in a binge. Usually because it’s been hyped up or I’ve seen clips. I love to do that when I’ve got a cold or something and want to spend the day lying there.
I don’t think TV is evil but I do find it very hard to remember when something’s going to be on and my evenings are never routine enough for me to just be there to see that show. It does depress me too. To watch one series every 6 months can be nice but I can’t handle just sitting there looking for something decent to watch.
One of my favorite coworkers could be this guy. Any time someone asks him “did you see___?” he smugly says he doesn’t watch TV because there’s nothing on worth watching.
“Uh huh. But weren’t you talking just a few days ago about watching Firefly on DVD? And I know you own other shows on TV, too.”
But it’s different. He says. Without ever explaining how it’s less plebeian to watch shows on DVD.
Let’s see… Well, 95% of what’s of TV suck goats and I don’t want to pay for cable for just the 5% of watchable stuff. Plus, I’m not home often enough to keep up with series week to week. I’ve got real-life stuff to do. I’d rather be able to watch them according to my schedule.
No point in subscribing to somehing like TiVo, what with the 95% of goat-sucking shows on the air I just can’t justify the cost.
We ditched Comcast, so I guess I’m one of these DVD watchers now. I don’t miss broadcast television much. So far I’ve watched several seasons of Foyle’s War, Upstairs Downstairs, Bleak House, Vanity Fair, The Forsyte Saga, Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Prime Suspect, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, scads of movies and a bunch of old MST3K episodes.
I can hardly be uppity about it all though, since the one show I actually did miss seeing in real time was…
…American Idol. :o
I’m chiming in here, since I fall under this category. The #1 reason we don’t watch TV on TV, but do watch it on DVD (or in my case, TV-rips, which I won’t discuss any further) is so that we can control our viewing. DVR’s can fill up, especially if you’re planning on waiting to watch an entire season of something. By buying the DVD’s, you have them waiting for you whenever you feel like watching, whether it be an entire season over a couple days, or an episode here and there. By watching live on TV, or even waiting an hour or a day so that you can DVR and run through commercials, you STILL have to wait for the next episode to air. I watched the entire first season of Lost in 3 days. The second season (ESPECIALLY with that crappy schedule that most fans remember) killed me, by having to wait for new episodes, and I think it was part of what contributed to me losing interest in the show. The show Traveller just ended, and I was waiting for this moment to watch it, since its a serial show, and I didn’t want to have to wait, should I decide I wanted to watch 2 or 3 eps in a row. Now, I have all 8 episodes, ready to watch when I want.
For the upcoming fall season, I intend to implore this technique even moreso, ESPECIALLY with the new shows, so that if something gets cancelled, I won’t shed any tears (like I did with Sons & Daughters, Smith, Knights of Prosperity, 6 Degrees, and that close call with Jericho)
The only time I’ve watched regular television in the past 2 years is when I’m over at a friend’s house. There are a few shows I still watch at home but I just download a torrent of the TV show (usually a season at a time unless it’s a current episode). I have my computer hooked up to my big screen TV so I just watch all my TV shows and movies on windows media player.
I don’t really have anything against regular television but I just find it’s easier this way; I just type in the name of the show I want to see and wait for it to download. Plus, no commercials. And when I’m done watching a season I burn it to a disc.
The delivery model just seems so…antiquated. Imagine if you had a favourite website, but you could only access it by sitting at your computer at a set time for an hour once a week, and then had to put up with nearly a third of that hour being taken up by blaring spam and gaudy pop-ups, and with no way of suppressing the noise other than walking away for 3 minutes out of every 10.
I suppose we’ve been spoilt by the internet, but every other form of entertainment in my house - games, music, books, movies - I can access at will, all signal and no noise. Watching television qua television, rather than something that’s available on demand at any time with no intrusions - I dunno, it just seems like an anachronism now, like a holdover from 1957 when you got what you were given when you were given it and said thanks.
I never watched that much TV in the first place - I got out of the habit when I was a poor student and our flat didn’t have a TV: I just found I didn’t really need it - maybe one or two shows a week, and I’m quite happy to pay a higher premium to get those on DVD and subject to my whims. Plus I have a really good indie rental store up the road which specialises in stuff that the mainstream stores don’t stock - a couple of BBC wildlife documentaries and some old Jeeves And Wooster will do me nicely for a week.
I really didn’t like physically having a television take up space in our living area. It just sat there in the corner glowering about how it didn’t really give a crap about an attractive form factor or whatever. Yeah, I could have got a prettier tv, but for reasons unrelated to leisure viewing, we ended up with a digital projector. So I get the television shows I pick out, at the times I want to watch them, without a big ugly chunk of plastic and metal in the room. Plus, the few times I’ve seen commercial television news in the last few years, the dedication to the mantra “if it bleeds, it leads”, the sensationalism, and the ridiculous things that somehow get to count as news but are really commercials made me really angry. I didn’t want a conduit to that in the house.
I am a delicate flower.
But a few years ago if I told people I didn’t have a TV they were very put out, and assumed I was a snob (which I’m not. You should just see my appalling netflix queue). Now just about everyone understands that I can watch tv on dvds or download it from the 'net (go iTunes season pass for Heroes!) and it’s not really such a big signifier of anything.
That’s me exactly. When people hear I don’t have a TV I have to explain it’s not that I’m against it, just that it’s a huge timewaster in my household.
I hate watching series on Dutch tv with a passion.
What they normally do is transmit the first 6 episodes, move it to a different night (or even station), stop transmitting mid-season for the summer, start transmitting re-runs during the summer and when the season continues in the fall you will always miss the first few episodes because they announce it during the commercials I never watch.
So nowadays I just download torrents of the show and if I really like it, buy the DVD set when it gets released.
I cancelled my cable about 3 years ago and haven’t watched network television in longer than that, but I have a good collection of videotapes and DVDs. Others have given the reasons for this: I can watch the things I enjoy when I want to, and never be bothered by a commercial, annoying pop-ups, or media blitzes on some celebrity or event I couldn’t care less about. When I’m at friends’ houses and they have the TV on, I’m surprised at what they put up with just to watch a show in 4-8 minute increments.
If there’s some new series on and I hear interesting things about it, I’ll check it out when it comes out on DVD. For example, I recently Netflixed through the first two seasons of “Lost,” which was fun but not something I’d buy my own copy of.
Here in the UK, the BBC doesn’t interrupt programs with anything. (They do show occasional trailers between programs, but that’s it.) No adverts!
When I watch fine US TV like ‘West Wing’ or ‘Law + Order’, the ‘hour long’ program is actually much shorter. 10-15 minutes less program per hour :eek: : just how many adverts do you guys get stuck with?!
Watching a series
I have collections of CSI (set in all 3 cities) as well as the above two series (including the multiple versions of ‘Law + Order’) and ‘Murder One’. Instead of relying on ‘previously on …’, I can watch several episodes in a row and at any time that suits me. I like a good plot and can easily go back if I miss anything.
Extras and subtitles
I like interviews with cast and production staff; I like following the dialogue precisely; I like watching my favourite episodes at my convenience.
The ration of noise to garbage
A friend kindly got me a Freeview box. This means I can watch 100 channels.
Now some options are worthwhile, but there are many, many channels that offer me nothing. Also almost all channels repeat endlessly during a day or a week.
DVDs contain exactly what I want - TV is largely rubbish.
I’m one who will watch some TV shows on DVD. (Most recently - Firefly) I don’t include anime in that list, not because they’re not TV, but at this time, in the US, it’s far more likely that a series brought over will be released on DVD without going through US Broadcast or Cable TV.
I also don’t like Cable. There are shows I like on cable, but I can never care enough to set up a recording for them, and I refuse to schedule my life around what I consider good shows. When I have the time to sit down to watch, I find that more often than not Cable is just a hundred plus channels of nothing to watch. I believe I get better value for my money by choosing what I want to watch and renting or buying it.
And subtitles are great. And I enjoy the various commentary from shows I like - it intrigues me to get a glimpse of the process of creating the story I’ve enjoyed.
And with DVDs of series you can actually see story arcs in the order that they were meant to be seen. That’s not always something that happens with the show is broadcast.
On preview: glee, AIUI the standard here in the US is that a 30 min block will have 22 minutes of content. And some of that (the OP, ED, and teaser) can all be easily edited out to give the broadcaster even more advertising time.
I don’t have cable because cable companies don’t offer ala carte packages. I’m not going to pay for a bunch of crappy channels just to get the two or three I want. But some shows are quite good, so I buy or rent them when they become available. That way, I’m only paying for what I want to actually watch.
(They do show occasional trailers between programs, but that’s it.) No adverts!