I Watch Shows, Not Tv
Recently I’ve been feeling guilty about the amount of television I watch. Up until last year I hadn’t watched Tv for about 4 years. The medium had become totally uninteresting to me. Reality Tv was everywhere, sitcoms sucked, and ads were worse. Sure, I had a Tivo, and I had every single person I knew convinced to get one, but the quality sucked, and the experience of watching Tv was just second-class.
Enter Bittorrent, Hd rips, and RSS. Ever since I set up my system, not only do I watched more shows, but I watch a LOT of shows. I probably have at least 10 shows I watch weekly without missing a beat. But not only do I get to watch them at my own convenience, but I get to watch them in quality that even digital cable can’t provide. I have a better system set up than Comcast could ever give me. The amount of shows I watch is attributed to the fact that I’m able to go back in time and get shows after they’ve aired. House for instance had been on for a half a season before I got into it. So I got the rest of the shows and started from the front.
Its also a heck of a lot easier to “try out” new shows or existing shows. Having a list of shows in an RSS feed allows me to double click a show and try it out. Instead of mousing around through a horrible cable box interface trying to find some On Demand show. I’m able to find new shows that I like this way.
The only television I watch is the television I watch. That makes sense, I swear. When I’m done with a show. That’s it. I don’t flip to the next channel to see what else is on. I finish and move onto another project. Just sitting in front of your Tv leads to watching Hugh Hefner’s Whores jumping around pretending they have enough content to constitute television. I’d rather sit down catch 42 minutes of Lost or 28 minutes of Curb and be happy.
The television medium has begun its decent in line behind the music industry. Times are changing and so are the customers. Viewing habits exist that did not 5 years ago. So now I’m not feeling too guilty. I know there is a difference between watching shows, and watching Tv.
I am enjoying all of your thoughts on the current state of television and the viewing habits of the shows. This article hit the nail on the head if you ask me. I could not agree more.
Until your article about rss feeds and torrents I was manually downloading each episode that I wanted to watch. Now I have it running full time and downloading the shows as they become available. Thanks!
Only issue that I run into is getting a really good regex string for the show that I want to grab. I end up with multiple copies of the same thing being downloaded a lot. Why do I need to be a regex pro to get a solid search criteria that will not result in duplicates and full seasons? I know most will reply that its not rocket science and I would agree, but I do think its a little silly that each person is writing thier own regex filters for the rss feed extension of Azureus. Why isnt there an online repository for regex filters for shows? Is that something that anyone is interested in working on? I will throw the serverside up for it if some would contribute.
Comment by angrycamel — October 26, 2005 @ 4:18 pm
If you’d like you can right click the show in the rss feed and choose “Create Filter”. This will automatically create the REGEX for you. Once your filter is created, be sure the check the “Use Smart History” option. This will enable the plugin to recognize if its downloaded one of your shows or not. It will remember, and never download it a second time!
Also, try making some fail filters. I have filters for VCD and hr-hdtv, so that those types won’t download. I also use it for other reasons when i need to restrict something from downloading.
Good Luck!
Comment by Jon — October 26, 2005 @ 8:05 pm
Thanks for the smart history tip. I have that checked currently but I still see duplicates. It must be due to not having any fail filters setup so I will give them a whurl.
Any thoughts on a public repository of filters for any given show?
Comment by angrycamel — October 26, 2005 @ 9:41 pm
I don’t really see the point. All you need in the filters are dots in between the words. They are simple REGEXs.
arrested.developmentThats all you really need. That won’t pick up anything but something with “Arrested Development” in its name. You may have problems with shows like ER, or say, CSI came out with a new show called CSI: Las Vegas. Then the filter for Las Vegas, “las.vegas”, would pull that show. So you’d make a filter to fail on “csi.las.vegas”.
Comment by Jon — October 26, 2005 @ 9:45 pm
You have a good point. Thanks
Comment by angrycamel — October 27, 2005 @ 11:48 am