Find the Entertainment

In the recent past, if I missed a show, I had to wait until the summer re-runs. Or if there was some old black and white movie from the 1940's that I wanted to see, I was out of luck. Recently, I could just go to my library. Luckily, the local library makes all the hot dvds available for free. Or lots of shows, like The Office or Lost, issue dvd sets with each new season. Right now, we don't even have to wait that long. We can catch whatever we missed streaming over the internet, via the network website, hulu, or other sites.

I've even watched some shows on youtube. They'll be broken into 10 or 15 minute chunks, but they still work fine. Usually, I only resort to this with something that is really hard to obtain, like BBC sit-coms (Murder Most Horrid) or PBS shorts (Posh Nosh).

Some shows I just love to re-visit, like Arrested Development or The Tick. I can watch those instantly on hulu.com or Netflix. By the way, I don't understand how The Office can be such a big hit, when Arrested Development barely made it. Arrested Development is almost a hybrid, between the typical family-centered sit-com and the fake documentary-style TV show, like what we see in The Office. And even The Office wasn't the first to do this. Before The Office(British or American), there was People Like Us, also from England. It was part of the late-night British sit-com lineup for PBS here.

If you want, you can even buy lots of these shows. Absolutely Fabulous or Black Adder are both hard to find, unless you purchase the dvd sets.

There you are: lots of suggestions for entertaining time-wasters. Here, I'll get you started. This link takes you to a bit of People Like Us on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_VND1196WI

Don't Convert

Lots of chat out there about the new converter box you will need to watch TV if you don't have cable. Even though I am a TV/movie junkie, I haven't had cable in about 10 years. Who needs it? Anything I've ever wanted to see was easy to get without spending money to have 300 channels, 275 of them being sports and assorted other garbage.


What with episodes on-line, all kinds of shows being released in DVD sets, and home delivery movies, all your entertainment needs can be met. I fell in love with the original Office, the British one, when I was given the DVD set as a gift. And in recent years, if you have a fast internet connection (like DSL), you can see most things on-line. I was dying to see the new French & Saunders sitcom Clatterford (or Jam & Jerusalem in the UK). Found some episodes on youtube. Found the rest of them at Netflix (my favorite!). You can even get TV and movie podcasts, although the laptop is as small as I want to go.

So who needs a converter box? Who needs cable? Ditch them both!