Turning off the TV

I often go a couple of months without watching the t.v. Have to pull out the guide to remember how to use the satellite tuner.

I like having it there for times I'm feeling cruddy and just need to stare at something. Design shows work well for those episodes. As does Andy Griffith.

Other than watching Football on Sunday afternoons my TV gets very little use. I watch the evening news every day but other than that it's usually turned off.

FOOTBALL. Football's been about the toughest. I'm gonna drag the sozlet to a smoky bar pretty soon, I'm afraid. I've been totally annoying Packer fan friends on Monday mornings. "So what happened? Details details details!"

You can't get the Packers on radio around you Soz?

Er... fishin'... radio... deaf...

Doh! Oh yeah! I guess that would make it a little harder.

Brain fart!

Just a smidge harder.

They are working on captioned radio, which I don't really get, but would be cool.

This is kinda like captioned radio! (Talk radio anyway)

That sozobe/fishin exchange gave me the best laugh of the day!

I confess I like TV. I love Survivor. I love 60 minutes. I'm still kicking myself for forgetting to record that true story of the bridge over the River Kwi the other night. It was supposed to be great. I'm a documentary junkie.

I don't get to watch much TV though. I'd practically kill for one of those Tivo things.

When I moved from LA to northern California four years ago I bought a new Sony tv-vcr combo. Ah, I do know that that isn't so wise, one is smarter to have separate components, or that used to be the case. But, it turns out that I haven't had much chance to test how unwise it might have been to buy the combo since I have ended up barely watching the either the tv or vcr. You have to have basic cable here to get any kind of good reception (ne'er mind satellite, not going there). So I got a look at the basic channels here. The news shows are vastly more drecky than in LA, the shows there being drecky enough to start with. Then I got more expensive cable, still not with hbo and a few otherhigh money options. I found I wasn't watching it enough to justify the expense of even the middle choice. Then I went back to basic. I haven't watched the tv in my house in probably two years, and mainly keep the connection so my niece when she visits can have a video marathon as one part of her vacation.

Even with 911 - I was in LA visiting the day it happened, and watched friends' tvs for the rest of that week, and when I got home I followed by computer.

This is a wild change over time, since I watched great gobs of tv as a child/teen, lots and lots of football over they years, and lots of Washington Week in Review and MacNeil Lehrer when they were in their heyday, not to mention spending half my afterwork life going to old movies at the Fox Venice in the seventies.

The only thing I miss - the occasional wonderful commercial in the Superbowl. The design shows annoy me (I am a designer), and I get my cooking info elsewhere, from Cav and Vincent and jerryR, for example.

I do see the Academy Awards with friends at their house, a long time tradition.

I have so many other things to do, and love music on...
and of course... have a2k.

Whenever I'm home for breaks and the like, I can't help but turn on the tube every once in a while to see if my favorite channels still, ya know, exist. . . but when I got up here for the first time and realized I was going to have to PAY for my own cable, I decided I could live without it. . .

I'm addicted to CSI, but other than that, I really don't do much time in front of the screen. . . of course, Abuzz and a2k cut into any tv watching time :-) But the public library's around the corner and I've enjoyed having time to read and catch up on that kinda stuff. . .

But I do miss my Food Network. . .

I turned the TV off over ten years ago and have not even owned one for the last three. I found that not only could I do wiht out it, I did many more interesting things to replace it, like going to movies. For news, newspapers and magazines are much more thorough and the internet and radio is more than adequate for breaking news. If I am in a public place where there is a TV I'll watch it, and if there is a very important even like 9/11 I'll locate one, but I do not miss it. One things I have noticed when I do watch TV now is how shallow much of the programing seems.

I have jumped into the HD TV market. Once you see a true HD broadcast, you'll never be able to watch regular TV again. It's that good.

CSI Miami is the best of the broadcast HD. Discovery Channel in HD is the best of the satellite feeds. EPSN HD cheats and stretches standard signals then broadcasts them in HD formats. That sucks.

I currently get all of my HD material off my roof antenna. Of course I did have to buy an HD receiver ($650), to go with the HDTV ($1600). The thing is, I paid about $2K for the 40" big screen TV I bought ten years ago that just died.

For football fans, MNF in HD will draw a crowd. Make sure to have plenty of snacks and cold beer on hand.

Turned it off in 1992 and haven't missed it.

I don't watch much TV. I don't have cable. I have a very old TV and VCR that work ok, but not great. No DVD player. I bought an antena in september which helps me get a clearer picture of a few stations. I still don't watch it. Since the begining of september, I've watched TV maybe twice. For the 2 years before september (the antena purchase) I watched TV maybe a dozen times.

I'm on Time Warner HDTV and the tuner only cost a couple of bucks more a month. What a great investment! HBO and Showtime both provide their main features all day in hi def and although they aren't actually filmed in hi def film, they are extraordinarily clear. The 5.1 Dolby sound is even superior. But watching the last Nature on the delta at the Kalihari was spectacular. I was pulling in my legs every time a croc came bounding out of the water. "Carnivale" on HBO looks like hi def film -- the picture is better than the best projection at a state-of-the-art movie theater. Coming up: the TV remake of "Dr. Zhivago" in hi def.

I must say that I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only TV viewer on here!

It's kinda hip these days, boomer, to be free of the tube, but I must admit, when I have nothing to do, if I need a breather, anything like that, it goes on, and I go to bed to watch it :-) (I'm not too hip to begin with, so this is not out of character. . .)

However, I used to watch hours upon hours a day. . . and don't do that so much anymore. . .

I do a lot of movie watching -- the Sundance and Independent Film Channel are great for seeing films one can't find anywhere else. They just had a Kurosawa binge on IFC and last night I watched the PBS Kurosawa biographical special in HDTV. Now I'm adding films to my NetFlix rental films, even "Rashomon" which I haven't seen for some time.