That Not So Fresh Feeling

Through the wonder of the internets, I was able to check out a few of the new fall TV shows via my TiVo. Yay! New TV!

So, then I actually watched them. And new TV didn’t seem so new anymore.

Let’s start with the worst. “Journeyman” stars the dude from “Rome“. Not the really cool dude, but the other one. The less cool one. He plays a journalist (ha, “journ”alist … “journ”eyman … ha) in San Francisco who has a British accent that just sort of peeks out every now and then. It’s only mildly annoying. It’s slightly more annoying when he randomly starts going back in time. It becomes apparent, fairly quickly, that the show will be about him adjusting to the new time he’s in and then setting some prior wrong right.

Yep, exactly like “Quantum Leap.” Except not nearly as good. The one good bit was that they resolved the marital strife his time traveling caused right off the bat. But, otherwise, this looks like a show that’ll make it through half the season before they have to rewrite it and have it take a massive twist because it’s just boring.

“Bionic Woman” reminded me a lot of another show. What was the name of it? Oh yeah … “The Bionic Woman.” Except this one tried to be all futuristic and clever. It had one decent fight scene with the villian (Starbuck from “Battlestar Galactica“, which is an infinitely better show, as far as I can tell), but like everything else in this show, it was rushed and pretty much pure exposition. You’d think a dorky sci-fi action show would be right up my alley, but I fell asleep twice trying to get through this. The best part is how the main character flips out after becoming bionic, hates everyone involved, but within 10 minutes is fully using her new powers and fighting the bad guys. I guess they wanted to get right into the bionic powers rather than dealing with the potentially interesting story of her struggling to deal with her new powers.

Whatever. I probably won’t watch this. It looks like it’ll be a worse version of the new Terminator show. Which I haven’t seen yet.

Finally, there were two kinda good shows.

“Life” is not about Eddie Murphy being in jail. No, this version is about a cop who was wrongfully accused of a murder and spends 12 years in jail before being freed. Part of his settlement for wrongful imprisonment (besides a bunch of money) is to be put back on the force as a detective. It all stems from him living his zen-like existence and wanting to make a difference … or is it. Muhahahaha.

Actually, the zen aspect of the main character, and how it affects his perspective and approach to police work is kind of fun and reminds me a good bit of “Raines,” a show from last season that I like a lot (about a detective who talks to ghosts in his head). So even if the show didn’t have a secondary element, it’d still be worth watching. But there’s a nice reveal at the end of the pilot that puts a slightly new spin on the main character (is he as zen-like as he seems) and adds a hopefully nice serialized story to the proceedings. I’ll be watching.

Finally, there’s “Chuck.” Or, as it’s also known, “Jake 3.0.” It’s about a guy who works for the Geek Squad at Best Buy … umm, I mean the Nerd Herd at Buy More. He’s a dork, he’s droll, he’s Seth Cohen. Hey, wouldn’t you know, this the new show by the guy who invented Seth Cohen. Surprise! Chuck gets an email from an old associate and BAM, he knows a bunch of spy stuff he shouldn’t. The NSA and CIA send operatives to capture or kill him. They all work together to save stuff.

Ok, so it’s a bit derivative of the previously mentioned Jake 2.0 crossed with The O.C. And, given the subject material and the plot, it’s a bit lacking in the energy department. That being said, it was really fun. It’s obvious that this could be a good, even great show, once it finds its footing a bit. They had to cover a lot of ground in the opening episode, so it’s not too surprising that it was a bit uneven. It looks like it’ll be worth watching for the first season and a half before it turns crappy like The O.C.

Around Wednesday I started feeling sore — an achy back and neck. It got progessively worse (from handleable to requiring a few Advil every couple of hours) until Saturday when I had a fever, headache, and even worse back pain. It was a fantastic way to start a long weekend.

So, given that I was going to be spending a majority of my time on the couch or in bed, most of it was going to be consuming a bunch of the media that had been collecting over the past few weeks. 10 or 12 podcasts, 3 Netflix DVDs, and a whole bunch of season finales on my DVR (Heroes, Lost, Veronica Mars). With work and the generally nicer weather, a variety of things have been building up across my network.

It’s an odd feeling to be anxious about the things building up on your “convenience” devices (DVRs, iPods, DVDs-by-mail). The whole point of these tools is to make life more convenient (which they do!), but the downside is that from time to time, when you’ve been really enjoying the convenience, you get to a point where you’re not sure how you’re going to get through all of the media you’ve saved up. It’s an oddly daunting feeling.

It’s the downside (if you can call it that) of the “digital-content-at-your-convenience-era”. Media overload.

After spending a whole bunch of time on the couch, I’ve made it through most of the TV on my DVR. I’ve still got 7 or 8 hours of podcasts to get through, but I’ll make up that time at work (just one of the benefits of working at a computer). Hopefully, I’ll get through one more DVD, too, which would make this little bout with what seems to be the flu about as successful as it could be (minus the night sweats, fever, and inability to sleep).

Last week, I tried out Amazon Unbox downloading to the TiVo for the first time. The experience went pretty smoothly, though I’m pretty certain it won’t replace Netflix or OnDemand in my usage.

I finally had a chance to actually watch the movie, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. The quality wasn’t too bad, and I was able to even stretch it out to fill my 16:9 TV. The quality was about what you’d see on digital cable, which is better than what I normally get on TiVo, but obviously worse than DVD. But, for a movie like Idiocracy, it was perfectly acceptable.

Given that I’ve still got some money left on the initial $15  credit, I’ll probably keep grabbing cheap movies where visuals aren’t important. There’s still slow download times (I’ve got an older TiVo and an older wireless adapter, so I don’t get great transfer rates) that mean this isn’t instant gratification. But, it’s not a bad thing to grab a movie every now and then to watch when I have some free time.

Honestly, the worst part about the service is probably the Amazon end, where the search and navigation is nauseatingly bad. It’s impossible to quickly browse and easily distinguish TiVo-compatible movies from those that aren’t available for the TiVo. That’s going to be something that needs some refining if this is going to catch on with more than the early adopter crowd. The iTunes Movie Store interface is far easier and significantly more attractive.

iTunes + Apple TV are probably going to defeat Amazon + TiVo in the long run, as the Apple combo has better quality, faster downloads, and a nicer interface. But, since I’m not shelling out another $300 for Apple TV, I’ll probably stick with Netflix and BitTorrent, which, for me, is the best of all options.

One last thing tonight: I’d been reading about the integration between TiVo and Amazon’s Unbox service, where you can download a movie or TV show from Unbox and have it delivered to your TiVo. TiVo has sort of lost me as a user, as their HD DVR is way too expensive, and as bad as the Comcast/Motorola DVR software is, I can record HD and do pretty much everything I need to do. The TiVo has been relegated to backup recordings and occasionally streaming some music.

However, TiVo and Amazon are offering a $15 credit, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I signed up for it today–it was very easy, you just sign into Amazon, then type in your TiVo account info, and you’re done–and scanned through for something to download. I didn’t want to get a TV show, so I grabbed a rental of the recent Mike Judge movie Idiocracy. It cost about $4, which leaves me a good amount of credit to rent a few more movies or TV shows. The rental last a few days after download.

Now, after about an hour, it’s only downloaded about 1/3rd of the movie (I’ve got an older wireless adapter), which means this isn’t going to replace On Demand for instant gratification. On top of that, it’s not in HD, so I’ll probably never use it when I could use On Demand or Netflix.

But, for stuff that I’m not worried about being timely or high quality video, it’ll be worth playing around with. Frankly, I doubt that this will take off. I just don’t have much of a desire anymore to watch stuff in crappy TiVo quality. I’ve got a laptop that I can download movies/shows in high quality, or watch them online in high quality, and I can access them faster than the TiVo can get them from Amazon.

So, it’s sorta cool technology, but I think it’s a little bit of “too little/too late” from the TiVo camp. I don’t think this will compete with Apple TV; I don’t think this will compete with BitTorrent and a laptop; I don’t think this will compete with On Demand. It doesn’t win on price, quality, or convenience.

Well, at least I don’t think it does, since I haven’t had a chance to watch it, and it won’t let me start watching it until it’s fully downloaded.