A Farewell to Cable

I decided to drop down to basic cable last month. I decided that I was wasting too much time on frivolous TV watching, and that there was plenty of content available through Netflix for my video entertainment needs. I'll let other people serve as my filter for what is and isn't worth watching, and then I'll rent the DVDs of the shows worth watching. By doing this, I'm saving about $40/month on my cable bill + $10/month on my ReplayTV service. So I'm going to save about $600/year. Not bad.

I also cancelled my membership at the JCC . I don't need it anymore, because I can now use the fitness facilities at Carnegie Mellon (one of the perks of Apple moving into a building on CMU's campus). That's going to save me another $600/year.

Combined, I'll be saving about $1,200/year, or, as Mark Cuban likes to think about it , I'll be earning the equivalent of a 12% return on a $10,000 investment. That's pretty hard to beat.

Comcast Still Sucks

We all know that the basic service levels provided by big, government-backed monopolies (e.g., cable and telephone companies) are terrible. If you call their customer support number, you will wait on hold for an hour before you get to talk to an unhelpful miscreant, and so on. Comcast fits this bill in every respect.

Still, sometimes these companies do cool things unexpectedly. For example, Comcast has upgraded the speed of my Internet connection twice this year, first from 3 Mbps to 4 Mbps, and then from 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps. So, after reading an article about Comcast last week, I was a little bit excited about a new service being offered, and gave Comcast the benefit of the doubt. That was wrong.

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article entitled, To Ward Off New Competitors, Comcast Builds a Mini Internet . The article talks about Comcast's efforts to beef up its On Demand service in order to compete with Internet video sources and phone company backed IPTV rollouts. The article didn't say much that I didn't already know, and generally gives Comcast much more credit than they deserve. One line did interest me, though: "In sports, it has NFL Replay, which shows highlights from football games played any given week." As a dislocated Cleveland Browns fan, the ability to watch the highlights of their games each week had appeal. So, this week I decided to try it out.

My first attempt to use NFL Replay was Sunday night around midnight. There were no games available. Comcast's website indicated that the games weren't available until Monday morning. So, tonight (Monday) after dinner, I decided to try again. This time I was greeted by a message that said "NFL Replay Blackout" with a 1 minute video clip attached. The video clip spent about 50 seconds explaining how awesome NFL Replay is, and how I should thank my lucky stars that I am a Comcast subscriber. The final 10 seconds of the video rapidly explained that while any NFL content is being televised on any channel, you can't use NFL Replay.

What. the. %$^@. I can't watch the highlights from the Browns game yesterday because the Monday Night Football pre-game show is on?! That's unbelievably lame. Comcast claims that they are offering services like NFL Replay to compete with Internet video sources. Well, guess what, Comcast? People like Internet video sources because they can watch what they like, when they like, and they don't have to put up with petty, bullshit restrictions like this. I look forward to watching you have your lunch eaten by the Internet over the next decade.

Mixed Martial Arts

A few weeks ago, I noticed a show called The Ultimate Fighter on SpikeTV. It was a reality show, where contestants competed for a contract to fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship . Three bouts were televised during the show's finale, which intrigued me since the UFC is normally only on pay-per-view. I decided to record the finale on my ReplayTV to see if I liked it and to find out how it compared to my previous conception of the UFC.

My sole prior experience with the UFC was watching one of the very early UFC shows (back in the mid-90's) on videotape at a friend's house. It was entertaining due to its novelty (slogan: There are no rules!) and the shear insanity of it all. There were no weight classes, almost no rules, and guys had to fight up to four times in one night. There wasn't much substance to it, though, so although I enjoyed watching it once, I wasn't itching to see more.

The fights on the finale of The Ultimate Fighter were quite a bit different than the fights I remembered from that old videotape. They took place in the same caged octagon, but now there were weight classes and more (mostly common sense) rules (e.g., no groin shots). The fights were also of a much higher strategic and technical quality than the old fights. Instead of two guys with beer guts running at each other and punching wildly, competitors were using proven fighting systems (notably Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu ). In addition to being able to take a punch, the fighters clearly possessed a great deal of skill.

I enjoyed watching the finale show, so I decided to rent some some UFC and PRIDE (a Japanese organization similar to the UFC) DVDs from Netflix. I've been really impressed with how far the sport has come. It even has a proper name now: Mixed Martial Arts . You can count me as a new fan.

The Shield: Season 4

The Shield: Season 4 starts tomorrow night at 10pm on FX. The Shield is one of my favorite TV shows. Part of that is due to the ambiguity and complexity of the characters. Vic Mackey, the "protagonist" of the series and a guy you often find yourself liking, is a crooked cop who kills another officer in the first episode of the series.

Season 3 was a bit weaker than the first two seasons, so I'm hoping that Season 4 can return the show to its original glory. I have to admit that I'm worried about the addition of Glen Close to the series, though. The Shield has always relied on unknown actors/actresses that end up being really good (e.g., Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey). I don't want the addition of a big name to ruin that dynamic. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Tomorrow night I'll be looking forwarding to hearing daaahahaaaaaaaaaha hit (no, I have no idea what the hell is being said, if anything).

Last Exile

Just keep trying, keep on flying, I will be the light...

Last weekend I finished watching the anime series Last Exile . It was the best anime I've seen in quite some time, and I'd rank it just below Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop in my list of favorite shows.

The first thing that draws you into Last Exile is the setting. It takes place in an amazingly creative world which is a cross between the early 19th century and the future (think Master and Commander with anti-gravity engines). Against this backdrop two nations engage in a war, which is arbitrated by the mysterious Guild. The story focuses on Claus and Lavie, who are vanship pilots (a vanship is a small two-seat aircraft), and their adventures.

The story and character development is generally well done, although it takes awhile for the plot to get rolling. That's fine though, since the world is so interesting. My only major complaint about the series is that a number of plot elements are either underdeveloped or unexplained. This is especially prevalent near the end of the series. It feels like the creators had to rush to fit everything in 26 episodes. Even so, Last Exile is still a great series, with beautiful OAV-quality animation, and I highly recommend it to all anime fans.

The Apprentice

I recently decided that I wanted to check out The Apprentice, since it's been getting so much buzz. I downloaded a bunch of episodes, and so far I really like it. It's very addictive, which is a hallmark of Mark Burnett shows (I'm also a fan of Survivor). I even purchased the theme song from the show on ITMS:

The O'Jays - For the Love of Money

Roundup

Tonight's episode of The Shield kicked ass. It set a good stage for the third season, as well as being excellent in its own right. David and I have the following predictions:

• Mackey and Shane (a.k.a. Cletus Van Damme) butt heads and have a falling out, endangering the proceeds from the Money Train heist.
• Dutch's pride gets the better of him, and he goes through a rocky time. Mackey takes advantage of this, perhaps.

While poking through the BBC websites for Coupling and The Office, I came upon an interview with Ricky Gervais (David Brent from The Office), and he was praising a show called Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. Now that I've finished watching all three seasons of Coupling (supposedly a fourth season is in filming), I'm going to have to check CYE out.

Here's a funny rib of events like BloggerCon : Attend PhoneCon 1876!

The Shield Premiere In One Day

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10pm on FX is the premiere of the The Shield , Season 3. This is one of the best shows on television, if not the best. It's a gritty police show where the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys is not always clear. In other words, it feels real. The first two seasons are available on DVD, so if you're not already a fan, then I recommend checking them out.

David and I are going to have a The Shield premiere party, so if you're in the Alliance area and want to come, let me know.