I have a 40+” screen at home, hooked up to a DVD player and an XBOX One. The latter serves 95% of the time for streaming and 5% for those green boxes with game DVDs in them. It’s reached the point where I have to keep track of which streaming service the show I want to keep watching is on…
I’m old enough to remember television: three major VHF channels: Channel 4 was NBC, Channel 7 was ABC, and
Channel 9 was CBS (Washington DC area).
There were some UHF channels with PBS and other odd channels. We moved to Paris in 1979 and did not care
much for French TV, even if some of that was US shows dubbed into French. When we went up to SHAPE we could watch AFN (Armed
Forces Network) TV at the Raymond Hotel in Mons, Belgium – that was older US TV
shows with public service announcements where advertising would normally be. The primary purpose of the big 26” TV in a
wooden box was to put the humungous VCR on top to watch VHS tapes: first ones
being the 1976 “King Kong” with Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, and Charles Grodin,
and first recorded movie being “The Odessa File” (1974 with Jon Voigt). Our friends had relatives back in the Boston area
taping US TV shows for us, but their tastes were along the lines of Lawrence Welk
and “Murder, She Wrote”. You know, old
people stuff. But we’re talking about
the early 1980s, well before FOX and more provocative programming.
Eventually DVDs came around, plus the flat screen TVs far
larger than 26”. Now we’ve got streaming.
Netflix. Remarkably, I STILL borrow DVDs from
Netflix. However, the days when a red
envelope wound up back with them the day after, and I received my next movie the
day after that, seem to be long gone.
However, a note “DVD ONLY” for a movie does not discourage me at
all: send it to me and I’ll watch
it. You’ve spared me the need to find it
on YouTube or buy it used.
Shows I’ve been watching:
The Crown (still season 1), Schitt$ Creek (finished season
1), Disenchantment (previously finished S2, but rewatching S1 again now
that S3 is available), Umbrella Academy (finished S1), The Politician
(finished S1). I was watching the
Original Twilight Zone (finished S4), Peaky Blinders (finished S1),
Riverdale (finished S2), and as noted in the last blog, Babylon
Berlin. Their original programming
is competitive and watchable.
Amazon Prime. The $12.99 membership gives some excellent viewing
– plus free shipping and far quicker delivery times than USPS these days. Shows:
Goliath (finished S2), Suits (finished S1), 30 Rock
(finished S1), Roadkill (still plowing through S1, brings me back to my
earlier days working on my cars and subscribing to Car Craft), The Boys
(finished S2, glad to hear S3 is on its way), Tin Star (finished S2),
and of course, High in the Man Castle.
Hulu. I had to get Hulu to continue with season 4
of Burn Notice – that Miami-based show about the CIA operative, Michael
Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) who was inexplicably fired from the CIA while in the
middle of an operation in Lagos, Nigeria and is trying to figure out what
happened, while he takes miscellaneous jobs – narrated by him in the first
person – which take advantage of his unusual skill set. Sharon Gless of “Cagney & Lacey” plays
his mom (Tyne Daley guest stars in one episode) and Bruce “Army of Darkness”
Campbell is his FBI buddy, Sam Axe, who helps out. There’s also a hot skinny chick, Gabrielle Anwar,
as his “no, I am NOT gay, Sam and I are just friends” GF and close
associate. I can’t help calling this “BURN!!”
(KELSO!) Notice. Hulu also has Black
Jesus – Aaron “Boondocks” McGruder’s most recent thing – and Archer,
including the most recent season 11.
Disney+. This has ALL of “The Simpsons” (just finished
Season 16) and all the “Star Wars” stuff, including our beloved Man
Delorean.
CBS All Access. This
has all the Star Trek stuff: the movies,
the Original Series, plus Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager,
Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks, plus the movies.
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