Category Archives: Television

ROKU and Credit Cards

Last fall I was able to get in on this great ROKU Ultra deal, $50 for a $100 streamer! I was replacing an Amazon Stick for my in-laws as a Christmas gift and I was high on it for two reasons. The first is that it was one of the larger units, physically, and that let it house more higher end hardware with ideally less stability issues than the Amazon stick. The second perk was the “premium” remote that had all the buttons but also the killer feature – the headphone jack! Hearing and volume issues being what they were this seemed like a great way for one of them to use the TV to watch and keep the audio from blasting. There were a couple of bad surprises when I opened the box, however…

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Google Chromecast Broken in 2019

I wanted to like this thing….

Streaming Internet video is taking over the way many people consume their television and movies and there are more and more ways to accomplish this. The Google Chromecast seems to be a much loved tool for this and can be found for $30 or less nearly anywhere. I had gotten one expressly to be able to screen share from Android devices a while back and it had set in a drawer, lonely and unused. Then, just before cancelling the Chromecast Audio (which I continue to love) they announced that it was now possible to add a Chromecast (video) to a speaker group. Awesome! Except.. not.

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Daily Show Book Listings

When John Stewart interviews people it is often because they are supporting a book that they have recently published or a movie they have starred in that is opening soon. The movies stick with me but I can never remember the books. No problem, other people are creating a list themselves!

What boggles my mind is that the Daily Show doesn’t do this for themselves?  How hard would it be to simply have a list this on their site?  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

In the meantime, I’ll rely on bored people to maintain their blogs 🙂

–Nat

Castle – Worth Your Time

Everyone once in a while I am surprised by a TV show. I just started watching Castle and hey, wouldn’t you know it is pretty fun? I am hoping that in Season 2 (just clearing Season 1 now) that they encourage some cases that are a little bit more overarching, solving one crime per episode is safe but I think they have the material to reach further.

In that aspect it reminds me of Fringe – a show that started (and sometimes reverts to) a creature feature (one mysterious issue resolved per show) and now is telling an epic story line. Perhaps a crime show can’t quite pull that off… but I think they can do more. I guess I have couple of seasons to watch and find out!

Oh yeah, and it is nice to see that Nathan Fallion can actually be a multi-season show. Just sayin’.

–Nat

Fullmetal Alchemist

After some debate, Kristin and I have canceled the disk portion of our Netflix service and finally signed up for the unlimited streaming side. We had been grandfathered in on a now-defunct plan so we gave that up to get the unlimited streaming.

I don’t watch much anime, but in college Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA) caught my attention when I saw a couple episodes. Having burned through Archer Season 1 (fantastic and the only season available on Netflix streaming) I decided to look it up. Luckily, the FMA: Brotherhood series had been brought to Netflix in early April of this year – perfect timing.

What’s interesting about anime for me is that it clearly comes from a different culture. Supposedly FMA is one of the best anime shows ever which makes it a prime example. There is one story arc that covers 53 episodes. Only rarely is there a subplot that starts and concludes in one show, but rather you need to watch every episode to get what’s going on. This is no mere cartoon.

There is also a much freer take on topics that we might find sensitive here – genocide, God, violence etc. It’s a bit more like how real life goes, the cartoon delivery and flights of fancy (again, cultural difference) underscore the irony of the situation.

The downside? There are five parts to the series and I exhausted part 1 and 2 over the last week. Netflix only has those for streaming, the rest come on DVD. From what I have read, the length of wait time on these disks can be very long as they are in high demand and you also stand a great chance of getting a damaged disc. Three and four are on sale at Amazon, only $25 for each on Blu-Ray. Tempting… We’ll see. It is TV, after all…

If you have an open mind towards cartoons (Tangled is also great for some very different reasons) and by extension anime, please take a look at this series. It would be nice to have someone to talk about it with! 🙂

–Nat

Shows I am currently watching…

30 Rock, Season 1:

I am about eight episodes in and this show is just fantastic!  Some of the humor might be lost on me, but I think this show pulls humor from many levels so I am still laughing at every episodes… I’ve had to pause the Zune at points because of this.  I recommend this quit hitting show to anyone who likes to be actively entertained in a show where the brain has to be exercised just a bit in order to keep up.  Tina Fey + Alec Baldwin == priceless.

Drink Snapple!

Dexter, Season 1:

One episode in and I am hooked.  If the pace and complexity remain at the same high level through out this is going to be great ride.  To some extent if feels like a “The Pretender” but with a static location, complete with flashbacks to a childhood that built the protagonist into who he is today.  Jared and Dexter have a slightly different mission in life, however.  Who would ever have thought that you’d be pulling for a serial killer in a TV show?

What are you watching?  Anything I should DVR or find online?

–Nat

TV Consumption

Since I started my new job and bought a Zune, many seasons of different TV shows have passed before my eyes.  I am going to setup a page to document what I watched and when that transpired and what I thought of each season.  Maybe watching the shows more critically will give the experience more meaning… or in the very least will make me feel better about my time investment.

The current plan is to create a static page, linked on the right side of the layout here.  The shows I have watched will be listed in chronological order, and each show will have a hyperlink back to a blog post that describes what I thought of it.

Link to TV show page.

Heck, I might do this for movies too…

–Nat