In the fall of 2000, I got my first TiVo. That was the first time technology changed the way I watched TV. There are far too many TiVo fanboys for me to bother going into the details, but I’ll just say to this day I still have no idea what people are talking about when they start a sentence with “have you seen that commercial where …” and we’ll leave it at that.
In the summer of 2005, I signed up for Netflix. At first, I used it to replace something I already did. It merely made renting movies easier. But with time, I started to watch television series on dvd. I was late to the Lost bandwagon, so I watched the first two seasons on dvd. I never even heard of Firefly until it was long gone. I watched Six Feet Under and felt like I was getting HBO for “free”. It wasn’t long before I realized that this was a much better way to watch TV. Instead of watching bits and pieces of the story week over week for years, I could chew through the shows at my own pace. I watched every season of Sex and the City in about 6 weeks. The first two seasons of Weeds filled a fun marathon weekend with my brother and sister. I loved it.
After a couple of years of watching television shows on dvd, I decided I liked that format better and opted to cancel my cable altogether. That was about a year ago. It successfully cut out all the noise. If a show isn’t good enough to wait for it to come out on dvd, I don’t watch it. It saves time and it turns out you end up hearing about the really good shows one way or another. I just chewed through the last 3 seasons of How I Met Your Mother. I had no idea NPH had made such a dramatic comeback but not only did I eventually hear about it, but by the time I did there were three glorious seasons to chew through.
Watching a good television series is like reading a good book. You can’t help but watch just one more episode until the next thing you know it’s 3am. I never felt this way about television before. But then again, I used to watch a lot of crap just because it was on.
About three weeks ago, I bought a Mac Mini and connected it to my TV. It has once again completely changed the way I watch TV. It turns out when you have a computer connected to your TV and a nifty remote that allows you to control it from the couch, you suddenly have access to a whole new world of content. Sure I always had access to the content on my MacBook. But it’s a whole new ball game when it’s on the big tube.
It’s only been three weeks but I’ve already found some great content. I’ve reacquainted myself with my old friends Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who I really hadn’t watched since I gave up cable. I’m making my way through the TED talks - if you haven’t checked these out it’s an amazing collection of talks. I’ve subscribed to two b-school classes through iTunesU - I have no shame about my nerdy academic hobbies. I discovered Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture and was blown away. And this, I know, is just the beginning.
I have a favorite saying it goes like this: “I can see the future and I want it now.” With regard to television on the web, I can now say, I can see the future and I’m starting to experience it. We live in great times.