I was reading TVByTheNumbers, but switched over to reading the Grim Reaper (who has bounced around a bit and now does his own thing on his own site). A little more snark, but the analysis is a bit better.
At ABC:
Wicked City is cancelled — This “1982 serial killer” show wasn’t exactly a huge draw, but surprised it didn’t get a couple more shows in before a decision was made;
Castle and the Muppets are toss-ups to be cancelled by end of year, but I think the Muppets will leave before then and Castle is a definite lock to be the last season;
Quantico is on the list for “likely renewal”, but I think it is way too early to decide that, unless someone has a REALLY compelling storyline for Season 2 already in the works; and,
SHIELD is on the list for definite renewal, must be something I don’t see, as it’s a watch or not toss up for me.
At CBS:
Elementary is a toss-up, but again, I think way too early to decide;
NCIS: LA and Blue Bloods are likely to be renewed, but I’d put them in the same category as Elementary;
Newbies Limitless and Supergirl are also listed as likely to be renewed, but I would downgrade Limitless to a toss-up and upgrade Supergirl to “definite” as a Berlanti-diamond-that-needs-polishing; and,
NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, Scorpion and Big Bang Theory are all expecting renewals, but I’m not sure why for any of them.
At NBC:
The Player has been cancelled, which saddens me…there is a plot line here for a weekly action show, one man with some skills against the world, and nobody has cracked it in the last five seasons, wonder who will try next year;
Undateable is likely to be cancelled, and I gave up on it some time ago;
Heroes: Reborn is rated as a toss-up, but I think they have too much chaff and not enough wheat in their lineup, so might upgrade that one, depends on what happens with the plot going forward, if it will hook people or lose them;
Grimm is down as likely to be renewed, and there may be some syndication money at play there (they’ve reached their 100th episode), but I would list that one down a bit unless they can pump up the storyline a bit; and,
The Blacklist is predicted as guaranteed to be renewed and Blindspot is already renewed, and I’d be interested to see what the writers for Blindspot have pitched for mythology creep in Season 2, as at least one of the major pieces has to drop this year or people will cry foul.
At Fox:
Minority Report is already cancelled, which is a shame, I think it had potential just needed a bit more spark outside of the police department;
Sleepy Hollow is predicted as likely to be cancelled, and can’t disagree with that, the storylines have been pretty flat this year;
Gotham is predicted as guaranteed to be renewed, which I don’t disagree with; and,
Rosewood is listed as guaranteed to be renewed, which seems like a giant odd-man-out, and worries me for recent retooling to make both Rosewood and Villa single and available for each other, leaving little tension, they’re almost happy together.
At CW:
The hybrid of CBS and WB, TV Grim Reaper suggests treating them like two “sources” of shows since they seem to be almost managed as two pools (often the top CBS shows get renewed, even though they’re worse than some of the bottom WB ones):
Crazy Ex-GF for CBS is on life support, and TV Grim Reaper thinks they already pulled the plug without telling anyone;
Arrow is guaranteed to be renewed, and like The Flash, I think it’s a no brainer, partly as I think Berlanti is achieving some economies of scale between multiple productions and makes up for it volume (Arrow, Flash, SuperGirl, DC Legends of Tomorrow, etc.).
That’s it for now, will probably recap in about a month when the first “season” ends (the networks now treat it as the “fall season” for 10-13 episodes and the “winter season” for 10-13 more, plus replacements).
I like reading the website TVByTheNumbers (zaptoit.com) as they pull together some of the hits and duds each week to see how they’re doing based on ratings and whether networks are likely to keep them. They adjust for things like demographics, whether the network owns the show or it’s produced outside the fold, etc. It’s a fun read, and their prediction rate isn’t bad. Mostly I just like to check in from time to time for my shows and see how they’re doing…
ABC:
Blood and Oil — The “Dallas” remake, more or less, it held no interest for me and is on fumes;
Wicked City — The premiere was last week, this is the 1982 serial killer show, pretty low on predictions but only just started, hard to tell;
Nashville — Why is this show still on?
Castle — I watch, but I’m not sure why anymore. They should have had a better ending for last season, bigger, badder, etc., and just ended it instead of separating Castle and Beckett this year for ridiculous reasons;
Last Man Standing — Haven’t watched since the beginning, let it die;
Muppets — I had initially hoped this would be kid-friendly, but most of the pilot was more for adults, more so than the previous version, fine to let it die;
CBS:
CSI: Cyber — this should have died the first week;
Hawaii Five-O — this should have died two years ago;
Code Black — St. Elsewhere with updated DRAMA! ACTION! ROMANCE!…yawn;
The Good Wife — has probably run its course, don’t have strong views, it never hooked me;
NCIS: LA — I was watching regularly, but lately, it is definitely third on my list of NCIS shows, and happy to see it go;
Madam Secretary — yawn, never hooked me, fine to see it die;
CW:
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — I can’t figure out how this was greenlit…confused mess;
Reign — never watched it;
iZombie — haven’t watched it through an episode, but some friends like it, no real view on this one;
FOX:
Minority Report — I think there’s a show buried in there somewhere, not sure where, but won’t be surprised to see it die;
Sleepy Hollow — I would miss this one…it’s like X-Files with things actually appearing rather than just hinted at;
The Grinder — Rob Lowe, yes…this show, hell no;
Grandfathered — premise bored me before I finished reading it;
Bones — I should love this show, as I like procedurals, I like the stars, I like forensics…but I don’t, the chemistry was never, and I mean NEVER, there for me;
The Last Man on Earth — no interest;
NBC:
Truth Be Told — no interest in this from the beginning;
The Player — each week, save the victim…there have been a lot of these action shows in recent years, and if there was no secret identity, super power, or cape, they`ve all failed…this one is no better or worse then most of them, and Wesley Snipes isn’t enough to save it;
The Mysteries of Laura — I have no idea how this one survived the pilot;
Undateable — I don`t know where this show went, it started off with “let the dating guru give lessons to the nerds” and it was great, funny, watchable…then it became, let the nerd reclaim the gigolo, and the show tanked…now it’s *gasp* live (!)…or not;
Heroes Reborn — I hope this one grows legs (and not in the evil grow-your-own-clone way), as I’m actually enjoying it again. Save the past, save the future isn’t as compelling as save the cheerleader, but they also haven’t introduced a really bad super villain yet (honestly, Erika is a bureaucratic joke);
The rest of the big shows that I watch are likely to be renewed. And if I had the power to save a show of the 8 that I actually watch, it would be Heroes Reborn, with The Player and Sleepy Hollow fighting it out for a distant second place.
Anyone who reads my blog or follows me on Twitter knows I watch a lot of TV. I love serialized story-telling, sue me. But within my watching schedule are the increasing number of superhero shows. There’s actual academic research out there about storylines and market share correlating with people’s level of optimism — i.e. when things are bleak, they often look to archetype-style storylines where good triumphs over evil, and one person can make a difference — but mostly they’re just plain fun. And while lots of people think they’re all the same, far from it.
Back in the early 80s, I watched reruns of Batman (bif! pow!), for the campy fun. Plus the anti-super-hero story, Greatest American Hero…a suit with special powers given by aliens no less, but the hero couldn’t fly straight, lost the manual, etc. Not exactly a man of steel. Oh, and he was a high school teacher with The Breakfast Club set in tow occasionally. About the only thing going for him was a hot girlfriend (Connie Selleca, rar!).
Later I graduated to other shows. Lois and Clark had potential when it stayed out of the romance realm, but wasn’t a mainstay. The Superman movies were decent (well, except for the Richard Pryor one, blech). Spiderman was awesome, but again, on the big screen.
Then Smallville changed everything. When it debuted, everybody said, “What? An origin story? Who wants that?”. Turns out, a LOT of people. Hugely popular, hugely successful. And while not every storyline was a home run, most were solid singles. Some, particularly in the last season, were stand-up triples. All leading over the 7 years to him becoming Superman. The origin story of how he learned to become Superman. Lots of other franchises were thinking big screen, but not all.
Arrow is into its fourth season, probably one of the natural successors to Smallville for many viewers. With the notable exception that it starts with the Arrow’s first day on the job, the rest of the show deals with how the Scoobie team builds, Arrow goes from “the Hood” to “Arrow” to “Green Arrow”, and if you want backstory, lots of flashbacks to Oliver Queen’s missing five years. Plus, no need to worry about paying the rent when you’re a billionaire. Yet, it is very dark. More “Dark Knight” than “Smallville” (which had a lot of sunlight). The physical mood is quite different, the dark seedy underbelly of life.
Gotham started last year, and I honestly thought it was off the rails. Another origin story, like Smallville, but the focus isn’t on Bruce Wayne becoming Batman but on Jim Gordon trying to clean up the streets of Gotham. It is very dark. Oddly lit. Sometimes it looks like a 70s style cop show more so than the present day. But here’s the problem. Batman emerges because he is needed…to use the mythology, maybe not the hero the city deserves, but the one it needs. Dark. Vigilante justice. Lone wolf fighting back because the criminals are in control. Someone who will break the law because it is the only way to save the city from anarchy. This means, over about 7 seasons, Jim Gordon has to consistently lose battles. The city has to continue to descend into darkness, and conditions have to continue to get worse in order for the Batman role to be born in Bruce Wayne’s heart. Seven years of seeing Gotham sink under the weight of criminals and villainy. This season is even dubbed “Rise of the Villains”. It is way darker than Arrow, and it can only get worse. Yet, for all of that, it’s really compelling watching Gordon. He is a great character to focus on. We’re even seeing other characters like the Riddler, Penguin, Falcone, etc. become the nutbar super villains that Batman must face later on. Love the show.
Marvel Agents of SHIELD is the campy, slightly poke-in-the-ribs superhero show. The clean-up crew deals with the fights that Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, and others can’t get to, the smaller battles. Fighting the humans who want to find alien technology and dominate Earth. Very few people die, lots of bullets get fired, and there is a lot of bright light areas. Hints of darkness, but rare to actually deal with the seedy underbelly. Again, a totally different mood. They had a related “Agent Carter” series, and it didn’t interest me much.
Last year, the Flash came on the scene, courtesy of Arrow’s spinoff/kickstart. Barry Allen, the fastest man alive, is young, idealistic, and haunted by his father’s false imprisonment for the murder of Barry’s mother. Bright, happy, but realistic. Barry has seen the darkness, it’s touched his life, but he doesn’t want to live there.
This season, they released Supergirl. Forget the darkness of Gotham and Arrow. Forget the human downside of fighting evil of SHIELD. Forget even the schoolboy seriousness of hiding his secret as Clarke became Superman on Smallville.
Supergirl is brightly lit, saccharine sweet, with rainbows and unicorn-positivity. Kara is thrilled to be a superhero. She can fly, she can help people, she wants to be “strong together”, working with a team of friends and her military agent sister to bring down the bad guys while maintaining a cover as a slightly ditsy assistant to the editor of a magazine. Sure, there are big baddies lurking in the shadows, including her evil aunt, but hey, let’s take a break to pick up a car with her boss in it and carry her off to do an interview atop a hill.
Clarke Kent was super serious for his young age; Oliver Queen has seen the darkness and now lives there, at whatever cost it takes to save his city; Jim Gordon is worn down by the corruption and Gotham’s descent, but he’s a soldier in the battle and will keep fighting on for his principles; Coulson and his team on SHIELD are amazed at the weird crap that keeps coming their way, but are willing to face it head on, hopefully with some wry humour to help them cope; the Flash has his little band of humans to help him take on everyday criminals turned meta-humans. Kara El, of the house of El? She’s a sunshine yellow superhero and pep rally cheerleader all rolled into one.
All very different shows, but the themes are consistent. Rebirth. New beginnings. Power, responsibility. Duty. Honour. Fighting the good fight. And, if possible, looking really handsome or beautiful doing it.
More of the shows are coming, and I’ll likely tune in for most of them.
As I mentioned in Part 1 (Cutting the cord – Part 1 – Internet), the core focus of the “cutting the cord” movement is on reducing costs and unbundling things to make them as cheap as possible. There’s a strong element of “freedom” in there, not unlike writers going the self-publishing route, people growing their own food, running businesses out of their house through the power of the internet, ordering glasses over the internet, etc. A lot of it is thumbing the nose at the established monopolies to say, “Well that may be how you THINK we should do it, but I can do it myself now, and I don’t need you.”
Of the five main areas (internet, TV, phone, cellular and hosting), by far the biggest focus is on cable TV. As I mentioned in the previous blog, I’m not talking about people thumbing their noses at TV because they think it is rotting people’s brains or they didn’t watch it to begin with, it is about how you consume TV and whether you get it from a monopolistic provider or if you get it some other way that is (likely) cheaper.
While the current form of the movement has gone legit, the pressure points have been around for years, often with lots of illegal solutions. People who had regular cable could pay for “descrambler” boxes that would give them pay-TV stations for free. Or dishes with special boxes that unlocked other channels too. Even, for a while, people splitting their cable feed where it entered the house so they could run it to multiple spots in the house without paying an “outlet fee” to the cable company (mostly eliminated now, but it did happen). Some people had US satellite dishes with U.S. post office boxes for billing, even if they were living elsewhere. Some people split their cable off the neighbour’s feed, and split the cost (or maybe didn’t even tell the neighbour!). While some of the people were just cheapskates, almost all of the solutions were double-edged — they were both illegal and a chance to thumb your nose at the established companies who said “there’s only one way to get the service, take it or leave it.”
In more recent times, there have been huge internet developments and people now have at least seven ways to consume TV differently that doesn’t require them to have a cable package subscription.
First and foremost, there is the still-illegal option of torrents. Putting aside the risk of malware, putting aside the bit of extra technical know-how to get it up and running, and putting aside the need to have a computer, it’s still illegal. You are downloading content that you don’t own and don’t have the rights to view. Often with peer-to-peer client sharing tools, which is the fancy way of saying that it downloads fast to you because it is downloading from hundreds of people with copies — and once you have a copy, your server usually starts sharing it too. You’re not only downloading and possessing illegal copies, you’re distributing too. Yikers. So what’s the upside? Massive availability of the latest shows. Movies in theatres, latest EPs of the hottest shows, no waiting for your theatre or TV or country to launch the show locally. If it’s out there, someone pirated it and made it available. Have I used torrents? Sure. Often when I missed an episode because my PVR didn’t tape. If I couldn’t find it online for watching through the cable offerings, it was out there on the net. But it’s not a long-term viable solution for daily TV consumption, at least not for most people. Too much overhead and tech, plus that whole (relatively minor) risk of going-to-jail-thing kind of turns them off. And no live sports. Ever. Usually not even taped sports.
Second, people turn to the easiest replacement for cable TV — services like VMedia (that some have somewhat incorrectly described as a Canadian TIVO equivalent, but I won’t quibble). It basically is the same as cable TV through cable or phone or dish, but it’s through the internet. There aren’t a lot of companies offering this service because, well, quite frankly it’s not a lot cheaper than regular TV costs. Add in the need for internet with a strong reliable connection, and some people are like, “Wait, I have to pay for VMedia AND for internet? Isn’t this supposed to SAVE me money?”. But the beauty of the VMedia-like service is that (a) it’s legal, (b) you get to keep your handy little TV guide and remote to page through current listings), (c) you get SPORTS with LIVE shows, and (d) you can add in a PVR option. It’s almost identical to your cable options, just works a bit different. A friend of mine has VMedia and it was a very strong contender for me when I was looking for a new option. Partly because it had the basic “menu” of shows to go through, a very easy transition both for me and my wife+son. But only marginally cheaper than what I had and, at the time, it had a very big LOSS — there was no easy PVR option. I was using my PVR for everything. If Castle was on Monday at 10:00, and I was watching TV, I wouldn’t watch it live. I’d wait until at least part-way through the hour and then watch it on PVR so I could skip commercials. Or I would watch something else and watch Castle later. I find it horrendously difficult watching live TV. One night I was watching, and there were 14 commercials in the middle of a special TV show. I really can’t take those long commercial break anymore — PVRing has ruined me for regular TV watching. Except sports, on that I seem to be okay, partly as the breaks aren’t usually for as long. So I ruled out VMedia last year for the lack of PVR option, and when I went to cut the cord this year, I re-considered it as an option as it now has a PVR option, but I was already committed to another (much cheaper) option.
Third, some people consider running something like Graboid. It is frequently described as being totally legal, that you can download all these shows for free, no risk. It’s totally untrue. Graboid is really just a torrent application that pulls from torrent sites and downloads the content to your computer. It isn’t legal, although it is slightly more legal than the raw torrent option as you don’t do any filesharing yourself and it usually doesn’t tell you where it’s pulling it from. A legal slight of hand, but not enough to make it legal. You can pay them $20 a month for better access (unlimited downloads, etc.), and some people think, “Well, I paid, so it’s all good.” No, you just paid them to let you download more stolen content than previously. It’s slicker than a torrent site, but it’s still not legal. I confess I fell for this one for awhile, they had a decent selection, and since I was only after TV shows, I didn’t notice anything strange. Then I happened to look at the movie offerings. And discovered that they had some of the movies that were STILL IN THEATRES. Here’s a red flag for you — if any site is showing you something that is still in theatres, particularly if it is just recently released, you are well into the illegal world. And downloading that stuff is a really good way to attract the interest of the companies being ripped off. I cancelled my Graboid account shortly thereafter.
Fourth, there is one option that exploits a big giant grey area with respect to online resources. If I go to ThePirateBay and download the latest episode of Castle, a law was probably broken somehow. My local providers signed contracts to have exclusive rights for set amounts of time and paid for the privilege so that they could make the money back selling advertising. Here I am, bypassing them entirely, accessing unlicensed content and DOWNLOADING it. That point is important. By contrast, if I go to CTV.CA and pull the same episode off their site and STREAM it from them, no issue. It’s freely available, but they show me advertising with it. Interestingly, I can go to ABC.COM or NBC.COM or CBS.COM and try to get this week’s shows from them, and I’ll be blocked — if you’re not in the U.S., you’re blocked entirely. Enter live streaming through a program like KODI. It used to be called XBMC video player, and while I had looked at it, it held little interest for me. Too techie in the config, not very user-friendly, and quite frankly, I couldn’t get it to work hardly at all. Plus I had other video players, so why bother?
Well, the program improved and became a new product altogether — Kodi. It is slick, it has decent menus, it has a reliable code base, lots of online user supports, etc. And what does it do besides play music or local videos or show local photos? It streams from the internet. Give it a URL of an internet stream, more or less, and it will stream just fine. And therein lies the grey area — streaming isn’t illegal. You didn’t make a copy of anything. You didn’t download anything. You didn’t share anything. You just watched what someone else put on the net. And you didn’t pay them anything for it, they don’t even know who you are. Most jurisdictions have no legal block for this activity. You can watch it because YOU didn’t do anything illegal and nobody is profiting from it through payments or advertising. So Kodi users around the world have set up free feeds. Streams of U.S. websites that are streaming it for free already. Some are streaming from copies on their own servers. Thousands of options, you don’t see hardly any of it. Because you don’t care. There’s nothing illegal about it for you. Sure, maybe the person who is streaming it might be doing something legal, illegal, or quasi-legal in whatever jurisdiction they are in, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are no Canadian / American / European / Australian laws that say there is anything wrong with watching something someone else put on the net. You don’t possess it at any time, you don’t own it at any time, you don’t share it at any time, you just watch. And while it does require a bit of setup to get it working on your computer, once it is up and running, everything is available. TV shows. Movies (although again, lots of pirated material in there that shouldn’t be, and easy enough to avoid). You want to see episodes of Castle? Yep, they’re available. Not just the latest episodes, all eight seasons, including the latest from this past week. It is way more manual than a standard cable package, but I PVRed everything already — this is like the entire internet is my PVR. Sure, it buffers occasionally (hence the faster internet package).
Now, you might think, “Well, that’s okay for the basic user, but I’m a heavy consumer, it wouldn’t work for me.” I know you might think that because I thought that too. I’m a much heavier than average user (not just physically, hehehe). I treat premiere season like some people treat fantasy football. I rate shows, I pick ones to watch, I review them, I add or dump some. And I raise the average hours watched per week considerably. I love serialized story telling. I love revisiting the same characters from the week before in a new story. I’m the same way with books — I prefer series whenever possible, and I’ll binge read as much as I will binge watch. NetFlix, Crave TV, Shomi, are all options for me, and I consumed them too. Up until I got Kodi. And this is the best part. You can try Kodi without doing ANYTHING on your existing cable package. Leave it exactly as is and try Kodi with no need to commit to ending anything or starting anything. It’s just a program to run on your computer. Like it? Keep it. Don’t like it? Don’t keep it. No risk at all.
I tried it over the summer, a few shows here and there. I basically wanted to evaluate it before I got to the fall premiere season. Turned out, I wasn’t watching my PVR anymore. Shows were still taping, but I was just watching them online instead. I weaned myself off the cable provider teat over two months. I have a laptop in my basement, so it was easy to add to the configuration. Kodi is like having Netflix, except with almost every show that has ever been shown, AND with current TV episodes available too, not just previous seasons. So my basement config was good to go.
The first-floor TV however was a different kettle of fish. It is generally used by my son and wife, neither of whom consume a lot of TV, occasionally NetFlix or regular cable offerings, and are not that interested in figuring out how to work tech solutions to get to their shows. If I cut the cable, they would lose their feeds upstairs too. Was there an easy option for them? It turns out there was. There are Android TV boxes that are sold, including a decent option by MyGica. Rather than having to attach a Windows PC to the TV, like the laptop in the basement, I can hook up the Android TV box, basically a little mini-computer running Android just like a tablet or phone but with full internet ports, USB ports, HDMI ports, etc. And oh look, there are NetFlix apps, a Kodi app, you can run the browser if you want to surf, etc. Is it as easy as the previous cable option? No, not quite, but they can do 90% of what they had been doing with two clicks. My wife tried it and said, “Okay, this will work.”
So, why doesn’t everyone go for the Kodi option? Four reasons:
It’s more technical. You have to add some configurations, play with software setup, etc.
You lose the live programming menu. I wasn’t using it much anyway, but if you often find yourself watching whatever happens to be on right then, without caring what you are watching, simple consumption browsing isn’t quite as easy.
Grey area doesn’t mean white. Some people still worry about the legality of it. If you are, simple solution until the law becomes clear — run a VPN for $5 a month that hides your IP address. It is actually a good security practice ANYWAY, even if you aren’t doing streaming, i.e. highly recommended by most security advisors to protect your home computer from hackers and malware.
Sports. Live sports is really hard to get, particularly if you want local stuff.
Most of the people who consume sports say this is the silver bullet for them…they can’t get their hockey, football, soccer, etc. I’m not a huge sports watcher to begin with, but occasionally we watch a hockey game or football game. Or golf. Or a lot when the Olympics are on. My son, age 6, really likes hockey now and wants to watch the Canadiens play. I thought this would kill us, which would lead to one of the extra options below (OTA), but I ended up with a free NHL Gamecentre subscription this season because I have a big Rogers cell package. It even comes with, you guessed it, an ANDROID app that runs on the MyGICA box. Instant hockey. Plus I found a bunch of feeds in Kodi called the SportsDevil add on that has amazing sports feeds. Half the time I end up watching those rather than the official feeds, just easier and sometimes more stable. With no regional blackouts either.
Hockey? All the NHL games are there. American football? There. Including some of the ones that are only available with super sports packages that cost you $200 a year. Soccer? Are you kidding me? They have every league around the world, teams you have never even heard of at levels you may not have heard of either. Baseball? MLB absolutely. After that, it starts to get a bit spotty. NASCAR, most golf, volleyball, etc. Few feeds likely for your local provincial teams (junior hockey, etc.) but they were hard to come by on regular cable too. A few weeks ago I was in Lindsay, and my brother-in-law wanted to watch the Eagles game. None of the local sports bars had the game, it was available on super sports packages only, and they didn’t subscribe. Yet we could have watched it on my laptop — I could get the feed, but I was trying to run it through the McDonald’s wifi, and it was buffering like crazy. I did a bit better at a local coffee shop, but still spotty. If we could have found a good hotspot, we were golden. I’ve been pretty happy with the options, nothing has been unavailable yet when I went looking. A bit more manual, harder to find than just clicking on a channel on your cable box, but doable.
Fifth, people decide to just ignore the current TV season. Instead, they subscribe for $10 a month to NetFlix, or less for Shomi or CraveTV, and get access to previous seasons of tons of TV shows and movies. All great options, but again, if you are like me, and you want the latest episodes, you need a stronger option.
Sixth, people go for “website” options. For this, you probably need the VPN option mentioned above. If you try to access ABC.COM, it will let you get all the way to the part where you play the video and then it will tell you the content is not available in your region. It knows you are connecting from Canada. So, no show for you. However, if you first connect to your VPN service ($5/mth), and it is based in the U.S. (most are), then the network website thinks YOU are in the U.S. too and plays the content just fine. If you can find it on a Cdn website, play it there; if not, go VPN, and watch it on the U.S. site. The downside is not everything is available, usually not for previous seasons, usually not for more than a few weeks, and often with ads with it. Plus you have to search multiple sites for multiple shows. It works, but it was too much work for me. Note that this is often no different than running Kodi — some of the feeds are the same source, it just tricks the computer into thinking you are already in the U.S., without the need for a VPN. However, the website option worked GREAT for recent election results — I watched the CBC website rather than the CBC stream through Kodi, just in the website browser (Android version upstairs, regular Firefox downstairs). The website feed was perfect. Which is likely what I’ll do for the Olympics too when it comes, just boot up the browser.
Seventh and finally, people go the OTA option. OTA stands for “over the air” and is basically reminiscent of the old rabbit ears setups people remember either from early TVs or setups they had at cottages, etc. While the fancy options now don’t look like simple rabbit ears, they work pretty much the same way. You wire it into the back of your TV or to a box and then to your TV, and the antenna pulls the feed from the air by tuning the receiver to whatever frequency the channel is being broadcast through the air. The options for this are pretty extensive, and the results are varied — depends on the variables.
First and foremost, this isn’t much of an option if you live in a rural area. Or rather, you may already be doing this, but you only get a channel or two. Large urban centres likely have multiple channels to choose from. Ottawa has up to about 15. All free over the air broadcasts, and since it is all digital now, pretty dang good quality signals to pull in. Not that snow you remember from the cottage, or attaching extra pieces of foil to extend the reception or trying to hold it at a specific angle. Second, it depends on if you live in a house or an apartment. If you are in a single level house, with a big antenna, you may not get great reception compared to the guy who lives in an apartment building downtown on the 20th floor with just a little antenna out the window and perfect sight lines. Third is the antenna itself. External / outdoor ones pull in better signals than internal / indoor ones, bigger is usually better than smaller, and the best yet is probably an external one hooked to a rotor that will let it turn the antenna for better reception depending on the channel you want.
Ottawa has two towers, one to the North-East, one to the South-West, and depending on which channel you want, you can get better reception pointing towards one of the two. You can get a better setup with a rotor so that if you choose Channel 1, and it is on the NE tower, the little machine tells the rotor to angle NE; if you choose Channel 2, and it’s on SW tower, it will rotate to the SW. Once it is set up, you never have to worry about it again, it moves on its own. Completely free. Completely legal. You end up with an antenna on your roof probably and some wires coming in, but the main constraint is the number of channels you get. Anywhere from 3 to 15 depending on where you live. I was considering doing this at home in order to get the local feeds, which would have been perfect for watching the news or the Olympics when it is on. Same with local hockey games. But with the GameCentre pack, plus Kodi, my wife has said they’re covered for now. I might do it in the future, and there are some cheap internal antenna solutions ($30) I could try first, before going to a full outdoor antenna with a rotor setup (about $350 for equipment and installation).
Why did I go Kodi? Because it wasn’t that complicated to set it up or run it once it was set up, the tutorials were dirt simple to follow, and oh yeah, it’s completely free. I’ll add a VPN soon for about $5 a month, which is pretty dang good considering I was paying Rogers $85 a month before. I had to shell out $200 for the MyGica box (there are cheaper options available, I went for faster processor, later version of Android, and more ports), and I added a wireless keyboard for the remote for $30 (purchased previously downstairs, but ended up not needing it down there). Bought a long HDMI cable too, $40. Overall, I’ll spend $300-$350 for the first year, compared to $1020 last year, and about $60 a year going forward.
Not too shabby a savings. For $700 saved in the first year, and $950 a year after that, I’ll put up with a bit more manual configuration and a couple of hours of tweaking the setup to be exactly what I want and use.
The seventh item on my vaguebooking list was “07. Seven new topics”. These are new “subject areas” that I want to write about on my blog.
Pop culture is likely one of them, although it might be more narrow than that, maybe “pop culture intersecting with the news”. I didn’t comment on Jian Ghomeshi or Bill Cosby’s news items when they hit, but I loved watching people post and take sides, often looking like internet trolls in comment forums except they were posting the same comments on their own social media feeds. My take is a bit different and is primarily about the law, and the court of public opinion vs. the court of justice or law. I may yet blog about it.
Equally, I love the law. So much so that I couldn’t become a lawyer. I’d like to take a subject area and blog about that, but I haven’t yet found my niche. It may very well harken back to my days at law school when I was working for the Ministry of Education in B.C. and focus on the law, schools, education, and children. I haven’t quite decided yet. But there’s an itch there that I’d like to scratch again.
In the realm of writing, I have three areas that are of interest to me. First and foremost is the changing nature of the business model of publishing. I’m very much in the world where “everyone must choose their own path”, and I may turn my attention again to the world of disrupted publishing. Second, I think there is a lot of general information out there about marketing of books in the modern age, but not a lot that gives a comprehensive list of “here’s everything you COULD do, choose wisely”. I started work on this at one time and would like to go back to it. Finally, I also think there is a ripe area for a different slant on books and publishing, and that’s measuring the performance of libraries. I did some research and even some preliminary writing about three years ago but never brought anything to fruition. I think libraries are going to come under increased fire in the digital age, and while they have a strong role to play, I don’t think many of them are telling the right story or using the right yardsticks. When they tell their story initially, they act as a community centre; when their funding is threatened, they claim critics are burning books and destroying literacy if the library goes the way of the dodo. The balance is off, and maybe I can find something I can contribute to the conversation.
In a similar vein, I’m wondering if I have something to say about charities. I feel that much of the rhetoric out there is a bit one-sided, or at times, diametrically-opposed two-sided. I know, for example, that there is not much out there giving people insights into different types of charities. I also have some questions for myself that I want answered on local basic human needs programming and the most effective means of contributing donor dollars.
Finally, I do reviews for books, movies, TV and music, or at least my website says I do. I’ve been a slacker-doodle for my reviews, and I want to get back into them. I am not yet ready to commit to exactly what the other six categories will look like when I’m done, but I know this one pretty well. So, I commit to:
