I watch a lot of TV shows. Some TV shows are good, other are average, some are utter crap, but I’m not going to discuss the quality of television that is currently airing, that is for another post. I don’t watch my TV shows the way that typical people do. You would expect typical people to watch television shows, well on a television. Don’t sound obserd, does it? Well I am not like these people, I am not a typical person, for many reasons, but in particular for the way I obtain my television shows and watch them.

I don’t know whether or not it is true to assume, that more people are not watching television on their television. With computers being able to play video and being great to use as media centers, some people watch video content on there. Also with the huge growth of portable media players, there is another place that people are watching video content. People are watching video, not just on their television, but on other devices. I myself watch most, if not all, of my video content on my computer. But why do I watch it there? Why do I watch my TV shows on my computer, rather than on my television?

There are many reasons behind this. I do not live in America, the place where “all” television comes from. I do not get to see Heroes, Prison Break, or even Lost, when it gets released over there. No, if I want to see it on my television, I have to wait half a year to a year. But the thing is, I can access this stuff freely on the internet. It is so simple for me to just click a few buttons here and there and in no time, I have this television show, hot off the press, on my hard drive ready for me to watch.

Its not only the waiting times, it is also the quality. Over in America, they have had High Definition channels for quite some time now. Over here, nope, no HD channels till next year! So this pretty much means, by the time it does get over here, we get it in average standard definition. Back a couple of years ago, that would have been nothing we could do about it, but things have change, because there is something we can do about it. We can get these shows, in high resolution, 720p, off the internet. They may not want us to but we can do it! I don’t have to put up with second best because I can get better.

There are many other advantages that come with downloading your television shows. One of them is freedom. You aren’t being told when to watch it and where. You can watch it at anytime, as long as you have it with you. You can also watch it anywhere, your computer, your iPod, even your TV. You’ve had your HD television for a while now and you are watching standard definition on it? Well why don’t you play those 720p TV shows on it. Finally, something else you have to take advantage of the full capacity of your television.

There are many ways of obtaining these shows, some legal, and some questionable. If it is available in your country, or you have a way of accessing a store that has TV Show downloads, you can get the shows that way. The problem is, they generally either have ads, are overpriced, and if you save them to your hard drive, the most likely have some for of Digital Rights Management. Another way of obtaining them it through bittorrent, or any other p2p program, or other file sharing sites. This way you can always guarantee free, ad-less, DRM free, high quality video. This is alway the best video and far surpasses any other methods of obtaining television shows.

It is a game of cat and mouse. Networks want you to pay for their shows but they give us a crap deal. We can get it for free, and much better doing other means. If they want me to watch television shows on my television, I should get them the same time as the rest of the world, and in the same quality. I understand that there are issues and it is not necessarily the networks fault that they cannot provide this, but the least they could do is give it to me online to download, legally and without overpricing it and giving me worse quality than I can get illegally. If you wanna beat it, you have to do just as good, if not one up from what is already available to me. I am going to get my television shows in a way convenient to me by all means necessary.

Ten days ago, I posted complaining about VLC and one of the point mentioned was the bad quality of the video, more specifically, HD video.

I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC.

I now retract hat I have said. The reason the quality didn’t look as good as it did in Quicktime is due to the fact that Quicktime opens the video in its original size whereas VLC Player scales the video down so all the controls and everything fits on the screen.

Quicktime makes the player adjust to the size of the video, in this case, HD Diggnation is 720p (1280×720). The resolution of my monitor is 1280×800 and what ends up happening is the player controls get chopped off. For me to control it, I have to move the player so the topbar goes offscreen. If I want to exit the video, I have to then drag it down. I can always put it in fullscreen and not worry about it but sometimes I want to do other things or want to be notified of events in the taskbar.

VLC doesn’t let it happen. It scales the video down so the player controls fit on the screen. The disadvantage is that you get loss of quality and a little pixelation due to it scaling the video down. This thing was, I didn’t realize thing until I accidentally put it into fullscreen and found that the quality was perfect and the pixelation gone. This is great, but I am a little disappointed in it. VLC didn’t tell me that it had scaled it down so everything would fit on the screen. When opening a video that is bigger than the real estate it has to work with, it should either prompt me and ask what to do, scale down or go fullscreen or otherwise alert me on what it is doing. Another thing is that 1:1 original size isn’t the original size, it has scaled it down and hasn’t told me. 1:1 original should mean that, the original size, and it should do that regardless of the space or at least give some sort of message.

I don’t think VLC is perfect but I have to admit, it’s pretty darn close. I suppose I am just a fussy person that wants things perfect and other people wouldn’t have issues with it. I will give VLC the award for best alternative player, especially for Quicktime, I have given up on that.

Today is the day Diggnation come out for members. Usually on this day, I would download Xvid Diggnation from a mirror. Unfortunately the mirror I use isn’t mirroring this week and I cannot find an alternative so I can get Diggnation early. This makes me uneasy because I am missing out and it has also ruined my Saturday Schedule.

Generally how it goes is on Saturday, I download Diggnation early in Xvid format to watch at night time. Then the next day, Sunday, I download the Quicktime HD H.264 and watch it at night then again too. This has been my weekend schedule for the past… 3 weeks now (I think) and I do not like my schedule being disrupted.

I am also thinking about downloading Diggnation a 3rd time each week, once in iTunes so I can put it on my iPod Classic when I get it. I’m not sure if it is worth it though. I wish I could just throw the Quicktime HD or Xvid onto it but iPods don’t support it. I vote for DivX/XviD support in Apple products!!!

Now that Diggnation is released to members a day earlier and released to everyone a day after that, i can’t decided whether to download it on the Saturday using a mirror or the Sunday officially. I generally watch Diggnation on a Sunday night, its like my end of week routine. Diggnation is a nice way to end the week.

Saturday is one of the busiest days as that is the release of 2 podcasts, 2 TV Shows and now Diggnation. That is 2 hours of podcasts, 2 hours of television shows and now an hour of Diggnation. 5 hours of media compared to the now empty Sunday. Should I continue my routine and watch it on Sunday?

Another thing is the HD issue. First off, Quicktime videos don’t like playing of my laptop hard drive, which HD Diggnation plays in, secondly the videos are 600mb per episode, I barely have enough hard disk space at the moment let alone enough to support a 600mb diggnation episode each week. It it worth downloading it in HD. I’m pretty satisfied with the Xvid version that isn’t in HD to be honest.

Comments would be appreciated on this important issue. I can’t decide what to do!