January 16, 2005

Since Sliced Bread

In the last year or so, I have read a great deal about the Apple iPod being the single most important innovation in this century. Despite my personal love for this great device and its undeniable ubiquitousness in the realm of personal digital music, I must venture that I have found something else to be the next best thing since sliced bread.

Although the iPod has completely revolutionized my life since I purchased it nearly two years ago and it certainly beats my Sony MiniDisc player and the DiscMan before it, I think that something even more revolutionary in consumer electronics has been the advent of television shows on DVD. I'm serious. Whoever came up with this idea is a genius. TV on DVD is actually better than the real thing; that is something DVD movies will never be able to claim! With television shows on DVD, I can watch as many as I want in a single sitting, without the harassment of idiotic, mindnumbing commercials and unbearable waiting periods composed of weeks. Furthermore, the picture is clearer, the sound is crisper, and I don't have to spend thousands of dollars for a HD Plasma Screen and digital cable. And did I mention how there are no stupid commercials to distract you from the plotline and drive you mad with inaneness?

Moreover, the availability of television shows on DVD fill a void in the entertainment spectrum that normal television and DVD movies simply could not. Sometimes you have just enough time to watch a television length program (i.e., 0.5 - 1 hour) but don't want to risk watching the garbage that is probably on live television when you have a moment to spare, for fear it might leave you unsatiated, angry, and bitter (also known as my natural state). TV on DVD allows you to watch the tried and true episodes of yonder year without compromising on either entertainment value or time.

I suppose the only question that remains is one of economics. For a long time, I too scoffed at the idea of television on DVD, given the availability of episodes from other sources. But speaking from personal experience, watching TV on a computer screen is really not the same, especially when you have a perfectly good flatscreen television that cost a lot of money hooked up to a stereo system that also cost a lot of money. This is not to even mention the amount of effort and time required to acquire episodes for a given show in a given season. TV on DVD, which is priced at anywhere between $30 and $60 for a season (except for The X-Files, damn bastards), is a price I'm completely willing to pay to save myself the time of acquisition.

To make the case even more final for TV on DVD, just think about this: cable TV with no premium channels usually costs about $40 a month, which is essentially the cost of one season of a TV show. And, realistically, besides the two or three good TV shows in any given season, the only thing cable good for is sporting events; I don't believe in reality TV and have never watched an episode of The Apprentice, Survivor, or even Real World - it just reminds me how stupid the average person is. Think about that; one month of cable TV and you could have an entire season of a good show, as opposed to constant garbage. And as for the sporting events, those can always be caught at a bar. With almost all good TV shows now available on DVD, the real question is: why are you paying your cable bill every month?