Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

Well, what else can you do after Dr Who?

...is watching old McGyver, XEna and Hercules repeats on digital TV:

Since the introduction of more digital channels here in Australia I've noticed a number of things.

Firstly, the apparent "lack" of fresh material has meant that there are more repeats on each channel. This in itself is not a bad thing, but it has several implications.

• "First run" shows often get repeated later in the week in the early hours of the morning, just before the infomercials. That started a couple of years ago with LOST, which would get repeated on a Friday Morning after being shown on a Thursday night. If you have a recorder it means that you have a little more freedom in when you record episodes.
• Also, shows that used to run when I was young, have reappeared as early morning viewing. All of a sudden we can watch episodes of Wagon Train, Bewitched, The Lucy Show, McHales Navy, The Virginian (odd, because each episode is almost feature length). Shows like Thunderbirds which were already being looped as morning filler, stay, but what is annoying is that other potential old time shows, like Stingray, Cisco Kid, Superman,  Space Patrol and so on don't appear.
• Lastly some shows just seem to be on an endless daily loop, which is both good and bad if you want to watch those shows. Xena and Hercules are shown daily (except Sunday) between 3-5pm. That's going to be great for the show's popularity with the kids, but what if you want to watch it in sequence. With shows like I dream of Jeannie, or Cheers, that doesn't matter that much, because little changes between episodes. Imagine if LOST were a daily show and you'd never seen it before - how would you keep up?

Also, I've noticed two conflicting trends.

• The first is specialisation of chennels, What convinced me to get HD Set Top boxes to replace my old SD ones were channels like GEM, Eleven and 7Mate which are all HD. Gem specialises in films and certain types of shows, which are mostly "family" in nature. Eleven has a high SF content  (Futurama, Stargate, Trek) and these shows won't be seen on the other channels. 7Mate  has Xena and Hercules, Magnum PI, Baywatch, and so on - plenty of shows to perv on! ABC3 is a dedicated kids channel (which is why it shuts down at 9pm each night);
• The second is that the Commercial channels and non-Commercial ones (ABC and SBS) have become much more alike. Shows (mostly from Britain) that were on ABC years ago turn up on the commercial channels now (Pie in the Sky, Heartbreak, et cetera) and Top Gear, which used to be on SBS, is now on NBN and Go! (both the same broadcaster). The ABC on the other hand started airing shows that you would have expected on the commercial channels a few years back, like Breaking Bad, The Wire and so on.

A consequence of some of the above is that timeslots for shows seem to change a lot (and sometimes unannounced), with first run shows being shifted to later timeslots or other days with little fanfare. It seems that digital has brought up more choice, but that most of that choice is which rerun to watch! And good luck taping anything consistently.

I realised that I was recording too much and not watching it to keep up. I've let some shows, like the V remake go (in truth I don't care for any of the characters in it), and others, like Smallville and Fringe, I'll watch online.

I think I made the right choice getting the AKAI AD163X HD set top box. It saves to both Fat32 and NTSC formatted usb devices, and the format used is .ts which I'm familiar with (and can be played/edited on my PC). Not only that, but it will play the .mpg files recorded on the Strong SD set top box (but not vice versa). The EPG on it is pretty good and it's very easy to modify a recording schedule (it will also record digital radio as well) and there doesn't seem to be a limit on how many schedules one can have. 

This was pretty much what I wanted, something that I could record HD with and be transferable later on. The DVD player is a bonus. That only seems to lack a memory function (which starts you at the position you were at on a DVD when you cut the power). That being the case, I'll move this one into the lounge, move the SD set top box with the hard did=sk in it into my bedroom and keep the Strong STB as a spare.

Why am I bothering? Well for the last two years Kevin has been running something called MythTV on a spare PC hooked up to digital tuners. It's very good because it uses an online program database that in general is kept up to date. Using this system one could find a listing for say, House, and set up a recording schedule for it. But you can set it up so that any episodes of House on any channel is recorded, or any episodes on one channel - which meant that last minute changes to program didn't screw up one's recordings.

All that will be gone once they move out.

I could try setting up something like this myself, but as MythTV is still in the beta stage and runs under Linux, it would require a level of expertise that I don't quite have (but which Kevin does). That being the case, having multiple STBs that I can record from will probably cover most contingencies. Of late I haven't been watching a lot of recorded (or even live) TV, but when I do I prefer to watch it when I want to, rather than when it's broadcast.

Bloody typical. I had thought that I'd missed a lot of episodes of both HOUSE and FRINGE on Australian Free-to-Air TV. That's not exactly the case. Turns out that after the first episode of season 7 of House being shown on TEN, it went to FOX (pay TV)! And Fringe was dropped at the very last moment! What wankerss - grrrr!

I'm fairly sure I can watch watch house online, and maybe even Fringe as well. But it's still as annoying as anything (I like my TV shows)!!!