Television Idiot

I remember when I first heard about the writer's strike. I thought, "Okay, the writers and the studio owners (whoever management is) are going to fight over this for a week or two and that will be that.

The only thing I have really learned is that most series are only running part of a season ahead of their scripts. I didn't know that. I really don't know much about television.

When I was growing up, television was not complicated. There were two knobs, VHF and UHF¹, and you just turned them to one of four stations that the television received. Okay, sometimes you had to play with the rabbit ears, but it was a piece of cake to do. And there was no hunting for the remote, because there were no remotes. No tiny buttons, no fumbling in the dark, wondering if you are going to hit the volume up or the disable DVD button. Well, not sure what the button is, but it sure screws with watching a DVD.

Well, we just bought a new television. Actually, I am not sure we purchased a television, based on the several acronyms used on the box. We have no cable, no dish, just rabbit ears. Funny thing is that now, the over-the-air channels are crisper than before.

And I get more channels. Actually, one of the channels, 11.2 (WTOC Weather is like having a weather channel). I am a little confused that some of the channels are "split." For instance, CBS has three channels, sort of. And the weirdest thing is that broadcast television sometimes looks better than DVDs. It is all about resolution – broadcast television, for the digital stations, seem to be at 1080 DPI. DVDs are at 480 DPI.

I thought that Blue Ray or HD-DVD was a waste of money – who needs to see better than a normal DVD. Of course, with my logic, I would still be tuning into radio to listen to the president's fireside chats while pinning up my blouse on a clothesline. I hate that there is no clear leader of Blu-Ray verses HD DVD.² Before I got my new, er, television, I would not have wanted either technology. Now I don't like watching DVDs on my television. Son-of-a-bitch marketers.

We gave our television away – the old one – and that's why we had to buy a new one. The old television had a DVD/VCR player in it, and now that it is gone, we can't watch VCR videos. And I wonder if I will buy a new player. I mean, what is the point. We did have an old DVD player – was not used, actually. Sometimes I think me and hubbie are so weird – without cable/dish, giving away equipment before we replace it, etc. Completely weird.

Plus I learned in a year that normal televisions won't work without some type of converter – if you want to watch TV from an antenna. Our government is sort of pushing this – and they will be spending more than a billion dollars to help out people with converter boxes. Yeah. Not sure I understand this. Personally I am surprised that we are not giving out digital televisions to felons, people on welfare, and congress people.

Me, I am wondering if we can trade our new TV for the one we just gave away. Because the videos on the old TV seemed okay to me.

Television technology really confuses me. The best thing about books? I won't need a converter. I have books published hundreds of years ago, and you know what? I can still read them.

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¹They stand for very high frequency and ultra high frequency.
²Looks like Blu-Ray has a slight advantage right now. Blu-Ray is winning in Japan, Warner only makes Blu-Ray disks now, and several retailers are giving more shelf space to Blu-Ray.