Stuff & TV
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We'll the past few days have been odd for me. I've not been on LJ, which might or might not be good. Instead I've been going through Harry Potter C2's on fanfiction.net and reading fic there. I love LJ and the skill of my newer fandom's but there are times when I need to step back and read the old favorites like Faith and Life, as Experienced Through Your Fingers. I know ff.net has a crappy rep, but there are some fantastic fics stored there and because it bridges all fandoms and is so easy to use, there's such a varetiy.
I've also been converting my avi's into mp4's and I gotta tell you, I missed having so much free space on my harddrive. I've converted all my Doctor Who, Dresden, the various fanvids, movies, and pr0n clips. I'm currently done with the first season of SGA, and part way through season two. Just through that I've reclaimed 10GB of freespace because a 350MB file suddenly becomes 100MB or less. The quality isn't the same with the video, but that's fine by me. The audio is pretty much the same and the fact that I can concolidate everything in iTunes is brilliant as well.
One thing I have noted is that when I buy eps from the iTunes store, the quality is patchy at best, but converted files are seemless in playback. Maybe the issue is with me using a router or something, but I'm guessing not. All it's doing is making me wonder why I bother to spend cash on the Daily Show when grabbing via a torrent is free and better quality. I know piracy is wrong and stealing and a crime, but it just doesn't seem fair that I pay for crappy stuff but the free stuff is excellent.
I'm not a normal TV watching person, my schedule's erratic at best and the only thing I know for sure is that my internet connection is fast all the time, while my TV does have the DVR function, there are times when I don't want to wake the rest of my household up so I can watch House or when I'm in the mood for a crappy SciFi Channel movie, someone else is in the middle of Law & Order or Gilmore Girls.
If I can't get my eps online then I'll lose interest in the show or I'll have to wait for re-runs which never show the eps I missed because I needed overtime or needed to run out to the grosery store. But to pay or to go through the show's official website and get video that freezes and audio that skips only serves to make me angry and alienates me, a normally loyal veiwer. It's like they're saying, that by not carving out blocks of my schedule for them, I'm not good enough to watch the show.
Oft times I do spend my cash on the DVD's or the soundtracks, I do want to support the shows I watch and I understand advertising and how ratings work. But if they can't make the effort to meet me halfway and give me the quality I'm paying for or better yet give me the ads, then why should I bother?
I understand that it might be because of this attitude that SG1 is ending and SGA might be under the gun, but damnit, I can't sit down and watch on Friday nights because I work in retail and that's my busiest night. And Saturdays are just as bad if not worse. I try, but sometimes it's not until Tuesday or Wendsday that I get a chance to sit down and watch anything.
Why can't they make TV conform to my needs?
Gah, now I'm all angry.