I’m not watching a movie tonight. I saw Amadeus: The Director’s Cut last night free via Amazon Prime. It was three hours, so tonight I’m viewing just a slide show of photos — 3 seconds apiece. (Hey, I just looked up and saw the teacher all four of my children had for second grade, Mrs. Radcliffe.)
My experience with director’s cuts by the way is that they are a good demonstration of why films have editors.
The $99 Apple TV got a software update today. Much to my surprise they’ve added Major League Baseball and the NBA. I don’t care about the latter, but I am interested in the baseball package — $99 for the whole season, most games of all 30 teams, except for national and regional blackouts. Alas, that means my favorites the regional Colorado Rockies won’t be included, but the World Champion Giants will. The Apple TV Netflix package is pretty nice, too.
All this streaming, of course, is to one of my TVs — I don’t watch too many movies or ballgames on the computer or iPhone, though I have. There are several ways you can stream, if you’re not already. Roger Ebert gives it a pretty good run down for movies in Stream a little stream with me, posted on his blog 90 minutes ago or so.
Ebert has a nice rant about Facebook too, and they’re always fun.
The slide show continues, Gene Vincent singing “Be Bop a Lula” in the background, and lots and lots of Sweeties in large screen glory.
I agree with pretty much everything Roger Ebert said in his post. I not only lack cable (and save $60 or so per month), I don’t have room for a TV where I live. I do watch TV, though (plus lots of movies) on my computer. (I have a nice monitor and head phones.) I get much of my TV programming for free from Hulu or from the actual network sites. I like that I have to be so intentional about selecting a program and sitting down to watch it. It keeps me from channel surfing and watching old reruns, etc.
I do miss the premium channels (Showtime and HBO), but, hopefully, they will catch on soon and realize they are missing a huge cash audience. (I would gladly pay them a fair monthly fee–I just don’t want to have to pay for 400 other “expanded basic” channels I don’t want. (Buying their shows one episode at a time for a whole season is cost prohibitive, and Netflix never has the current season on DVD or streaming.)
Meanwhile, I get most of my movies from Netflix, and I am quite happy with them–it’s a good value. I can stream all the movie I want. Unfortunately, some of the ones I want aren’t available through streaming yet, but I expect them to start improving on that score soon, since the competition is growing. I also get about one DVD a week in the mail. (I can have one out at a time on my plan, but with my rural address, and being away from home several days a week, I can only manage about one a week.)
One thing they could improve on, though (IMHO) is that I would really like the option of captions on movies I stream. Hulu has it (usually), DVDs have it, but Netflix streaming doesn’t have it, and I like the captions. I’m always amazed by how many lines I miss or can’t understand when I can see them on the screen. Unlike many folks, I do not find the captions distracting–unless they are out of sync that is.