{"id":1470,"date":"2009-05-30T10:43:55","date_gmt":"2009-05-30T14:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2009-05-30T10:43:55","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T14:43:55","slug":"no-glee-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/30\/no-glee-here\/","title":{"rendered":"No GLEE Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the regular<\/em> TV season is over, I’m a little more attuned to potential new shows to watch, particularly during the summer.<\/p>\n

I really like Jane Lynch<\/a> a lot, in particular her turns on Two and Half Men<\/a> (one of my favorite comedies). So, when I saw a commercial for a new show called Glee<\/a>, and saw that Jane had a prominent role in it, I figured I’d give it a try.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I missed the pilot episode. I have bought a TV episode from Amazon Unbox in the past, so I get their weekly newsletters. This past week, they were offering a download of the Pilot episode of Glee, for free. Cool, the universe seemed to be looking out for me.<\/p>\n

I downloaded the 847MB file (wow, that has to be some pretty good definition, right?). A few days later, after a little bit of arm-twisting Lois into checking it out, I popped in my HDMI cable to the back of my laptop, fired up the TV, and was set to enjoy this new show.<\/p>\n

Even though I could hear the sound, the picture was blank. Sparing you the details, Amazon Unbox was clearly applying some DRM and HDMI cables respect DRM, so I was able to see the picture on my laptop, but not<\/strong> through the HDMI cable on the TV itself. I could have switched to component cables, but I was just annoyed, and I put something else on the TV.<\/p>\n

The very next day I saw someone mention that they just installed the new Hulu Desktop application<\/a>. I don’t watch Hulu all that often, but when I do, it’s quite a pleasant experience, so I decided to download the app, just to check it out.<\/p>\n

Imagine my surprise when it started playing Glee by default! I stopped it pretty quickly. Later that night I told Lois we would give it another try, using Hulu instead of Amazon Unbox. Hulu didn’t have any of the DRM problems (which were strange to begin with on a free download<\/strong>). So, the show fired right up, with excellent resolution as well.<\/p>\n

Sounds like a happy ending, no? No<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

After torturing<\/strong> ourselves for roughly 15 minutes (with no commercials), we simply couldn’t watch another second of this show. It’s possible that they redeem themselves later on. People magazine had a very positive review of the show. We’ll likely never find out. Both of us felt immensely relieved when I killed it.<\/p>\n

Since I had Hulu Desktop up, and had the HDMI cable plugged in, I ended up watching the very first episode of It Takes a Thief<\/a> (from 1968), which was one of my favorite childhood shows. Lois was bored out of her mind, but at least it was pleasant<\/em> boredom, as opposed to Glee, which was actively painful. I loved the show, if for the nostalgia alone. I’ll be watching more episodes, I’m sure, likely without Lois. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Glee was an experiment. The Pilot debuted now, but the rest of the series will be shown in the Fall. This was a way to build some excitement in advance. Oops…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the regular TV season is over, I’m a little more attuned to potential new shows to watch, particularly during the summer. I really like Jane Lynch a lot, in particular her turns on Two and Half Men (one of my favorite comedies). So, when I saw a commercial for a new show called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,2,20],"tags":[58,415,1370],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","category-3","category-2","category-tv","tag-amazoncom","tag-hulu","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}