Broadband

My first year living here in Ottawa we didn't have cable. We got 2 channels that came in clear, Global and the Aboriginal Channel. We would sometimes get a very fuzzy CTV, but that's it. Needless to say we didn't spend a whole lot of time watching TV. Once I moved into my new apartment, not only did we get cable, but we got some specialty channels and a whole lot more. So to make up for first year, I now watch a ton of TV.

For the sake of this blog, I did take the broadband challenge and attempted to go a while without watching TV and just watching everything on the Internet instead. I won't lie, I didn't go a full week. Plus if I don't watch Lost when it first airs, bad things happen. But I gave it a pretty good shot and here are my thoughts on everything.

My favourite way of watching things online is using torrents, or P2P. Sure it's illegal, but damn does it ever work well. You do have to wait a little while after a show airs for that episode to appear online, but it's never more than a day at the very most. Then you just download it (which depending on the length of the show usually never takes too long) and watch it on your computer, completely commercial free. It's the exact same quality it was on TV, only someone was kind enough to edit all of the commercials out of it.

The only real downside of torrents is the little length of time you have to wait to get a new episode of something. Other than that, it's a great way to watch your shows online. Another thing about them I really like is that if you're really behind on a show, or want to start from the very beginning of one, torrents allow you to download complete seasons of shows. I find with many official network sites such as CTV or ABC, you can only watch the last few episodes of something and they very rarely allow you to watch the older episodes. Another huge advantage of using torrents.

If you are looking for a more immediate fix than the streming video sites work well too. Official network sites usually allow you to watch some of their shows on their website. Once they load up, you have to sit through usually just one advertisement (that you can't skip, try as hard as you might) before the show starts. However many of them (CTV included) divide each episode into clips instead of playing the whole thing straight through. Therefore you have to load each clip up to see the entire episode. Of course each time you load a new clip, there is that unskippable ad at the start.

The problem here is that it's often the exact same ad before each clip. So by the end of your episode, you hate that commercial. Not a very good strategy on the part of the advertisers. Sometimes the commercials do change which helps things. It's still shorter than having regular commercial breaks if you were watching these shows on TV.

The ads around the episode usually change as well, unless their is one specific sponsor, then it will be the same static image the entire time. Often you're so caught up in the show that you don't even notice these ads really. So I can't say they are particularily effective.

Overall there is a lot less exposure to advertising when you watch shows online but I'm sure that will change very soon. That one unskippable ad will turn into 3, the show will be interupted more frequently, etc. They'll think of other ways to get the messages out there I'm sure. In the meantime I will continue to watch TV on an actual television. The convenience is worth having to sit through more ads. Plus how else can I watch my Family Feud?!