This week, I had things to do Monday and Thursday night so I missed Heroes and The Office. I thought, no problem, I’ll just watch them online at nbc.com. I did that regularly last season with Heroes. Oh yeah, I have no VCR or DVR. And I’ve figured out it makes no sense to get one until I get a new TV and possibly commit to cable. And I’m not ready for that sort of outlay.
Well, their new player is unwatchable for me. Stop, start, stop, start, and so on. What the hell? Why did they mess up something that worked great before? I don’t mind the commercials. I figure it’s the price I pay for not having Tivo or my own recording device. But I do mind it being unwatchable.
Then I remembered I had TVShows. It’s an app that automatically downloads tv shows for you. You just subscribe to the ones you want, it automatically grabs the new episodes as they come out and downloads them for you via bittorrent. It kind of takes forever, which is the nature of bittorrent, but I cranked it up last night, went to bed, and woke up to the missed eps of Heroes and The Office. Yay!
Oh yeah, this is a Mac OS X app. There is probably something similar for Windows, but I just don’t care.