My TV addictions

Since it's a slow news day, I decided to chit-chat a bit today.

One of our DVD players is dying. It just won't read some DVDs. At first I thought, "Okay, I'll just buy a Blu-ray player since it has won the HD format war." Then yesterday I decided to just buy another cheap player to keep me going for a year or so until Blu-ray prices drop. This morning I read this:

Thinking Blu-ray? Don't rush

You may be itching to buy a Blu-ray DVD player now that the format has won the high-definition disc standard war.

But you may want to hold off a bit before scratching that itch. By waiting a few months, you may save yourself some irritation - and a few bucks to boot.

Blu-ray players are theoretically ideal complements to high-definition televisions because they can play movies formatted to take full advantage of an HD display. But until recently, a battle raged between two competing formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. The competition limited sales, in part because consumers worried about getting stuck with an obsolete machine.

That fear went away last month after Toshiba, HD DVD's main backer, pulled the plug on the format, announcing it would no longer make new HD DVD players.

But Toshiba's decision only took away one of the reasons consumers might want to hold off on buying a Blu-ray player. Another reason to hold off is price. The least expensive new model available on Amazon.com costs about $360.

That's significantly cheaper than a comparable player would have cost a year ago. But industry figures and analysts predict prices will fall by as much as $100 by the holiday season. Prices should continue to drop in the months and years after that as the parts that make up the players become less expensive and more manufacturers start to make them.

Already, the number of different Blu-ray player models is expected to double to 26 in coming months, potentially offering consumers a better range of prices and features choices.

Still another reason not to rush to buy a player is that only about 500 movies are now available on Blu-ray, compared with thousands on standard DVD. Unless you are looking for a recent hit or a popular classic, you probably aren't going to find it on Blu-ray.

Again, that's changing. Now that all the major studios are on board with Blu-ray, the number of film titles available should grow steadily. But the longer you wait, the more movies you'll have to choose from.

Waiting could also save you some operating headaches - and ensure that your player is future-proof. Few DVD buyers in recent years have had to worry about updating their firmware - the embedded software program that controls how the device functions. Yet many owners of Blu-ray players have found that some movies won't play if they don't update their firmware.

Updating can be a complicated process of downloading files from the Internet and potentially burning them to a CD. Amazon devotes an entire page to tips on how to do it. Many consumers may not want to bother - and probably won't need to as the technology matures.

Likewise, DVD owners accustomed to popping in a movie and watching it right away - or at least as soon as they bypass all the trailers - may be in for an unpleasant surprise with a new Blu-ray player. Many take 30 seconds or more before they start playing, a noticeable lag. As the technology improves, load times should get faster.

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Still, some might find it hard to resist buying a Blu-ray player now. It does, after all, offer stunning pictures on your TV. But there is a cheaper, reasonable alternative.

You'll find a number of DVD players on the market now that can "upscale" a standard DVD movie to look good on a full-HD screen. The picture doesn't look pixilated and the colors look fairly sharp. You can buy a good upscaling DVD player for less than $100 - and it will play any DVD on the market.

Is it perfect? No. Does it give you the full HD experience? No. The picture provided by a Blu-ray movie is sharper and more vivid, and the sound is much fuller.

But few folks are going to be doing side-by-side comparisons. And unless you are watching a movie on a large screen - say, 50-inches or larger - from a short distance - say, eight feet or less - you may not notice much of a difference.

What you will notice is a good-looking picture on your HD screen. And for now, that's probably good enough.

So I'm going to buy a $100 player and wait for Blu-ray to get cheaper and iron out its wrinkles.

One of the few TV network shows that I've gotten hooked on is Jericho. I actually hated it at first and almost gave up on it but, halfway through the first season, (which we have been watching on DVD) it either got better or I got attached to the characters which can easily happen with soaps even if they are bad. The characters become like family members and you can't wait to see what happens to them. Now, I read this this morning:

CBS cancels "Jericho" despite fan fervor

CBS has nuked "Jericho," the low-rated post-Armageddon drama that was briefly brought back from the dead by fan demand.

The network will air the season finale on Tuesday, one of two that was shot in the event either of a renewal or cancellation.

"The March 25th episode of Jericho will be the series finale," CBS said in a statement. "Without question, there are passionate viewers watching this program; we simply wish there were more. We thank an engaged and spirited fan base for keeping the show alive this long, and an outstanding team of producers, cast and crew that went through creative hoops to deliver a compelling, high quality second season. We have no regrets bringing the show back for a second try. We listened to our viewers, gave the series an opportunity to grow, and the producers put a great story on the screen. We're proud of everyone's efforts."

After the first season concluded with an abrupt cut to black, fans famously inundated CBS with tens of thousands of pounds of peanuts -- playing off a line of dialogue in the finale -- to urge the network to continue the show.

For the seven-episode second season, producers shot two endings -- one that leaves viewers in suspense for a third round, another that is more conclusive.

The ending chosen by CBS will wrap up the final season's storyline, where the nuclear war survivors of a Kansas town struggled under a violent occupation by a government contractor.

The finale doesn't entirely slam the door on the series, but is notably different from the cliffhanger version, sources said. The ending also doesn't entirely preclude the possibility of "Jericho" finding a second life on cable. The high cost of the production, however, will likely prevent a continuation of the show.

Despite the erosion of broadcast ratings in recent years, the massive protest that saved "Jericho" last year has been called the largest fan effort ever to try and halt a network cancellation of a series.

The outcry put CBS in a tough position, whether to renew a show that has below-the-line ratings, yet unprecedented fan support. "Jericho" also performed well online on CBS.com and in iTunes downloads.

Unfortunately for the network and fans, the second season's Nielsen ratings were even lower than the first. Latest weekly primetime ratings from Nielsen indicated the drama averaged just 6.8 million viewers so far this season.

"'Jericho' is unique because the fans saved it -- watching it on the Internet and streaming and iTunes downloads, all those things that are not being counted," said executive producer Carol Barbee in a recent interview. "That's what 'Jericho' will be known for."

Actually, I'm kind of relieved because I hate getting hooked on network shows. They always end up annoying me - like Law & Order which I loved so much that I got a satellite specially to watch it when we moved to the farm 5 years ago. A few weeks after we got the satellite, it became obvious that L&O was no longer watchable. Sometime in the few months that we had not watched it, it had succumbed to Bush Derangement Syndrome. I hate network TV. Grrr!

That hasn't happened with my other current network addiction, Medium - yet. BTW Tonight's Medium is a brand new episode which is annoying since last week's story has not yet been resolved. Grrr!

The other show that I have gotten hooked on is Torchwood which is shown on the BBC channel. I upgraded my satellite package just so I could get it only to realize, after two epsiodes, that it was crap. Problem is it's entertaining crap. The other problem is that the damned lefty hippy potheads running BBC can't seem to keep their correct schedules and showed two episodes out of order - part two before part one of a two-part story. Grrr!

The same thing happens regularly with my other addictions, Mystery and Masterpiece Theater on PBS.

BTW Masterpiece Theater is currently airing a Jane Austen tribute which has been wonderful so far - especially Jane Austen Regrets, a fictional biography of Austen, which was ten times better than Becoming Jane.

Jane Austen Regrets portrays Jane Austen in her 40s not long before her early death. Like Becoming Jane, it deals with her disappointments in love but shows a much "naughtier" Miss Austen who decided against marriage because it would have interfered with her writing. She's witty and often shocks people. She drinks too much wine and flirts with men half her age. It's the way I have always imagined Austen was - a hundred years ahead of her time (or maybe hundreds of years behind her time because she would have gotten on very well with Chaucer and Shakespeare who also saw the human race exactly for what it is.)