Shuroki Online

I am a big fan of television. I watch a lot of it, and have several devices in my home to make watching TV better.. or at least more convenient. This article is a listing, summary, and mini-review of my favorite shows that are on right now (or are soon to return). There are dozens of shows that are off the air that I love and some that are off air but might come back, but I wanted this list to contain only the shows that are running new episodes so that you can tune in and enjoy them yourself!

I was at a loss as to categorizing the list so that it is easier to navigate. I came up with a couple schemes but as I started doing a brain dump of shows they naturally fell into their own categories based on how to view them: network/free TV, basic cable/satellite, premium cable/satellite, foreign shows, and Internet only.

I will likely write more in-depth articles expanding on some of these shows and topics below, and in fact I have already written about a couple of them. As these get written, I’ll come back and link them in here for easy reference.

Before I get too much further, I’ll list out the shows I’m going to write about so that you know if it’s worth the bother to read on from here:

Network / Broadcast Television:
Lost
Arrested Development
The Office
Medium
Scrubs
Family Guy
Big Brother
The Amazing Race

Basic Cable / Satellite:
Battlestar Galactica
Reno 911!
Chappell’s Show
South Park
Dinner For Five
Myth Busters
Drawn Together

Premium/Pay Cable/Satellite:
The Sopranos
Entourage
Deadwood
Carnivale

Foreign (well, ok I might as well just say BBC):
Doctor Who
The Office
Coupling

Internet only:
Red Vs. Blue
The.Scene
the.broken / Systm
Pure Pwnage
Digital Ground Zero
Hack TV

My Setup

As I said at the top, I have a lot of devices to make watching TV better. Here’s a quick rundown of the stuff I use before getting into the actual shows themselves.

The center piece of any TV watching is, well, the TV. My primary viewing platform is a Mitsubishi 65″” HDTV rear-projection set. It’s got three different s-video inputs, two composite inputs and a mix of other ins and outs to handle just about any device you want to connect to it. The only downside of the model I have is that there is no HD receiver built in, so you have to rely on your cable or satellite box to get high def content into it.

This shouldn’t be a problem, but I have an extreme addiction to my Tivo which can’t accept or record high-def programming. For this reason, I don’t currently subscribe to any high def feeds and am under-utilizing the capabilities of the TVs beautiful screen. Hopefully soon Tivo will get off the pot and release their high-def stand alone unit.

I recently moved to DirecTV from cable and I almost bought the DirecTivo which will record two HD and two regular channels simultaneously – yep, that’s recording up to four programs on different channels at the same time. The problem is that DirecTV just launched a new satellite which is incompatible with that unit, so in a couple years it probably won’t be usable and they haven’t released a strategy of what to do about it. I didn’t feel like dropping $1,000 on a box that might be unusable a year or two down the road, so I just have to wait to get into the world of high def.

In the bedroom I have a 28″” Philips TV with another Tivo for recording the shows that we can’t watch in the living room, where the kids are coming in and out.. Tony Soprano and the South Park kids just aren’t conducive to family harmony and good behavior in school )

Both of the Tivo’s allow me to transfer recordings to the computer so that I can burn them on DVD, or transfer them to the laptop for watching away from home. Also, the Tivos can transfer shows to each other, so if you recorded something in the bedroom, but want to watch it on the big screen, you can.

I recently bought a Samsung progressive scan DVD recorder cabable of recording shows from the Tivo, or live TV, or digital camcorder with a DV input. I’ve done some video camera recording and dumped a few shows from the Tivo and can’t be happier with this device! It is so much easier than dumping movies to the computer, then transcoding and burning on DVD. The downside is that it won’t create fancy menus and stuff, but that isn’t needed for most movies or shows, and the computer is always standing by on the network in case I need to do any of that.

The last piece of must-have for me is broadband Internet which I’m now receiving through DSL. It’s a must have in general, because I’m a tech geek, but specifically it’s needed to download some shows not otherwise available for TV watching.

I’ve run DSL and cable modems in several homes in three different states. I recently moved into a new home and the cable company proved to be a big hassle to get programming and Internet working, so I ended up going with DirecTV and DSL through Verizon. Running the numbers I’ll actually be saving $10 bucks a month and get more channels than cable, so I think it will work out just fine.

As a quick aside, DSL is not quite as fast downloading as cable (3 Mbps as opossed to Cox’s advertised 4 Mbps basic service) but it’s certainly fast enough to keep everybody surfing the net and downloading video files – and it doesn’t have the slow-downs at peak surfing times like some neighborhoods do with their cable broadband service. Also, with Verizon rolling out fiber to the home, hopefully I’ll be able to bump up to a 10 Mbps FIOS service in the near future.

I’ve rambled quite a bit longer than I had expected, so I’m going to wrap part one. Part two will contain descriptions and mini-reviews of the actual shows. I plan on posting part two no later than next Friday.

Until then.. happy viewing!

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