4 posts tagged “tv dvd”

Note: This is the sixth in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.

I watched this year.

I've been an avid TV watcher for many years now, but we set aside the idea of watching movies for much of our marriage just for lack of time and money and my health.  This year, we did all of those things.

The end of last TV season, I was enamored with Heroes and Lost and several other shows.  This had me continuing to read TV news through the summer to decide what shows I was most interested in watching for the new fall TV season (2007-2008).  Even though not every show I started with was fabulous, I found some new loves.  Unfortunately, the writer's strike took a toll on my enjoyment, and some shows are being considered as cancelled by default because of that.  My very favorite new show of the year was Journeyman.  Heroes and Bones were probably my favorite returning ones, even though there were storylines on Heroes that just didn't thrill me.

We spent a lot of time watching Netflix movies in the evenings this year.  We were just on the one at a time plan, but we tried to take as much advantage of it as we could by watching it the same day it came and stuff like that.  This let us see a nice combo of movies and TV series.

We received 71 dvds from Netflix, an average of 6 per month.  27 of those were series disks, part of a TV series (like the 3 seasons of the 4400 and 2 1/2 seasons of Babylon 5 so far) or miniseries (in the case of Into the West).  I put 52 movies into Vox, with the difference being just that some dvds were part of a series.

This year was also a big year for TV on DVD.  In addition to the aforementioned Netflix series we got, we also purchased a nice pile.  At the beginning of the year, we owned 3 seasons of TV on DVD.  Now, we own 10 (talked about in September) + 12 more for a total of 22 seasons!  We got the rest of Buffy and Angel on sale at various times and E just received the 4 seasons of Futurama.  Obviously, we haven't watched all of those (so they aren't added to Vox), but it's a great thing to slowly rewatch and enjoy commentaries and other specials.

One thing that's been fun in the last year was finding the local Hollywood Video Outlet, where you can get a really good deal on previously viewed movies.  I've been able to get some of my favorites to own, like Paycheck and Poseidon (big screen one with Josh Lucas AND the TV movie with Adam Baldwin) among others.  This is a fun way to get to rewatch my favs, especially when there isn't great things to see on TV.

And then we saw movies in the theater - 4 in the summer and then the Golden Compass recently.  It's fun to be able to sit through a movie without my body hurting so much, that's what slowed us down a lot before.

My favorite TV on DVD series that I watched this year was The 4400, season 3.  The most surprising good movie I saw in the theater was Transformers.  And my favorite out of the movies I rewatched on TV this year was A Knight's Tale.

Back in March, there was a QotD about TV shows on DVD, and I answered about the 3 seasons of shows that I owned so far.  I got some recommendations in the comments, and I started watching sales at my fav stores for more sets I was wishing for.

We've found that now that we are cooking more, we enjoy sitting down to watching a Tv episode with our meals.  Since we are only on the 1 dvd at a time through netflix deal, and our TiVo is upstairs so we don't watch anything new, the TV series that we own are the things we watch when we don't have a netflix movie/show to watch.

Right now, we own quite a few more than we did in March (3 vs 10 seasons!):

• 3 season of Roswell
• 2 seasons of Tru Calling
• Full season of Firefly
• 2 seasons of Buffy
• 2 seasons of Angel

Next up, we'll start in on season 3 of Roswell - we didn't have that one yet when we finished season 2, so we started on the next thing we did have.  After that, Buffy and Angel even though we don't have the whole series on either.

In the meantime between the ones we own, we've been getting TV DVDs from Netflix.  We watched 3 seasons of The 4400, and omg, love!  I'm only sad that I didn't start watching it soon enough that I would have been able to watch season 4 in real time (I think it's just finishing up for the summer).

The 4400 is super and definitely fits my kind of show with some action, drama, and scifi all in one.  I'm so glad quornflour thought to suggest it!

Babylon 5 - The Gathering (Pilot)

E wants to rewatch Babylon 5, which obviously will take a while since there are 5 seasons, but I haven't seen any of it before.  I'm more excited about the episodes with Bruce Boxleitner (season 2, I think).

I think I'd like to see Sliders again.  I faithfully watched the first few seasons, but then trailed off at the end.  Another older series that might be cool would be Quantum Leap (since Journeyman is being touted as something similar and I like that concept a lot).

I've slowed down on buying TV on DVD, but I'm still watching for good deals on the series that need to be finished (Buffy - 5 more seasons - and Angel - 3 more seasons).  I would like to own Heroes at some point too, super show that I know I'll enjoy rewatching (as judged by how excited I am still on Monday nights while they are playing reruns).  No hurry, but it's sure nice to have such great options to watch!

Do you have any other suggestions along these type of shows for me? :)

I was just reading a very interesting thread on TV guide's site about how some TV shows on DVDs are unable to use the theme songs, and so they do replacements.  Thoughts on Theme Song replacements  I knew there were instances of TV shows unable to play the songs on the EPISODES but I hadn't thought about the theme song.

Now I'm the kind of person that wants to see a show exactly the way it was shown the first time, including the theme.  That's part of the experience for me.  I watch the theme song every time possible because I generally get attached to it (E always tries to fast forward).  This is particularly true for shows on DVD, If I'm going to spend the money to own them, I certainly want to get the whole thing!

I knew when I got Roswell season one that I was going to be sad because of episode song replacements, but at least they kept the theme.  I think that's what drew me to Roswell in the first place, I loved the theme song first before I started watching it.  But the episode song replacements still bother me throughout, and I know that's going to continue as I make it through the 2nd season and then buy the 3rd.  Just the other day, we watched the episode where Alex danced at Izzy's party, and I was astounded that they didn't have the original song.  It just seemed like that *had* to be one they'd keep, but they didn't.  That kinda ruined the scene for me.

Anyhow, back to the article - I'm pretty amazed that studios think that fans care so little about the theme song that they can just CHANGE it?  As much as I got tired of the Dawson's Creek theme, I agree with commenters that the song really is expected.  I'd almost rather watch the reruns on TV than have the DVD and have it be replaced by another song.  Also, if they just "take out" the episode's theme song like they are saying they do on Joan of Arcadia, where do they stop, do they start leaving off the guest credits too?  That's always something I enjoy seeing.

Very interesting stuff, and I wonder how it will impact the sale of TV shows on DVD in the future.

Video: Show us a TV series you own or watched on DVD.

I own 3 different seasons of TV shows:

Roswell - The Complete First Season

Roswell - The Complete Second Season

Firefly - The Complete Series

Firefly, we just watched last summer/fall all the way through.

Now the next ones I would consider buying are the full series of Angel, I've been enjoying the reruns on TNT.  Maybe even Buffy, but that's a lot of season to buy!  I'd also like the second season of Tru Calling, because there are eps on there I never saw.