I don’t own a TV.<\/p>\n
However, two months ago I bought a Dell XPS 420<\/a> desktop and a 30-inch monitor (3007WFP-HC<\/a>). The machine is spec’d with 4GB RAM and the least inexpensive quad processor in Intel’s lineup, with a basic dedicated graphics card. All up, slightly less than $2.5K. This is a box for processing photos, surfing the web, playing the occasional game, and occasional work (IntelliJ<\/a> at 2560 x 1600 = productivity<\/em>).<\/p>\n What I didn’t expect to be doing was watching movies on demand. I joined Netflix<\/a> last week, and discovered their all-you-can-eat movies-on-demand, which comes with all but their most basic plans. I signed up for the $8.99 1-disc at-a-time plan.<\/p>\n I remember what a buzz there was when Netflix first came out with its DVD rentals via mail plan. I can see what the fuss is about, having just got my first DVD in the mail, but online streaming movies are amazing. Sure, the online selection doesn’t approach that of the mail-out collection (it’s growing everyday), but that would be to miss the selling point, which is huge – if I find something I like, I wait all of 20 seconds before I start watching. Quality is on par with DVD, perhaps a little less, but eminently watchable on a 30-inch screen from my couch. I’ve been watching mostly foreign movies, and if my tastes ever ran into 80’s television sitcoms and series, or B-grade movies (they don’t, but if they did), I’d be all set too. $9 a month is simply a no-brainer.<\/p>\n Looking online, the major free-to-air stations like ABC<\/a>, NBC<\/a>, CBS<\/a> and Fox<\/a> are making available full episodes (some in HD) of most of their series (together with ads) as well. For music, I use Pandora<\/a> or Slacker<\/a>, and more and more radio stations are streaming their broadcasts online (which I listen to through this sidebar gadget<\/a>). I’m typing this post listening to KQED<\/a> and glancing at the Windows sidebar<\/a> where I have the weekend weather, latest exchange rates, and time<\/a> in Australia and Asia where friends and family are.<\/p>\n What I do miss TV for is broadcasts of live events (basically NBA<\/a> games). Then again, that’s what friends with cable, sports bars, and HDTV<\/a>, another amazing technology, are for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t own a TV. However, two months ago I bought a Dell XPS 420 desktop and a 30-inch monitor (3007WFP-HC). The machine is spec’d with 4GB RAM and the least inexpensive quad processor in Intel’s lineup, with a basic dedicated graphics card. All up, slightly less than $2.5K. This is a box for processing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}