Veronica Mars

[miriam_e]

It was a truly superb TV series. Heaven knows why the dopey network executives decided to cancel it after just 3 seasons. In fact three years after the final episode aired it still rates almost 9 out of 10 on imdb.com (8.7 actually). I have the entire series, downloaded from the net as TV captures. Later on, as I've been able to afford it, I've been buying the DVD sets. I've bought Season 1 and Season 2. Now only Season 3 remains to be bought, and as soon as I have the spare money I'll buy it too.

From time to time I watch the entire series again over a few months, usually viewing an episode during a meal. I'm doing so once more. Each time it makes me appreciate anew what an amazing piece of work that show was.

Now here is the interesting thing: although I have them on DVD, I prefer to watch the ones downloaded from the net. I haven't ripped and converted my DVDs to more efficient, more accessible video files yet. Watching them on DVD is such a hassle. I have to carefully get out the appropriate disk and avoid marking the absurdly soft plastic. Then I have to find the episode I want to watch and wait for it to load and run. I do this on my computer, using mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) rather than a dedicated DVD player so at least I don't have to sit through all the warnings and other nonsense, but even so, finding the correct track to play is annoyingly obfuscated.

Compare that with what it is like when I play the downloaded files, or my own ripped, converted files. All I have to do is click on the file called, for instance, "Veronica Mars 01-03 - Meet John Smith.avi". That makes life so much more easy. And I keep an empty file in the list, named something like "Veronica Mars 01-03", that I rename each time I watch an episode, so if I don't watch one for some days, I can easily see where I'm up to next time because it self-sorts to just above it.

The customer is always right. Deliver what the customer wants. Weird... those things don't apply anymore.