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.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who loves and rewatches VM too. I understand you dodged a bullet by NOT getting season four.

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.

That's not actually that much of a hassle, frankly.
(Well, autoload menus are annoying, I'll give you that).

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

That's not actually that much of a hassle

I guess it depends on definition of hassle. I find it interesting that I rarely ever watch a DVD, even though I've bought heaps of them. I rip them to the computer, put the delicate, soft disks back in their cases and they stay there as archives. If I want to watch something it is usually spur of the moment, during mealtime. I want to just click on a file in a list, not go through my DVD collection, select the appropriate disk from a set, then find the episode on the disk. The difference is several seconds versus several minutes and would be longer if I didn't keep meticulous episode lists on my computer, even for shows I only have on DVD (e.g. Gilmore Girls). When I have a meal in front of me I want it to be seconds.

Yes, I'm a spoiled brat, I know. :) I remember when I was happy to go and make a coffee while computer code a couple of kbytes in size loaded from cassette tape. Now I get impatient if I can't have access to a 350MB video file instantly.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I don't know how you would have survived with reel-to-reel and old film canisters. :)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

heheheh :D
I used to love my old reel-to-reel tape machine. I never quite got into using my old movie camera and projector as much, but that was mainly because of the cost of the film, rather than the inconvenience.

Convenience and hassle are strange things.

[xxclovergrrlxx.livejournal.com]

aw, i loved veronica mars too! it was quite a bummer how it just... ended. totally undeserved. my old roommate and i had a drinking game for it, haha.

odd tidbit, my best friend went to school with kristen bell. she grew up blocks away from where i live. ahhh i do dream that our paths will accidentally cross someday when she comes home to visit her family. not too likely though, heh.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:) That would be one of the nice things about living in USA. So many cool things are nearby. Don't get me wrong, I love being out here in the Australian countryside... the big green tree frogs in the toilet, water dragons in the water tank, wallabies grazing in the garden, beautiful bunya pines dotting the landscape, the clean air, universal health care, the slow pace... But I have to say being in the same country as people like Kristen Bell, Jodi Foster, Liv Tyler, Joss Whedon, Terry Moore, Jessica Alba, Sandra Bullock, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts, Bill Bryson, Amory Lovins, Brewster Kahle, Carolyn Porco, Janine Benyus, Jimmy Wales, Will Wright, Jill Tarter, Patricia Burchat... wow... it has some attraction. :)

[xxclovergrrlxx.livejournal.com]

lol, well, it's really not that cool. see, i live in detroit. kristen bell HAPPENS to be from here, but i've never seen a celebrity walking down the street. that's more like LA/Hollywood which is about... um... 36 hours of straight driving away? the idea might be neat, but it doesn't impact my everyday life at all. i'd keep your fresh air and universal health care and frogs and stuff if i were you... haha. although, fyi, obama just recently passed some sort of bill, so APPARENTLY, universal health care isn't too far out of our reach.

maybe.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

It would be great if you guys got universal health care back. Blame that slimy toad Nixon for getting rid of it. He handed your lives over to his corrupt friends in the insurance industry and made US health care the most expensive and one of the most inefficient in the world.

And yeah, I gotta admit I do like it here. :)
The net gives me access to much of USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Europe, Brazil, and other cool cultures and pools of knowledge.

[xxclovergrrlxx.livejournal.com]

well, on a side note, i talked to my mom about this today and apparently, i misspoke. it's not so much "universal" as "mandated" haaah. so, now we're just forced to pay for it. this could be fine, depending on the price, or it could big mistake. one of the current worries is that companies will drop their insurance programs since health care is no longer a "benefit" but a "mandate". -_-

yes, it sucks to live here sometimes. i JUST got health care through my job at the beginning of this month after 4 years of not having it? i have so many appointments to make, lol. i'm young, but even i have had times where i seriously had to weigh the pros and cons of going to the doctor. i have things to be checked out that could be very serious, but i decided that if they were, i couldn't pay for them. better to just ignore it and hope for the best. be thankful your country has worked all of this out.

countries all over the world have universal health care and do quite well with it. if you would watch the news over here, people act like obama is trying to destroy democracy. i don't know, i'm irritated. the U.S. needs to catch up with the rest of the planet. lol

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The weirdest part is that I believe you used to have it until Nixon screwed the country over.

I can hardly imagine what it would be like to have to weigh up money against health. It makes life so much safer being able to go to a doctor immediately you need it. Years ago I read a piece in New Scientist where someone was blasting universal health care, saying that it leads to over-use of health services, but a researcher looked into it and found that it just isn't true. People still avoid going to doctors when it is free, unless they really need to.

There are three main arguments for universal health care:

• it makes it more possible for all people to live good lives that contribute to society
  
• it stops illness spreading through the rest of society
  
• it is cheaper, because medical services don't need enormous, costly, insurance and accounting branches and concentrate on delivering health care

Of course my favorite is that it is simply fair, but that doesn't even count for economists or politicians.

Veronica Mars

[jenna2.livejournal.com]

Miriam,
I think that must be a rhetorical question about the dopey execs.Its ALWAYS about the money.

Re: Veronica Mars

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Hi Jenna. :) Yeah. Audience numbers do make me wonder though.

Season 1 averaged 2.5 million viewers (a truly mind-boggling number when you think about it), ranking it only number 148 out of 156 series airing.

Season 2 dropped a little to 2.3 million, still a mind-boggling number. Rank improved to 145 place out of 156 series.

Season 3 went back up to 2.5, with numbers climbing higher toward the end of the season. Rank improved further to 138, though as there were only 142 then, it could be interpreted as a lower rank.

They had a cult show that improved the quality of TV. Veronica Mars was acclaimed by other directors and writers as superb stuff, which it clearly was.

At the moment the execs are in a race to the bottom. When they get there they may find they've reduced television to utter drivel. As you say, it is about money: spend the least to get the lowest common denominator that holds the largest fraction of the audience. What a pity.

oops... gotta run or I'll be late for the op-shop. Wednesday is the day I volunteer