With the fall season in full swing, many of us are drawn back to TV to see what new shows and old favorites are in store for us. Despite my TV cutback over the summer, I’ve been pretty excited about the upcoming fall shows. With the new HD TV and the DVR queued up, I’ve been building up quite a repository of season premiers and new series. However, my busy schedule hasn’t been as accommodating and I’ve found myself leaning heavily on the DVR’s hard drive. Then tonight it happened, I checked the DVR and found that it was 97% FULL! Oh the humanity!
This is actually quite pathetic. When I had the Tivo things got pretty full, but never past 80%. Granted, recording the shows in HD does take up quite a bit of hard drive space, but I’ve had the HD-DVR for 6 months now and I’ve never gone beyond 50%. There’s a lot of TV sitting on my DVR, and we’ve reached the point where hard decisions need to be made. The homework isn’t going to dwindle, the weekends aren’t going to clear up – I need to re-evaluate my season passes and recordings. Thus begins the excruciating process of "to delete, or not to delete":
Old Favorites
The Office – One of the funniest shows on TV at this point, and the only "live" comedy show I have. Keeper.
Family Guy – Favorite comedy – hands down. It started out pretty fast out of the gate, but it turns out that they’re already in reruns. With baseball season around the corner Fox is pretty much out to lunch for the month. Temporarily Delete.
South Park – New episodes kick off Wednesday (Oct 4th) and you have to make time for South Park. Plus the show is 30 minutes long and not in HD = doesn’t hold much space. Keeper.
Inside the NFL – Pretty much the only reason I have HBO. However, I’m not happy with their new highlight formats where you only end up watching highlights to 3 games when it’s said and done. With the emergence of the NFL Network it might not be as necessary – still nothing surpasses the cinematic quality of the Inside the NFL highlights. It bugs me that my Comcast DVR can’t figure out the "First Run Only" command with this show and essentially records it every time it airs. Keep, for now
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – Great show, but I never have time to watch it. Keep on "the list", episodes often get deleted.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent – The show’s only worth watching when Vincent D’Onofrio is on, so basically I delete half of the episodes after the DVR records him. I just haven’t been interested in Chris Noth, especially after watching him being "Mr. Big" in Sex and the City (I watch it with my girlfriend from time to time). Keeper, half the time.
Battlestar Galactica – The back episodes have really piled up in my DVR and I am frantically trying to finish them before the Oct 6 Season 3 premier. This is an excellent show, one which I fell into through the DVD’s. At the same time, I’m frustrated that Season 2.5 only came out 2 weeks ago, leaving people to try to catch once-per-week reruns on Sci-Fi. I’ve seen the Season Finale, but I’m still 3 episodes out of the loop from last season. Keeper, although space is accumulating.
Daily Favorites: Glen Beck, Jim Rome & Bill O’Reilly. I catch them if I can, no heartbreak if I miss them. I have them set to only retain one episode, so not too much damage there. Keeper.
New Experiments:
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – I’ve been pumped the Aaron Sorkin-written series for quite a while. I fell in love with the West Wing through the DVD’s, but watched the steady demise of the show in the 7th season. Studio 60 is an entertaining show, with the complex dialog that is a trademark of Sorkin. It’s not West Wing seasons 1-4, but they’re the next best thing. Keeper
Heros – It’s the most anticipated show that I’ve haven’t had time to watch. The show looks exciting and right down my alley, but I haven’t been able to set aside the time to give it the attention it deserves. I need to start watching it soon before I fall too far behind. Keeper
Six Degrees – The previews/commericals looked great, but I simply haven’t had the time to watch. As intriguing as it looks, right now it’s unfortunately at the bottom of my DVR list. Likely to cut.
After mapping all of these shows out, it’s no wonder why my homework rarely gets done, especially when you put a day’s worth of football games on top of that. Going through the DVR, I managed to bring the "full" count to 51%. If I’m lucky that’ll last me two days.