Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover. ~Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

I am a television hog. I wallow in it. I consume it with gluttonous abandon.

MTV and Nickelodeon were my child hood muses. I can recall with great joy when the Fox Network debuted and when we first got cable and HBO. I would watch the same movies over and over. Rewatch programs ad infinitum. But then it all came to a halt when I went to college.

For some reason my college did not provide cable television to it's students in their dorm rooms. Except for a few hours on Sunday nights (the Simpsons) and Saturday mornings (The Tick) in crowded tv lounges I barely watched TV. Even my senior year when we lived in the giant fire hazard known as Shitby we had 8 people vying for the access to the one small TV. I recall nothing much being watched except South Park, Pop-up Video and My So Called Life (shame on 21 year old college men for watching that show). Oh, and a recurring viewing of MST3K's Warrior of The Lost World (MAKE IT SLOW, MEGAWEAPON!).

Upon graduating (1998) I resumed my television consuming binge. First there was the glory of having my own TV set. Then was the glory of street corner cheap-o DVD's. The advent of the DVR simplified my life as I became consumed with LOST and Battlestar Galactica (the best in serialized television story telling)- no longer did I need to be home at certain times on certain days to watch my stories. I was able to stay out whenever I wanted and wherever I wanted, confident that my electronic guardian angel was ensuring that my shows would be waiting for me upon my arrival.

I've started exploring a couple of options for non-cable content. One is Boxee and the another is TVersity. My guess is that I may find more use from TVersity since it's a versatile DLNA media server but at a glance Boxee has an impressive array of free television shows to choose from. I don't know if I can stream from my computer to my TV using Boxee. The other option that intrigues me is the recent resurgence in "rabbit ears" for capturing broadcast HDTV signals. Will any of these satisfy? I aim to find out.

Clearly, I don't have a verdict on which is best yet as my home network has been unreliable and I am not in possession of the television yet. Damn you Time Warner Cable and your shitty wireless router and even shittier chat based technical service! Swine. But, I'm pretty sure that between services such as those mentioned above and a plethora of torrents at my disposal- plus my good friend John having a huge jump on this sort of thing and who has amassed a huge media collection that he is generously willing to share - that there will be no dearth of content on my TV screen. I'm going to review the pros and cons of these services in the near future as I get the TV set up, the cable off loaded and my bearings straight.