In Pursuit of the Office
The BBC television show The Office was wildly entertaining. When an American adaption was announced, I eagerly awaited its arrival. I watched the first six episode season which aired on NBC four years ago. I missed the following season, mostly because NBC made horrible choices in creating their programming schedule.
A few months ago, TBS began running back to back reruns of The Office on Tuesday nights. The plague of reality television shows on the major networks along with their preference for stacking the only watchable shows on television into competing time slots on Wednesday and Thursday nights left me free to watch the back episodes of The Office. After watching half the second season, it was decided there was a certain urgency to viewing the remaining episodes and catching up to the new episodes of the current season.
The first place we turned was Netflix. A subscription to Netflix comes with several hours of video on demand available over the internet. We had already watched half of season 2, and Netflix was able to get us through season 3.
The Office is currently halfway into season 4, and thus season 4 is not yet available on DVD. NBC does provide several of the most recent episodes for streaming on its website, NBC.com. Unfortunately, that left five episodes from season 4 unaccounted for. Since we were now addicted to The Office, we had every intention of watching the new episodes as they aired-- once we watched the previously aired episodes of season 4.
Season 3 ended with a bit of cliff hanger, and not wanting to ruin the surprise, there was no way of justifying skipping the first episodes of season 4. The first three episodes we found on the internet streamed from some Asian website. The only downside here was the Japanese subtitles and long load times, but certainly nothing to make the episodes unwatchable. The fourth episode we bought from Amazon Unbox
, which was convenient and easy to use. The downside to Unbox however is that Unbox videos cannot be transferred to the most popular portable media player-- iPod. The next episode purchased from Comcast as a video on Demand; the quality was slightly better than the Amazon episode, but we also didn't own a copy after we finished watching it. Then using NBC.com we were able to watch the last three most recent episodes, available free with commercials splice in, just as though we were watching them during a normal broadcast. Now we are dutifully awaiting the end of the WGA strike so we can watch the rest of season 4 as it airs.
All of this would have been much easier had NBC not been so short sighted with distribution. Netflix, which we paid a subscription to use, did not have the most recent episodes. Amazon Unbox, while convenient, is expensive for a product with limited use. Comcast on Demand was great, but entirely unreliable for access to the shows since not all episodes from the season were available to rent. Finally, NBC.com should have made available all the episodes from season 4 since they are all streamed with ads anyway. Either way, the constant here is the internet. We watched three seasons of the show through legal distribution like Netflix, Amazon, and Comcast, and through gray market sites streaming episodes. We watched nearly 40 episodes of television.
From now on, I will be a faithful viewer of the Office, if only NBC would settle with the Writer's Guild and end the strike. The sticking point for the writers, of course, is royalties from internet broadcasting.
A few months ago, TBS began running back to back reruns of The Office on Tuesday nights. The plague of reality television shows on the major networks along with their preference for stacking the only watchable shows on television into competing time slots on Wednesday and Thursday nights left me free to watch the back episodes of The Office. After watching half the second season, it was decided there was a certain urgency to viewing the remaining episodes and catching up to the new episodes of the current season.
The first place we turned was Netflix. A subscription to Netflix comes with several hours of video on demand available over the internet. We had already watched half of season 2, and Netflix was able to get us through season 3.
The Office is currently halfway into season 4, and thus season 4 is not yet available on DVD. NBC does provide several of the most recent episodes for streaming on its website, NBC.com. Unfortunately, that left five episodes from season 4 unaccounted for. Since we were now addicted to The Office, we had every intention of watching the new episodes as they aired-- once we watched the previously aired episodes of season 4.
Season 3 ended with a bit of cliff hanger, and not wanting to ruin the surprise, there was no way of justifying skipping the first episodes of season 4. The first three episodes we found on the internet streamed from some Asian website. The only downside here was the Japanese subtitles and long load times, but certainly nothing to make the episodes unwatchable. The fourth episode we bought from Amazon Unbox
, which was convenient and easy to use. The downside to Unbox however is that Unbox videos cannot be transferred to the most popular portable media player-- iPod. The next episode purchased from Comcast as a video on Demand; the quality was slightly better than the Amazon episode, but we also didn't own a copy after we finished watching it. Then using NBC.com we were able to watch the last three most recent episodes, available free with commercials splice in, just as though we were watching them during a normal broadcast. Now we are dutifully awaiting the end of the WGA strike so we can watch the rest of season 4 as it airs. All of this would have been much easier had NBC not been so short sighted with distribution. Netflix, which we paid a subscription to use, did not have the most recent episodes. Amazon Unbox, while convenient, is expensive for a product with limited use. Comcast on Demand was great, but entirely unreliable for access to the shows since not all episodes from the season were available to rent. Finally, NBC.com should have made available all the episodes from season 4 since they are all streamed with ads anyway. Either way, the constant here is the internet. We watched three seasons of the show through legal distribution like Netflix, Amazon, and Comcast, and through gray market sites streaming episodes. We watched nearly 40 episodes of television.
From now on, I will be a faithful viewer of the Office, if only NBC would settle with the Writer's Guild and end the strike. The sticking point for the writers, of course, is royalties from internet broadcasting.
Labels: Technology
