Tag Archives: Once Upon a Time

Podcast

PTJ 107: Naked Celebs and TV Streaming

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El Kaiser has The Great Set Top Box Stream-Off of 2014 and J.D. takes a look at the geek-friendly shows the fall TV season has lined up for us.

In the news, a huge hacking scandal involving Apple’s iCloud and stolen intimate photos of various female celebrities; Apple includes restrictions in developer’s agreement for new iOS 8 HealthKit tool; Windows 8 and 8.1 slowly finds its way onto more computers; Google announces in-house drone program; the potential for drone traffic problems up in the sky; NASA gets ready to to perform some maintenance on its Mars rover; and the Internet Archive scans millions of book pages.

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I Want My Geek TV

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Streaming services and video-on-demand may have changed the way we consume television in recent years, but the broadcast networks still cling to the traditional fall debut for most of their new shows. This 2014-2015 season looks to have plenty of viewing options, especially for comic-book fans, so here are a few new shows (and some returning favorites) to consider for the recording queue:

  • gothamGotham is basically an origins tale centered around a young policeman named James Gordon, who’s on the force in a major city that’s very well-known in the DC Comics universe. Other residents of this urban sprawl include a young Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle and Oswald Cobblepot — why yes, this is a Batman prequel now that you mention it. Gotham’s first season is scheduled for 16 episodes on Fox TV and the network has already released a 21-minute preview video to get fans in the mood. The show makes its debut on September 22nd.
  • flashThe Flash is another popular DC Comics character who’s getting another run on TV. The Scarlet Speedster, lands on the CW on October 7th. (That’s same network that shows the Arrow series, so rest assured, everyone in the cast will look fabulous.) Let’s see if this version does better than the 1990-91 edition with  John Wesley Shipp running around in that Flash suit that looked like it was made out of Play-Doh; Shipp even  has an acting gig in the this new 2014 series.
  • izombieiZombie, right out of the DC/Vertigo canon, will also be on the CW network. The show follows an overachieving Type A medical resident who gets turned into a zombie at a party. After she takes a job in the coroner’s office to earn a living and have access to a supply of delicious fresh brains, she also becomes a crimefighter when she realizes she absorbs the memories of the murder victims when she snacks on their gray matter. iZombie will be appearing mid-season, so look for it in early 2015. 

DC Comics may be dominating broadcast television, but let’s not forget that Netflix is also developing several series based on Marvel Comics properties, including a streaming reboot of Daredevil due out next year. Other members of Daredevil’s Defenders team— namely Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist — are expected to get their own Netflix series as well, with an all-star team-up Defenders series on the way, too.

LUCY LAWLESSAs for returning shows, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD survived its first year on ABC and is back with new episodes on September 23rd and Lucy Lawless (shown here) in the Season Two cast. Also on ABC, the fairy-tale action show Once Upon a Time is back September 28th for its fourth season and this year, it’s starting off with a live-action storyline from another Disney property, the animated blockbuster, Frozen.

The Big Bang Theory returns to CBS with its Season 8 opener not on its usual Thursday night, but on Monday, September 22, while the network’s Sherlock-in-New-York crime drama Elementary has a a third-season premiere on Thursday, October 30th. (You can thank Thursday Night Football on CBS for the odd dates and late-year starts.)  Big Bang’s September 22 premiere also puts it smack up against Gotham, and the return of Sleepy Hollow is also the same night on the Fox network, so set your DVRs accordingly.

selfieAnd one last program — not so much with superheroes or the supernatural, but possibly of interest to Doctor Who fans: Selfie, an ABC sitcom about a woman who has thousands of online followers but no actual friends. She hires a consultant to help her to ease off the social media and navigate real relationships with people. It stars former Doctor Who companion (and current Nebula) Karen Gillan and Reboot Sulu John Cho. The show premieres on September 30th, and after the recent cloud-based photo theft scandal, its title should definitely stick in people’s minds, even if the show doesn’t.

Podcast

PTJ 88: Laser Beams and TV Streams

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Admit it, you aren’t prepared for the onslaught of “must see” television shows airing on Sunday nights this spring on U.S. networks. That under-powered cable company issued PVR just ain’t gonna cut it. Lucky for you J.D. has some strategies for dealing with your TV watching blues. In the news, the United States Navy announces its engineers are putting the finishing touches on a laser weapon prototype; the Supreme Court decides to skip a case against the National Security Agency over bulk phone metadata surveillance;  up to two-thirds of websites relying on OpenSSL might be susceptible to a critical security flaw; Google’s Play store deals with another embarrassing mishap; Windows XP officially bites the dust; and Battlestar Galactica may get “reimagined” again, but this time on the big screen.

 

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Long Drawn Sunday Night

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Spring finally seems to have arrived in the northern hemisphere and along with daffodils and gentle breezes, many popular TV shows are either returning for their new weird little cable seasons — or coming into the last leg of their network airings before summer vacation. (You know, when all the good stuff happens and maybe we slide right into a cliffhanger until October.)There’s a lot to watch, and unfortunately, a lot of it airs for the first time on Sunday nights.

Not all of the good shows are on directly opposite each other, but many of them are. To get an idea just how jam-packed Sunday nights are now getting, the cable and broadcast prime-time block includes the bloody blockbuster Game of Thrones, the first half of the final season of Mad Men, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, The Good Wife on CBS, the new tech-startup comedy Silicon Valley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep and Gillian Anderson in the Washington-based thriller, Crisis. There’s also the fan favorite Once Upon a Time, AMC’s Revolutionary War spy drama, Turn, and if you’re into British drama on PBS, Call the Midwife and The Bletchley Circle. And on top of all this, it’s baseball season and there could be some shows you’ve never heard of that your spouse, partner or kids want to watch. As the TV critic at Time magazine tweeted a few years back, “Sunday is the night you stock up your DVR for the week. It is the Costco of television.”

beepsTV1So if you have more than a couple conflicting shows on Sunday night, you need a strategy to see them all. Having multiple DVRs on multiple TV sets is one that works for people who can afford it.

Some carriers and digital video recorder companies have units that can record six shows at once. The Roamio models in the venerable TiVo line can record four to six shows at a time and with the company’s $130 TiVo Stream device, let you take your recordings to go on an iOS device, sort of like how Slingbox lets you tap into your TV from over the Internet. If you have one of these, you’re probably covered.

But what if you have a DVR from the cable company that only lets you record two channels at once, or you don’t even have a DVR? Or you can’t afford the newer models? Then you have to get creative.

  • For starters, check your TV grid for multiple airings of shows that conflict. Cable programs often re-air late at night, so maybe you can snag the 2:00 a.m. airing instead of the problematic 10 p.m. one.
  • If your cable company offers its own DVR control app, you can use it to search the program grid for shows and then set the box to record, right from your phone or tablet.
  • If you have On Demand services build into your cable package (like those at Comcast, DirecTV or Time Warner Cable, you may be able to find a lot of the popular shows there to watch whenever it suits your schedule.
  • As we’ve mentioned before on this show, network apps and websites also let you watch episodes of your favorite shows. However, they may run a week or two behind the broadcast schedule (depending on the network) or require an existing cable subscription, like the HBO GO and Showtime Anytime apps do.
  • If you have some spare cash and want to ditch the commercials entirely, sign up for a season pass from iTunes, Amazon Instant Video or the Google Play store, although you may have to wait a day to download the episode after it airs. This option also lets you watch the show on more screens besides your TV.
  • Paid services like Hulu Plus (which is $8 a month) let you stream broadcast network shows to compatible TVs, set-top boxes or devices.

TV Guide Online has a list of shows you can buy and download and what services sell them. Oh, since this is a nerd show, if the Silicon Valley show on HBO intrigues you but you don’t get HBO, you can at least watch the first episode for free on YouTube.

One advantage to doing the download or mobile-stream approach is that maybe you can fit in a show or two during your train commute or other moment of stillness where you have the time — but are not home in front of your TV.  If Sunday is not your only night of appointment viewing, now you have to find the time to watch all the stuff leftover from Sunday. Until the next Sunday.

And thankfully, Orphan Black will be on Saturday when it returns later this month.