Living without DVR

So I will say that of all the things I miss from living in the US, I miss my DVR the most. I mean, come on... has there been a better invention in the past couple of years in entertainment? Being able to record more than one thing at a time and pause and rewinding live t.v. That's pretty awesome! So of course, Dominica doesn't have that technology yet. (Shoot, I'm pretty darn sure they don't have digital t.v. ... it's all regular cable.) Though you can get satellite dishes (I've even seen those old-school ones that are bigger than your car!). Luckily, I have a great landlord that covers the cost of my cable (the reason will become apparent in a minute). I thought, "This is great! An added perk that I wasn't even going to ask for!" And the t.v. stations are pretty decent too. NBC, CBS, ABC, CW, Lifetime, Spike, Disney, Discovery, most of the American channels that I generally watch. There are even like 4 Starz channels too (~60 channels total), so you can watch movies!

The caveat of this great t.v. experience for such a small remote island is that unbelievably cable is pretty cheap. I'm talking like $30EC, which is equivalent to about $11.25 US. Now, tell me... when is the last time your cable bill was that low? Come to find out, that the reason cable is so cheap is that it is completely stolen. Meaning, they just point their satellite (or whatever) and those that they can pirate off for free, they get! Pretty cool (in a completely illegal sort of way), huh? Though it's interesting because this means your t.v. channel viewing doesn't always stay the same. For example, when I first got here, we got SyFy channel, which we no longer have. :( Because apparently they found us out and encrypted it. Grrr! Also, one day NBC will be on channel 26, and the next day it'll be on channel 40 (this I haven't experienced yet, but am sure that when I do, I'll be utterly confused).

But getting back to my DVR, the stupid networks have completely screwed me over this t.v. season! There are 3 shows at 8pm and 3 shows at 9pm on Thursdays that I watch (and can only watch one of them!), and no way to record them (VCRs are so 10 years ago). I'm sure you're thinking, "Come on Kristjan, just go online and watch them!" See, the US has a monopoly on that too. You can only watch the shows off their respective channel websites (NBC.com for example) if you live in the US, and also Hulu.com only works in the US. That sure does narrow it down! Luckily, I am surviving. SurftheChannel.com actually works, so I've been able to watch my shows at a later date (as long as the internet is actually on and isn't playing the "let's see how slow we can be today" game). But at least I'm fully caught up on Bones, Grey's Anatomy, ANTM, and only one off on Supernatural. So the moral of this story is, be glad for what you've got (though in reality, life would be so much greater if we all just threw the t.v. out the window!). Until next time...