streaming – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies

S is for Streaming

April 22, 2026April 22, 2026Fandango16 Comments

My wife and I rarely watch what I would call “regular” TV or what used to be called “broadcast” TV. Most of what we watch on TV is via streaming.

As you can see from the photo I took of my TV screen, we have a lot of streaming channels.

When we’re not actually watching TV, we stream music via Sirius XM, which serves as background music for us around our house. And when we do want to sit down and watch a show or a movie, we have plenty of streaming apps to choose from.

Some streaming channels, like Netflix, will release all episodes of a new or returning series at the same time, enabling being able to binge-watch an entire season of a show across two or three nights. Other streaming channels, like HBO/Max and Apple TV spread out their episodes by releasing episodes weekly.

Since my wife and I prefer binge-watching to weekly watching, we wait until all episodes of a show have been released before watching any of them. For example, season 2 of “The Pitt” on HBO/Max premiered on January 15th and the last episode of this second season was released on April 16th. My wife and I will probably start watching the season 2 episodes this coming weekend and by sometime next week will have binge-watched all 15 episodes.

What about you? Do you stream what you watch on TV or are you mainly watching the traditional broadcast networks? And do you prefer to binge-watch or do you patiently wait a week between each episode you watch?

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Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 20th

June 20, 2025June 19, 2025Fandango24 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term subscribers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about it? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 20, 2022

TMP — First World Peeve

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off. My peeve today is definitely a first world peeve. It’s basically that I have lost patience with weekly TV series. Especially when there is a continuing story that spans multiple episodes.

For TV shows, other than those where each episode stands alone, I prefer to binge-watch such shows, especially dramas. If a week goes by between the last episode and the next episode, I have often forgotten what happened in the previous week’s episode. Maybe it’s that at my age, my mind has become like a sieve, but I often ask my wife when the new episode becomes available, “Wait, what happened last week?” She doesn’t remember either.

That’s one of the reasons I like Netflix. Generally, when it releases a multi-episode series, it releases all episodes on the same day. So I can binge-watch the entire season of the show, and depending upon how many episodes there are, I can watch them all, one right after the other, over just a few days to a week. And if it’s a show with multiple seasons, it can keep us going for two or three weeks.

But even Netflix sometimes splits a season. For example, the first half of season four, the final season of “Ozark,” was released this past January 21st, but the second half of season four wasn’t released until April 29th, more than three months later. My wife and I had watch the last few episodes of the first half of season four to refresh our memories about how the first half ended before we started watching the second half of the final season.

Other streaming services, including HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime TV, and Apple TV+, most often still follow the weekly episode release approach. So we have to wait until the season has “aired” all episodes before we begin our binge-watching routine.

Yeah, major 21st century problem, right?

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — TV Commercials

January 19, 2024January 19, 2024Fandango10 Comments

For this week’s Mindlovemysery Menagerie Friday Faithfuls challenge, Jim is asking us to write anything about a TV commercial.

I wish I could write about specific TV commercials, but I can’t because I don’t watch them. Almost everything I watch on TV is on an ad-free streaming service. Or, if it’s a show on a channel that is not ad-free, like the commercial networks, I use my DVR to record the show and then zip through the commercials.

I take that back. There is one show I have watched, “Bosch: Legacy,” that is on Amazon’s FreeVee, which is a free streaming service with commercials. But when the commercials come on, I pick up my iPhone and go to the WordPress reader to catch up on posts from other bloggers until the show resumes. So, I don’t watch or pay attention to commercials.

Jim mentioned the NFL Super Bowl coming up on February 11th. If my hometown boys, the San Francisco 49ers make it to the Super Bowl by beating the Green Bay Packers Saturday night and their next opponent next weekend, I’ll watch the game and the commercials, because given how much money these advertisers are spending to produce these Super Bowl commercials, some are bound to be entertaining. But if the 49ers don’t make it to the Super Bowl, I’ll record the game and I’ll fast-forward through the gameplay, but I will watch the commercials.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #224

July 26, 2023July 25, 2023Fandango26 Comments

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

Back before the pandemic, I used to love to go to the movies in theaters. But once the pandemic hit, my wife and I, as did almost everyone else, stopped going out to theaters to see movies on the big screen. Since then, at least in my area, a number of multiplex movie houses have permanently closed. But some in my area have managed to keep operating.

For my birthday a few months back, my wife and I went to see our first movie at a movie theater since December 2019. It was nice to get out and go to the movies again, but we haven’t been back since then and have no real plans to do so! We are still relying on Max and Netflix and Prime and Hulu for the movies we watch, rather than going out to a theater.

And that brings me to this week’s provocative question.

When was the last time you actually went out to a movie theater? What movie did you see? Are you planning to go out to theaters for movies in the future, or will you most likely continue streaming them in the comfort of your own home?

If you choose to participate in Fandango’s Provocative Question, you may respond with a comment or write your own post in response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

TMP — Out of Sync

December 12, 2022December 12, 2022Fandango12 Comments

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off.

Lately, I’ve noticed while watching TV that the audio and the video are a bit out of sync. Sometimes the audio is a little ahead of the video; sometimes the video is a little ahead of the audio. Either way, it’s disconcerting.

It’s not all the time, but it’s often enough that it’s bothersome. I don’t know if it’s Roku Streaming Stick, the streaming channels, the DVR, or something else. I’ve turned the TV set on and off. I’ve resent the Roku device, the DVR, and exited and then returned to the streaming channels. Sometimes that fixes the problem. But not every time.

Well, maybe this is a good excuse to shut off the TV and pick up a good book.

TMP — First World Peeve

June 20, 2022June 20, 2022Fandango15 Comments

Yeah, major 21st century problem, right?

My Last Photo — May ‘22

June 1, 2022May 31, 2022FandangoLeave a comment

Brian, aka Bushboy, posted his monthly Last on the Card prompt, where he asks us to…

Post the last photo from your camera’s SD card or the last photo from your phone taken in May.
No editing — who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like, or the subject matter didn’t cooperate?
No explanations needed — just the photo will do.
Create a pingback to Brian’s post or link in the comments.
Tag “The Last Photo.”

So here’s the last photo I took on my iPhone in May.

This error message showed up on my TV screen yesterday afternoon while my wife and I were streaming a show on Discovery+. I took this photo on my iPhone so that I could have it handy while following the step-by-step instructions. It worked, and a few minutes later, the show we were watching was back on.

Truthful Tuesday — Cutting the Cord

July 6, 2021July 6, 2021Fandango10 Comments

Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts, and this week Frank wants to know…

How do you watch TV? Do you just watch whatever local channels your digital antenna can pick out of the air, or do you subscribe to cable or satellite, or have you jumped on the streaming bandwagon? Perhaps it’s some combination thereof, or perhaps you don’t even watch TV. Whatever the case, please enlighten us!

According to my WordPress stats, my blog has more than 4,600 followers, but it seems that there is only a small fraction of those “followers” who actually read my blog on a regular basis. Cable TV is like WordPress followers. There are hundreds of cable TV channels, but most of us regularly watch only a small fraction of the channels available. And because cable providers bundle so many channels into packages or tiers, you end up paying for channels you rarely, if ever, watch.

Earlier this year, I cut the cord. I dumped my cable provider, Xfinity/Comcast, in favor of steaming. I bought a Roku Streaming Stick and subscribed to a handful of streaming services plus local broadcast TV stations. And I essentially get everything that I had been watching on cable TV for less than half the cost.

Booyah!

TMP — The Down Side of Streaming

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021FandangoLeave a comment

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off. My peeve today is not so much about something that pisses me off as it is about something that surprised me.

Back in late March I decided to “cut the cord” with my cable TV provider. I switched to streaming using a Roku Streaming Stick and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime TV, HBO Max, etc. It was a lot cheaper than it was to pay for the cable TV package from Comcast/Xfinity. The monthly cost would be less than half about of what my cable TV bill was running.

Of course, I still needed an internet service provider (ISP) and because the only game in town is Comcast/Xfinity, I must use that for internet access.

Here’s the rub. I found out that my internet plan “limits” me to 1229 gigabytes of data per month, a fact I wasn’t aware of before I started streaming instead of using cable. It was never an issue. But then I received this email on April 29th: BERJAYA What? Holy shit. That’s a lot of data usage. And the only thing I can attribute it to is the switch from cable TV to streaming TV.

I checked the status of my account this morning and saw this: BERJAYA My first thought was “Phew, I came in just under the wire in April.” My second thought was that I used 64 gigabytes of data in just the first two days of May. And that was over a weekend when I watch much less TV than I do during the week. At this rate, I’m going to have an overage in May.