TV 2.0: The new way to watch

Growing up in rural Montana, I spent many hours on my sofa watching the boob tube. During the week, I quickly finished my homework so that I could bask in its cool glow for the rest of the night. On weekends, I embarked on great eight- to 10-hour marathons that ended only when my family sat down for dinner. My tastes were eclectic, and I often vacillated between perennial favorites like "South Park" and "WWE: Monday Night Raw" to gripping documentaries like The History Channel's classic "Modern Marvels: The Nail."

Besides being a source of endless amusement, television was the most concise educational tool that I knew. After all, where else could I learn about the fall of the Roman Empire one moment and how to bake a cake the next? It was a gift that kept on giving, asking for very little in return besides my complete attention.

Even as I soaked up its unending stream of content sitting in the living room, I always hoped television would find its way onto computers. In my young mind, multimedia on the computer represented the wave of the future. Back in the early '90s, I was fascinated when my family purchased the Encarta Encyclopedia. I must have played the excerpt from Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" dozens of times.

A few years later, I marveled at the terrible short movies on atomfilms.com and excerpts of "Simpsons" clips. Streaming and downloading videos off the internet was so amazing that I remained oblivious to their heavily pixilated image quality. Forget your fancy cable modems and T1 lines, this was the "all or nothing" days of the 28.8K modem. Armed with early filesharing programs like Edonkey2000 and the now-defunct Scour, I got my hands on low-quality copies of movies and TV shows that would be impossible to see otherwise. Looking back, the internet helped to expand my cultural horizons far past the meager offerings of my town's two video stores.

These two interests, TV and the internet, collided when I got to Princeton and was suddenly stripped of my 24/7 access to my precious television. By 2005, however, YouTube was making waves, and streaming video was on the cusp of dominating the internet landscape. TV 2.0 had begun, and it fundamentally changed the way I watched television. No longer am I limited by the haphazard schedule of syndication. Instead of watching "The Simpsons" only four times a day, I can view it as many times as I want on my campus computer. The only limit on what I can view seems to be my own imagination. The past few years have been a regular all-you-can-eat buffet of all the programs I once pined for on a weekly basis.

Even while TV 2.0 has put me in command of my television experience, it simultaneously has made the whole enterprise more addicting. When I saw an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" on television, I needed to wait a whole week to get another fix. Now I can watch whole seasons in the course of a few days. If you are wondering where I find the time, I simply designate the hours I used to sleep as "TV time."

Besides becoming even more tempting since crossing into the sphere of the internet, the adventurous side of old-fashioned TV viewing is no more. The possibility of tumbling onto some compelling gem now seems nonexistent, especially if we discount all those videos of people mixing Mentos and Diet Coke. No longer do I spend hours learning about the military blunders of the Crimean War or the physics of dark matter. Though the TV realm is now more expansive than it has ever been, it has become far shallower. Thanks to the internet, my personal experience with TV has devolved from an endless series of educational meals to largely visual junk food.

The only time I can get a taste of the halcyon days of television without YouTube occurs when I go back home to Montana. While away from the high-speed internet of Princeton, I revert to the routine of my childhood. Taking up my signature position on my sofa, I submerse myself in the random delights offered by the radiating screen. The contentment I feel on these grand days is best summed up by Homer Simpson who, while hugging his television set, once exclaimed, "Television! Mother, teacher, secret lover."

Though I have to admit, even as I write this, I am watching the scene on my computer screen, laughing away. So in the end, maybe nostalgia cannot completely cloud my happiness at having my Princeton broadband back and to being able to experience TV 2.0 once again.