Actually, PBS is a charity/non-profit organization, and is not entirely paid for by our taxes (hence, the frequent fund drives). It's among the top charitable organizations in the U.S., actually.
BTW, want to see the original Cosmos for free? Here's episode 1, and links to 2-13 (there were only 13 episodes): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6DAD93D11320E122
I'm in the UK, we have this thing called "The BBC". It's funded in a not-too-dissimilar way... and they sell DVDs and so on of the shows. Aside from providing extra funding, it's not exactly feasible to host everything and give it away. Also, the public may supply funds to the company, but they're not in charge of it nor do they own it, ergo they don't "own" it nor the right to obtain the broadcast content for free.
We are straying dangerously close to politics. But one little thing I must say and I will shut up about it. The courts in the USA have ruled several times that we have the right to record for future views anything we have the right to watch. We most certainly do not own the content, but that in no way diminishes our right to see it. Nonetheless, if there were a NTSC region 1 DVD set for (Much) less than $45 USD I would think it was a fair deal. Still, that price makes me cringe.
The government pays for only 15% of all of PBS's budget (although for smaller member stations, after the moneys are distributed, it may account for 40 to 50%). This is not a political question, it's an economics one.
Klondike started in the UK this week (after being in the US, though I don't know when it started). That looks good.
I kinda like a series called "Almost Human" -- it seems inspired by Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel and his other robot stories. But particularly that and The Naked Sun, because it involves a human cop and a robot partner. It's not something that I particularly believe is 'great television' or even 'great science fiction', but it is worth watching. As far as fantasy and horror-fantasy and so on, there is a lot more. I've mentioned my obsession with "The Walking Dead", for example. I also kind of like the American remake of the British series "Being Human" (no joke, I keep getting the name confused with "Almost Human". I actually like the American version better (at least it's more consistent). And I look forward to the eventual return of that EXCELLENT French series I mentioned a couple of months back, "The REturned" (aka "Les Revenants"). That should not be confused with either the future American remake "The Came Back", the future A&E production "The Returned", or the current American series using a similar premise, "Resurrection" . As you can see, you make one critically acclaimed television series with an interesting premise in a foreign country, and EVERYONE wants to jump on the bandwagon. "Continuum" is a pretty decent Canadian science fiction series -- I think it's a bit overrated, actually, but it's entertaining. It has to do with time travel and a police officer from the future trying to get back to her family, who may or may not exist in her future because things have changed as a consequence of her own meddling and that of other time travelers. It's a bit overly complex, with too many factions and so on, imho. It seems to me that the writers have bitten off far too much more than they can chew. Keeping it simpler would have been a better choice, imho. And one of the best things on BBC America (which should be starting a second season shortly), is "Orphan Black", which concerns a set of clones who come together to figure out why they exist, and if someone is trying to kill them, etc. Again, it's entertaining, but a bit overrated imho, partly because of a certain lack of logical thinking (I've said before how that sometimes can drive me nuts).
And I'm kicking myself because I left out "Doctor Who" as being among the best shows on BBC America. I have no idea when it's coming back with the 8th season, but I do look forward to finding out how the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi) will portray him. My favorite of the new series has been David Tenant, who I've never seen do anything bad. But the others have been pretty good as well.
I watched a few episodes of Almost Human on Hulu. But I cannot stand watching commercials, so I aborted altogether until it is available on Amazon Prime or something else I can get for cheap. (I actually only subscribed to Amazon Prime because I figure it will save me the cost of the membership in shipping costs on items I buy before the year is done. Now I have already watched more television shows than in the last five years combined...) I did watch Doctor Who, but not the original series. Just the new one. My opinion is that Almost Human looked like they took the ideas from "I Robot" and made a series of it with no real direction in mind beyond that. Doctor Who also seems to have no real direction besides the fast talking egomaniac pacifist that travels time and makes no attempt to explain how or why. ("Because it is fun" is not a reason to me.) So besides Amazon Prime, anyone have a suggestion for any good sites or services to see these programs from? Commercial services without advertising are the only ones I will even consider. I do not want to download a copy to keep, but I do want to compensate the provider and producers fairly. Streaming is good. Downloading to a file is more of a burden than it should be. Thank you in advance for any ideas. *Edit* Removed the off-topic ramble entirely. No sense leaving that mess in there. Can anyone tell me if Almost Human is on Netflix? I am thinking of subscribing so that I have even less free time than I already do... I am guessing it is another Silverlight site that gives you basically zero control over the quality. Amazon Prime once let you implicitly choose HD versions of the shows and movies they have in HD/SD, but now it does not work half the time and restarts the stream if you have to pause or reduce the size from full screen to a window to do something in the background or another tab.
I may need to make another thread for this. I wanted to ask if anyone here has tried the Roku device(s) and can tell me anything about how much it winds up costing for a decent selection of channels? I know it requires Internet access for everything, and that is no problem. I would rather pay for the channels my aging mother actually wants rather than a generic bunch of garbage that is three quarters duplicates with only a few channels she cares about. We are currently using Charter Cable for her television and for my Internet access. There is more than enough bandwidth for HD quality content from all the media streaming I have tried. I would love to ween her from the nipple of the cable monopoly. (She has been complaining because they keep removing channels she likes, and trying to fix anything with a cable company is seemingly impossible at best. She has no Weather channel anymore, and previously had no less than a half-dozen of them.) We are currently paying just over $50 every month for her cable television. Would this be enough to get her a decent selection of media from the Roku device? (They do not list any prices on the channels on the site, so that is why I ask here.)
I checked -- "Almost Human is about $33.00 for the first season on Amazon, which imho is criminal.. It's $23.00 on Vudu, or $1.99 for a single episode, if you don't mind it in SD (HD is the same price as Amazon). Hulu does have it if you have a premium membership, but yes, you'd have to watch commercials.
Thanks. I will either ignore the existence of that show altogether or wait several years until it costs something less than my soul to buy.
BTW, Orphan Black IS on Amazon Prime, I saw. It's one of those shows that's interesting and has its moments, but I can't help wishing it had better actors. The star, who gets all sorts of praise for playing several different roles in it, really has some problems with some of her accents which can be distracting at times.
Well, on the list of "things netflix or amazon prime has," I've finally gotten around to watching Firefly. Only two episodes in so far. Not sure how it took me this long. Space opera western? Good stuff. Typical Whedon fare: action, jokes, and good production value. I happen to like everything on that list so I'm rather enjoying it so far. I know it was cut short, so that means I don't have a lot of episodes to catch up on.
The movie sequel to the series, "Serenity" is also actually very good. If you like the series, you should definitely watch that as well. The only thing that bothers me about "Firefly" is the general premise (which sometimes can be lost if you aren't paying close enough attention). The whole series is supposed to take place in a single solar system -- yes, all the planets that they visit orbit around the same star, and are all habitable. But they do good job of covering that little piece of the story up (it becomes more obvious though in the movie).
Might I inquire as to why that bothers you? I obviously don't have much to go on yet, but I think Train Job or maybe even the pilot mentioned something about terraforming, and definitely in Train Job they pointed out how the terraforming causes all sorts of problems. Is it that there's too much going on in such a small solar system? I think Cowboy Bebop takes place just in our solar system and they get a lot of use out of those planets. Again, I haven't seen enough to form enough of an opinion on the show.
First of all, Terraforming can only go so far. It's not just a matter of replacing whatever is there with a breathable atmosphere, but maintaining that atmosphere, having a gravitational field that will not crush the life out of you, and not actually lose your atmosphere faster than you can produce it. temperatures such that the atmosphere does not actually freeze or liquify, while also allowing humans to survive on the surface and so on. Remember also that terraforming does not generally mean the totally impossible act of transporting and atmosphere to a planet but using the hopefully already present elements to produce an atmosphere. So there's that... Second, you are talking about complex orbital dynamics where you have umpteen earth-similar planets all within the 'goldilocks zone' without any two of them being pulled into each other, or the sun, or being sling-shotted out of orbit. You'd have to imagine that throwing in planetary moons would make things even more chaotic. Even if you did come up with a stable system (which I doubt any existent computer could calculate -- I suspect because such a system would be impossible), the tides ought to be crazy some times during the year.. It's a bit much. But I'm willing to forget about it because there's some entertaining stories there.
