NBC's online Rewind... sucks

Because of my work schedule and clerk social life on Thursday nights, I've had to watch The Office online through NBC's Rewind website rather than on tv at its regular time. While the plus side of being able to watch both The Office and My Name is Earl online without legal repercussions (see, e.g., Jury (unsurprisingly) finds against woman in music download case), I have to say that NBC's rewind site is almost as bad as watching the show in real time on tv. At least CBS puts their new shows on demand, why can't the other networks?

With NBC's Rewind, you now have to watch at least two commercials now instead of one (although even that is pretty inconsistent). One commercial is bad enough, and you can hit mute on that one; the second comes blaring out and there's nothing you can do about it but take off your headphones until it's over. In this sense, ABC's online system is much better and less obstructive. I would even go as far as to say that NBC's Amazon partnership system is a lot better and probably easier for them to track data, so I'm surprised they don't direct their site traffic to them instead of trying to host it themselves. One of my friends even suggested that they would rather just pay the dollar or two and watch it commercial free on itunes. I'm almost inclined to agree. In lieu of these mandatory online commercials, product placement works ten times better.

Fortunately or unfortunately, NBC again has failed to meet any reasonable expectations for the tech savvy generation of which I am a part. Similar to my complaints from last year, I can only simply voice my concern on the internet with their online entertainment division, and hope that the higher ups at GE hire somebody new.

On a related note, I plan on watching Pushing Daisies at some point during my long weekend, so I'll probably write up a review about it, probably later today since my Saturday night plans have been shifted to tomorrow. And I know I said I wouldn't watch My Name is Earl again, but it was on last week and the parts I saw were funny, so I caught up with it online, and sure enough, the two episodes so far are funnier than any of the episodes last season. It's still not as good as the first season, but there is hope.

The second episode of Journeyman (Friendly Skies) was okay enough to watch another but I think the show is going to lose me within a couple weeks because it is getting harder and harder to suspend disbelief for it (I mean, disappearing from an airplane, post-Sept. 11? And next week, the '89 SF earthquake? Come on).

Heroes, however, seems to be getting better (although I concede that it sort of seems like a rehashing of the first season storyline so far).

And, on a totally unrelated note, the HR Hero Blog continues to be updated with legal insight into the zany misadventures of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch. Check it out if you have any interest in employment law, it's quite enlightening. Not my cup of tea, but interesting nonetheless.

Tags: nbc rewind, nbc sucks