This weekend, I watched a DTM race for the first time. That's not to say that I've never seen a DTM race, as I've followed the series (known as the German Touring Car Masters) on and off since the early 1990s. The format of these highlight shows remained fairly consistent over the past two decades. The opening minutes would summarize qualifying, a discussion of the season thus far, and interviews. The middle third of the hour-long broadcast would show edited portions of the race. Each show would end with wrapping-up interviews, and a little of the podium celebrations. Thus, after commercials, what I actually saw of the race was probably little more than twenty minutes of the cars speeding around the track. Even if I had to endure this brief glimpse of the series, I longed to watch the highlight shows during the year, rather than several months after the entire series had ended.
A few months ago, discussions with a friend led me to investigate the history of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four. I discovered that Roger Corman helped produce a low-budget movie in 1994 based on their origin story, and their first meeting with the villainous Doctor Doom. Although the movie was never officially released, either direct-to-video or in cinemas, it demonstrated that the people who had purchased the movie rights from Marvel understood the characters, and desperately wanted to do them justice with a big budget motion picture. I discovered that the movie was available on Youtube, and watched it one afternoon. While it was hard to evaluate the film's merits, watching it as I did on a small rectangle on my laptop, I found it highly enjoyable.
I've realized for some time now that the DTM races were available on Youtube, so the desire to watch complete races, and follow the series throughout the season, beckoned. That, plus my interest in watching Roger Corman's "The Fantastic Four" on my TV, led my wife to investigate the possibilities of doing so. She discovered that we could access the Internet through our Playstation 3 game console, and found an app that made it possible to see content with the entire TV screen. I worried about excessive pixelation during the movie, but it played so nicely that my wife forgot at times that she wasn't watching a DVD. I worried about the feed halting at times, but everything played smoothly, and the video and sound quality were both excellent (in the case of the races, sometimes even better than the usual broadcasts).
While we're happy with our cable Internet access, we've been wondering lately if we really need Cable TV. Has the time arrived when I stop thinking of television in terms of channels and times, and start thinking of it as a database I can access at my leisure? I'm not sure that we've answered that question yet, but I know this. I loved watching "The Fantastic Four," and wish they would release the film on DVD, along with bonus material about the production. We also enjoyed watching the DTM races from Spielberg (Germany) and Brands Hatch, complete and uncut, and each with a length of approximately one hour-and-forty minutes. I'm wonder what else we'll discover--and grow to love--as we investigate how technology is revolutionizing our (apparently) outdated concept of home entertainment.
Dragon Dave
Related Internet Links
The DTM Racing Series
The 1994 Fantastic Four movie
No comments:
Post a Comment