TV shows take time

So, I haven't really kept up on much of anything on broadcast TV for a couple of decades and more. I've picked up a few shows and watched them all, but mainly animated stuff, a few other things here and there. Lots of documentaries, quiz shows, etc.

Last weekend I decided to start nibbling at things - pick a show, start watching, try to polish off an episode a day.

I started with Voyager, it being the ST franchise I have seen the least of. ISTR that around season 3 it got OK.

I'm up to episode 7 after a few days. After watching that, I backed out on Netflix and counted. 170 episodes. Even watching one episode a night, that's half a year. Then I have several other ST franchises to get through. And I'm 3 years behind on Doctor Who, 4 or 5 years behind on The Simpsons, never seen a single episode of Family Guy (I know I may not be missing much on some of these, but I figure I should at least sample some of the most popular things).

I'm also finding a bunch of new documentaries that I really would like to watch. Over the weekend we watched one about how honey badgers really are assholes (though still fascinating), and I found a kind of neat show about weird stuff hidden away in various museums.

Even if I stick to this, I've probably picked a 5 year project here and I'm not sure if I really have or want to spend the time on it.

Energy efficient

I measured the power consumption of the new TV today. It's a Sony Bravia 48" LED LCD. 5 watts standby, 45 watts when running. I'm a bit disappointed with the 5 watt standby, they should be able to do better than that. I did turn off some of the energy saving things, in an attempt to have it booted and ready for network video playback as soon as it's turned on (by default it takes 20 seconds or so for that bit to boot) but it doesn't seem to have made any difference.

Still, it's the lowest total energy consumption TV that I saw, rated $9 per year to run, whatever that means. It was one of the considerations when purchasing.

The movie projector and audio system draw about 300 watts (250 for the projector, 30 for the receiver, 7 for the blu-ray player, 15 for the sub), but comparatively little (about 4 watts) on standby. So it'll cost about a dime to watch a movie (for just electricity). I guess I can live with that. I do need to remember to turn off the subwoofer, it draws 15 watts just sitting there. It does have a hard power switch so absolutely zero when off.