Poor, poor Discovery Channel. Discovery may be my most favorite TV channel - I eat up Mythbusters and now Koppel on Discovery with a spoon. But please present your shows better! This was my experience tonight trying to watch The Long War:
Sit down to watch the show in HD. Find out that it's not on when it's on in Standard Def. Very well... come back later.
Sit down again to watch the show in HD. The first thing that comes on is something with water droplets letting me know that THIS is Discovery HD! Pretty. Looks like something I'd see on loop at Best Buy. On with the show!
A second video comes on: This... is Discovery HD! View of Earth. A sunrise. Discovery HD!!
A third: THIS IS DISCOVERY HD! Zebras jumping! Wild cats swiping! Are you ready for it? HD programming could come on at ANY minute! This is Discovery HD.
What felt to be 10 minutes later, these things were still letting me know that I had in fact turned to the proper channel, which I was fully ready to tune out of. In fact, I left the room, took care of a few things and came back to find these things still running: Yep, I'm watching Discovery HD alright. Only my love for Discovery Channel kept the TV on - I imagine most potential Discovery converts (which seemed to be the goal of The Long War with the way it was promoted on other networks...) have long since moved on. I feel despair that my favorite channel is scaring off people I could potentially converse with about what SOUNDS like a great show (if it ever comes on).
At last, the show comes on. And alas... the audio is at least a second delayed and the video keeps screwing up, getting oddly blocky. No! I watched wild life montages and vague CG for 10 minutes for this! The cable can't die on me now!
I check other channels for signal corruption. Nothing - everything's clean - it's the danged broadcast.
This... is Discovery HD?
I can only assume the massive amount of "Heyyyy viewer guess what channel you're watchinggg" was filler because insufficient advertisers signed up (although were you going to put us through that many commercials?) And I assume the video corruption was just someone asleep at the switch. I realize Discovery can't operate on the budget of NBC, but it seems like these are a matter of covering the very basics - it's got to be possible to get these right.... no?
All of that said I did eventually get a clean rebroadcast of the show much later, and it was a good show. Informative and above all really made me think. I hope it's presented in a format at some point that won't turn the average viewer away, so that more people think... it stands to benefit the country a great deal.
Watching the Blackwater guy fry himself was enjoyable - the show did that part perfectly, presenting a clear case of what's needed and what's harmful and then letting him push the harmful approach as hard as he could. Blackwater's ideal scenario is perpetual war and more and more of it, so they'll spin it as a solution to any problem. Remodeling your kitchen? Blackwater's team of trained killers can help.
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