Prepare Yourself for a Pleasant Surprise

Yesterday I found myself relaxed on the couch.  The kids were napping, and my wife was in the kitchen fixing some wonderful treat for later (muffins or chicken tacos or something… anyway it doesn’t matter). I was there in the living room looking at the TV deciding how to spend the next couple hours.  The Titans were not playing this week and I had already watched the Blu-Ray movies that we rented last week.  I probably could have invested some time into cleaning out the garage, but it was cold in there; and I was feeling very comfortable on the couch.  That is when I did something I probably would have never done about three years ago. I watched a Chinese film from 2008, and it was awesome!

I was pleasantly surprised by this obscure foreign film. Once I got past the dubbed voices, which I would have preferred subtitles to; I rather enjoyed it.  In fact, I would consider it to be one of the better action/drama movies I’ve seen in a long time.  Much better than “The Losers” which I had watched the night before.  And had it not been for modern technology which has just been available for the past few months I would have missed it completely.  I would never invest the energy to rent an obscure foreign film from a video store, a red box or even a mail order service.  The risk of not enjoying it and being left with the option of watching something I hate or re-runs of old shows is too great for me. But now there is something that eliminates the risk, and even the work of getting off the couch, it’s called “Streaming Video”.

Now streaming video is nothing new.  People have been streaming video to their computers for years, usually short clips from viral video sites like YouTube. (Which if you haven’t seen the video of my son with a toilet seat stuck on his head you’ve got to see it.)  More recently other video streaming methods came along, sites like Hulu.com which would allow users to watch full feature films and TV shows, but only through a computer. Now the invention of streaming directly to your television through subscription sites like Netflix has revolutionized the video rental industry, and to be honest, it’s revolutionized my video watching experience as well.

I can now stream high definition movies over my high speed internet connection through Netflix directly to my living room television and control it all right there with the same remote that operates everything else in the room.  I can put my feet up and watch whatever Kung Fu foreign film I want without the risk of wasting a dollar, waiting three days for another disk, or even expelling the energy to walk across the room. There are still some limitations with streaming video, but those quality and availability issues are quickly becoming resolved.  And to be honest, I am not unhappy at all with the solutions available today.

The world is changing, blockbusters are disappearing and video rentals are becoming an instantaneous thing that happens from your couch.  You should find out what it’s all about.  Who knows, maybe you will find yourself a new classic movie you will love like I did.  That movie by the way was “Ip Man”!