I work, and believe me I work hard. I read a lot and normally when I am home I like to relax with my food. I am single so leaving alone, and believe me guys, only thing which can replace wife is TV, the idiot box. I dont have the experience of wife, so lets leave that part, I have lot many friends and do hang out and I am not a couch ptato. But there are times when I stick to home, like when I am not feeling well, having a bad mood or feeling lonely and one more important reason....when I do write my results into a paper form for publishing them in a journal. Under these circumstances the thing which do take care of lonelyness is TV. But I like to see, informative programs, news and movies or some funny program like ’DREW’, ’Sansfield’, ’Friends’. I dont like to hook to serials or soaps. I can’t be regular watching them. I dont have time for it. I did quit my reading as a hobby because I do have so much of professional reading and then I try to keep up with technology, it becomes difficult to find space for all this. I cant have many hobbies, so I have a few. But recently, I had bad tooth, went to doctor and took out two of them, lots of pain and agony, had to take off and stay home for a week, I took digital cable for a couple of months and it helped. I saw the channels, and the least time I saw was HBO. It has five channels. I use to surf around to get something which can catch me. Mostly I look for movies and no original series get my attention. Cinemax is also a part of HBO. So the movies are kind of in rotation in all the six channels, so most of the time there are the same movies playing over and over again. But I prefer not to watch movies which I have already seen unless it is something close to my heart, like Mask or something like A Beautiful Mind. So I had to surf for other channells. My conclusion was its better to have basic package (includes 10 basic channels which are just kind of DD channels in India, nothing much to show, do news coverage, one whether channel and NBC and discovery. I like NBC news channel). You can do add extended service to it which includes CNN. I am not a big fan of CNN. I like BBC which comes only with whole package, which is expensive, and I dont feel to take it so I dont have it. I tried all channels before also but in a month you dont feel the need of them. So now I have basic+ extended and one of the movie channel. Movie channel I like to change after every two months to keep getting new movies.
For me HBO is not worth its cost. May be becuase I dont have time to watch them, or may be its the right thing to do. I dont want to be stucked to those soap operas which does not seem to move by one inch in a whole 7 episodes. I prefer programs which can be missed like ’Friends’ and try to laugh after a day of hard work.
So guys think and decide.... if you like soap operas, daily serials and can devote enough time for the TV go for HBO, if you have a family even then HBO is a good choice, but if you are like me, just forget it till you have a family. Remember, content of a few programms are really offending. Sex and City...in Saturday night live was called as W, , , , and city. One charcter is always looking for a good f... SHe will do anything for it and it seems to be the only motto of her life. ’’Real Sex’’ is about liberalisation from sexual inhibitions and do show title like Sex on net, group sex, mast....... club and whatever..I am trying to keep my review free of offensive language, but describing more may not be possible in these circumstances. I was kind of shocked looking at the degree of liberalisation in these programs. I don’t want to discuus the ethical issues here beacuse ethics is also a matter of choice and I dont have anything against anybodies life style. I am just warning to you people about the content which may be alright for many of you and may be offensive to many of you.
But my opinion is use TV for better viewing and go for Discovery, National geographic Special and if you are interested in else, I dont think anybody will like these things to go to their kids before they are mature enough for it. For me it was fine, I am single but I will keep these things in mind once I have my family. I know a few of you will argue about parental control option in TV and few may dont mind it at all, but still I just pointed out it and rest is to your discretion.
To conclude HBO is just hype. I feel programs on other channels are more original and better, there are some original movies and serials on HBO, only once in a while any movie impressed me, and till date no serial impressed me. It seems to be an advertisement place for sex industry.
I dont know HBO pays for those programms or is payed for them.