THE BEST OF 2005 TELEVISION

TV technology is on the upswing with myriad devices that allow viewers to watch television when they want, where they want and how they want

BY DIANE WERTS | STAFF WRITER; Verne Gay

December 25, 2005

TV technology is on the upswing with myriad devices that allow viewers to watch television when they want, where they want and how they want.

Those anti-TV folks who urge you on buttons and bumper stickers to "Kill your television" wouldn't win their battle these days even if they did persuade you to trash that tube in your living room.

Now they'd have to kill your DVD, your DVR, your computer, your iPod, your PSP, your cell phone and any number of other devices through which you can now watch video anytime anywhere anyhow.

The availability of the medium we still quaintly call television has exploded during the past 12 months in ways we won't fully grasp for awhile yet. But TV is suddenly popping up everywhere. In just the past three months, we've seen Apple debuting a pocket-size video iPod; ABC/Disney and NBC/Universal offering hot prime-time shows such as "Lost" via the iTunes computer download service; CBS agreeing to on-demand digital cable "rental" of just-aired episodes of hits such as "CSI"; NBC allying with DirecTV in "pushing" satellite delivery of its big shows to digital video recorders; and any number of cell phone companies hyping their new or imminent video-viewing capabilities.

TV on DVD also remains that disc format's fastest growing category. Series such as "24" are now offering fresh content such as the new Season 4 set's 10-minute preview of a Season 5 that doesn't launch on Fox until mid-January. For that matter, the same DVD set preserves last season's promotional one-minute "mobisodes" filmed by "24" producers with a different cast specifically to be viewed on cell phones. And TV content is now becoming available for the on-the-go Playstation Portable (PSP) video game device from Sony via the smaller 2.4-inch Universal Media Disc (UMD) format.

Whether most folks want to watch TV on the teeny screens of an iPod, cell phone or even PSP remains an open question. But what's already clear is that millions of viewers have begun adapting their TV time to their lives, rather than the other way around of the previous half century.

Why be home at X time to watch Program Y when it airs? You don't even have to set your VCR anymore. Just grab your digital cable remote, and there's a good chance you can watch that show on-demand whenever you want, easily starting, stopping and rewinding it via fiber optic cable from a cyber-server at the cable operator's head-end. Sure, TiVo could do that already, but you had to tell the machine to remember what you wanted to watch. And you had a capacity limit. On-demand offers a library of hundreds, even thousands, of choices that don't have to be planned or watched even on your premises.

Why wait a week to see what happens next either? Delayed gratification is a thing of the past - if you can wait even longer than that weekly gap between episodes for the DVD season set to arrive. Then you can binge on a series uninterrupted by pumping disc after disc into the DVD player, savoring an entire season of "24," for instance, in considerably less than 24 hours straight.

If these advances haven't yet changed the way you personally watch TV, they will. Because they'll change the way producers and networks make and present TV. In 2005, we saw the long-canceled series "Family Guy" revived by the Fox network thanks to surging DVD sales. Expect more such off-air success stories. This year's advances haven't all reached fruition yet, but the wheels are in motion, and spinning fast. The tube suddenly has a whole new pioneer spirit - a video version of the rough-and-tumble Wild West.

Yee-ha!

TOP 10 TV MOMENTS
Diane Werts

What kind of Tubeworld are we living in when two shows from UPN make the year's Top 10 list and none from top-rated CBS does? When the year's deepest drama is a space tale? When Canadians sneak into the mix? Well, it's a wacky, shifting, anything-goes TV universe now.

1. Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi). Wow. Who expected the year's best drama and most telling current-events allegory to come in a space-set actioner? This sly and sleek reimagining from "Star Trek" veteran Ronald D. Moore tackles nothing less than the meaning of civilization and the makeup of morality. As post-nuke humans battle for survival against a race of seemingly ruthless androids, Moore's writers neatly twist our expectations of who and what is "good" and "right" in a war of covert terrorism. You can look at this saga any way you want - as political drama, religious debate, psychological suspenser, sci-fi adventure, deep metaphor or just plain fun - and it's scintillating from every angle. (New episodes resume Jan. 6.)

2. House (Fox). Hugh Laurie establishes himself as the year's most provocative TV character: a brilliant diagnostic physician, crummy human being and devilishly rapier wit, solving medical mysteries like a detective doctor. Slick production and the addition of Sela Ward as his ex-fiancee foil make this Tuesday hour a must-watch in a tough time slot.

3. My Name Is Earl (NBC). Forget "Joey." This Tuesday-heading-to-Thursday half-hour is NBC's hot comedy of the future. Single-camera, sweet instead of sarcastic, focused on earthy folks rather than snotty "sophisticates," everything about "Earl" turns NBC's aging sitcom template on its head. Thank God. Jason Lee's small-town ne'er-do-well turned must-do-gooder brings genuine warmth back to prime-time comedy.

4. Everybody Hates Chris (UPN). Ditto this Chris Rock concoction about his 1980s Brooklyn youth. Narrator Rock and producer Ali LeRoi use gentle humor to assess hard topics such as poverty and racism, all wrapped up in a loving family setting with nutty childhood shenanigans. This sharp-eyed nostalgia trip couldn't be more old-fashioned or forward-looking. Or funny for all ages.

5. Veronica Mars (UPN). This teenage sleuth is no innocent Nancy Drew. Even though the sun always shines on her elite California town, Kristin Bell's high schooler lives under a cloud of mass murder, date rape, class warfare and more. The stories just get smarter, twistier, more probing and intensely personal.

6. Barbershop (Showtime). Everything clicks in this breezy, bawdy movie spinoff. Adapter John Ridley rides herd on a wild assortment of urban eccentrics who bounce off each other in quick-cut adventures that let adults act like adults, whether they're silly or surprisingly serious. How much do we love premium cable?

7. Slings & Arrows (Sundance). A TV show that makes you want to see some theater! This unique six-episode Canadian import struck just the right loving, loopy tone as it portrayed the machinations behind a Shakespeare festival with a possibly insane new director (Paul Gross) and a loony troupe of acting egos, corporate supporters and literally ghostly leadership. Can't wait for the second season.