On Demand

The red light brightly shown on the digital cable box as I settled into the couch for a lazy dinner of Hot Pockets. "Ooh...a message from the cable gods. There must be a fight on pay-per-view this weekend." I quickly navigated through the menu and discovered that it was not boxing, but HBO OnDemand. HBO OnDemand was teasing me with the entire fourth season of The Sopranos. Funny, as I was just thinking, "Now Sex and the City is over with, how do I catch up on the Sopranos?" Seems like the gods can read minds, but of course it's going to cost me. Great things like this aren't free. But wait...it's included in our normal HBO fees. WOW! Finally, they got something right. I can watch every gripping episode from the blow-me-away fourth season at my leisure. All from the comfort of my own home. Not only that, but they have movies, documentaries, comedy specials and all of the other great programming that HBO offers - right at my fingertips. You can pause, forward and reverse any show. It's like having a TiVo for HBO only, except that you can watch only what they offer, and it has to be complete within a given window, and once you start it that window shrinks considerably. (So close, yet so far.) But still, it's very cool to the non-TiVo user. I think I'm going to have fun with this.