I had to do it one more time. I had to watch The Vampire Diaries online again. Last time I swore I’d never watch something online at The CW’s website, but circumstances and the evil of destiny had other plans for this poor, wayward TV viewer.
Due to reasons and complications that don’t need exploring at this time, (My wife says I recorded over it), we had to watch The Vampire Diaries online… again. There’s only one place you can watch the show, and so I headed off to The CW’s website, hoping for the best. What I got was something that I had to turn into a simulated old fashion radio broadcast. I’ll explain in a moment.
When I brought up the episode of The Vampire Diaries I needed to watch, I couldn’t go full screen. The image was very blocky, so I had another opportunity to watch something in tiny square screen. But on top of that, the words were off time. The below sentence may demonstrate:
Words: This episode of The Vampire Diaries was pretty interesting to watch. It must have been fun to see it.
I Heard: the previous sentence spoken would go here. This episode of The Vampire Diaries was pretty interesting to watch. It must have been fun to see it.
Everything was off time. Bad. It as like the old Kung-fu movies everyone likes to make fun at. Yet, much to my chagrin, the commercials were perfectly synced, and much louder. We had 5 commercial breaks, each with 3 to 5 ads. And most of them, the same ad played twice. And all the commercial breaks were the same set of ads.
The mental anguish was unbearable, so I laid down, closed my eyes and only listened. It was the only way to “watch!”
The odd thing about this experience though, is that at work, I play-tested the episode and it seemed fine there. (Usually, my home bandwidth is as good as my work feed). So I wonder if it’s not The CW, but Comcast that’s the bottleneck?
Eh, we’ll never know. My therapy sessions are coming to a close and I’m recovering nicely from my online viewing horror. We think the best way to avoid this from ever happening again, is to buy the equipment to tape the CW 24/7. Just to be sure.
