2009 has brought the advent of the HD age to our household and things are changing in our content consumption. Before I purchased our new LCD TV at Costco, I promised myself that I would not spend a bunch of money after to make all our content HD. In fact, the main reason we got the TV was because of the Xbox. The impending HD switch-over was a consideration but not a big one because DirecTV provides our television content and they will continue to provide the same service for some time.

Still, the whole family is very HD curious and we longed for more HD content. Friends advised me that Netflix offers on-demand HD content and yesterday I revisited their website to see how much a membership cost and how the on-demand thing worked. When we left Netflix, the minimum membership was $19/month and gave you 3 DVDs at a time. Now Netflix has a $5/month plan that gives you 1 DVD at a time. However, if you get the $9/month plan, you get 1 DVD and unlimited on-demand viewing. That means we can watch as many movies as we want on the Xbox and they will be delivered at higher than DVD quality. Because we had to relocate the Xbox in order to connect it to the new TV, it’s no longer near a network connection. Thus, I need to buy an Ethernet cable long enough to reach from it’s old location to the new location (about 10 feet) before we can try out the Netflix on-demand feature.

While we’ve been gone, Netflix has really improved their service and added many features. One of these is the ability to share your ratings, queue and other information with friends. Because I’m “new” to the Netflix, I have no friends. If you’re on Netflix, please be my friend.

Aside from that, it’s been a very nice weekend here. The sun has been out and we even left our windows open last night. We spent this morning doing some yard work and then we let the kittens out but not for very long. It’s too hard tracking all three at the same time!

Thanks to Kathy Sue, we also have been enjoying a Starz Preview Weekend on DirecTV. My Tivo is overflowing with movies now and I’ve made most of them green (“Keep Until I Delete”) so we’ll need to watch some movies this week. We’ve already watched several including a really scary one with Luke Wilson called Vacancy. Tina kept squeezing my fingers when we were watching it and then claiming that I was squeezing hers!

This was the first Hawkeye football game I’ve seen this season. Here’s a few thoughts I had during the game:

• This quarterback, Jake Christensen, had a terrible first quarter. Just when I was about to write he was throwing high or behind his receiver every time, he threw a perfect pass to his tight end for the first touchdown of the game. Despite that, he still threw some pretty ugly passes throughout the pass and his receivers saved his ass a few times.
• I love the “jailbreak screen” play. Along with the full-court press from the Tom Davis basketball years, it’s among my favorite Iowa plays. When they do it right, it’s so unexpected and takes place in the middle of the field.
• It’s hard to believe both Sims and Young are still in the backfield. It seems like they’ve been playing for this team for many years. Let’s just assume they are seniors and they are playing legally.
• Sure enough, Christensen overthrew his receiver in the second quarter and it resulted in an interception. Is he this inconsistent all the time?
• Come third quarter my interest has waned. I suppose I’ll skim the fourth quarter since the scrubs will be playing for the rest of the game.