Sam Anderson has a nice article up on Slate on the virtues of watching HBO on DVD. I doubt I'll ever have the fortitude to actually skip a season of a favorite TV show in order to watch the whole thing on DVD, but I certainly have experienced the pleasures of the immersive, entire-season-in-3-days experience. In fact, I think my preferred TV-watching pattern has become: 1) completely ignore show as it becomes cultural phenomenon 2) long after the hype has died down (hence little possibility of accidentally reading spoilers in the media), succumb to badgering of more media-savvy friend and order experimental DVD from Netflix; 3) finish DVD, become distraught at prospect of 2-day wait to get remaining DVDs from Netflix; 4) break down and purchase entire season at local B&N, then proceed to watch it all over some long, feverish weekend when I'm supposed to be doing something else.
I'll note that this mode of watching adds even more to broadcast TV than HBO; given the inevitably erratic schedule, shorter episode running time, and need to fast-forward through commercials, it's really hard to get emotionally involved in any given episode of a broadcast show. I am watching Gilmore Girls in real time this season after having watched the previous 5 in a summer through some combination of DVD, TiVoed reruns, and (I confess) BitTorrent, and I can't figure out if the show has dramatically deteriorated or if it's just too delicate and slow-paced to work one episode at a time. Same with Veronica Mars, for which I also switched to real-time viewing this season - did the plot suddenly become choppy and nonsensical, or is it just that I can no longer remember what happened in the early-season episodes I saw months ago?
