As I prepare yet again to return once more to Phoenix to do Trustee work, I have TCM’s streaming video app running on an Amazon Fire TV stick. After an extended rough start, with annoyingly choppy playback, TCM has the technology figured out, and its streaming service works great. It’s now in HD, so it doesn’t matter that the station is in SD on my Verizon FiOS TV service. What matters is I have the channel in my cable package, and that gives me access to the streaming service.
Almost two years ago this was my plan for TV watching in retirement on the porch, when I returned one of my two cable boxes and replaced it with an over-the-air TiVo DVR. It’s finally all working as it should, and as of this month the TiVo DVR has paid for itself.
This weekend I watched two MGM favorites from the 50’s — “Forbidden Planet” and “North by Northwest” — and they played perfectly. Not having a Blu-ray copy of either movie, I was knocked out by the picture quality on Watch TCM. “High Society” is playing right now, but I’d better turner it off, as Grace Kelly has always been very distracting to me, and I have a lot to do on this 4th of July!