Since you asked, allow me to suggest this television show: 'Fresh From the Garden' on DIY Network. You may not get this, but it is a national show. DIY Network is a sister station to HGTV. This show is all about vegetable gardening, from seed to harvest. I may be partial though, because I'm the host of the show. If you'd like more info. check out www.diynetwork.com, and look up the show by title, or do a search. You can also google me (Joe Lamp'l) to find out more. Hope you get to watch.

I love my TIVO! I have the Series II with DVD Burner that's about 5 years old and it's great. I don't use the burner as much as I used to. But it is super if I need to offload some shows that I haven't gotten to watch. I recently was close to filling up my disk space so I offloaded a slew of gardening shows to DVDs to make room for the new seasons of Desparate Housewives, Greys Anatomy, etc. etc.. I keep recording stuff, but I have trouble getting around to watching them. I also got the lifetime membership which I think had a break-even point at around 3 years. So now I am "winning" with "free" service. I don't think they offer lifetime membership anymore. not sure. At some point though, I will eventually want to get high-def, so I will need digital cable (am only analog now) and new LCD-HDTV. (32" or 36" I hope will do). THen I will have to bite the bullet and get the Tivo HD XL (nice chart dtd, thanks!) I will lose the burning capability and I will lose the lifetime membership, plus the digital HD cable will cost me more than currently. I don't need all those shows. I wish they had High-Def-basic! For recording, I suppose I could go with cable DVR at that point, but I think once you have Tivo, its hard to be without it. This is one of my favorite subjects and I almost missed it thinking we were still lamenting the demise of the good 'ole Victory Garden and the "G" in HGTV. (both of which are certainly worth lamenting!!!)

I don't have television so I can't really comment on whats airing out on the waves but if I did have television I would enjoy seeing a locally based show. It seems like it would be more relevent and engaging to the viewing public. I've done some of those HGTV shows, Inparticular a show called " landscape smart" ( yeah yeah.. you should hear what my sister calls it when she sees me on it.. something like landscape stupid... but I digress ) It does take a long time to shoot those shows and quite a few people are involved in the set up ,story line, filming, editing and final cut. But people who watch these shows love them. And when ever one of the segments that I shot airs my email box has at least a dozen or so letters from viewers who want to know more about something that was not completely covered or they just want to say Hi and that they enjoyed the show. I would like to see the real inner workings of what it truly takes to do a job from the design process all the way thru to the completion. As an example there has been a discussion on the landscape design forum about how different landcape designers come onto a project during the planning stages. Some people said that they can come up with a plan in a matter of a few hours while others take much longer and do much more detailed working drawings before a shovel is lifted. It might be an educational show to inform and educate the public what is really entailed in creating a landscape plan. Like why is it important to know the grade elevations and when is it not as critical to shoot a grade and create a drainage plan. I think a lot of people are mystified by the whole process and a little bit of light shed on the inner workings of why certain steps are taken could be an enlightening and entertaining show.

I'm coming full circle. When we moved to Portland 8 years ago, I got Comcast triple play (voice, TV, internet) for $115, it was such a good deal! Well, over time it went up and up and last year, when it was $230 or so, I dropped voice and replaced it with a $12 extra line with our cellular carrier. That took the Comcast bill from $230/mo to $130/mo This weekend I dropped TV, something my kids have been telling me to do, since we hardly ever watch cable TV. That takes my Comcast bill to $95/mo for just 50 MB/s internet. I will also drop my TiVo service at $15/mo. I can reduce it to $85/mo by downgrading to 25 MB/s internet, or I can drop Comcast entirely and get internet from our local telco. They charge $80/mo for 40 MB/s, but there is a 1 year introductory $30/mo price, and I'm told they extend that for another year if you call and state your intention to drop. We are paying for $16/mo for Netflix and Hulu Plus. I might subscribe to an online sports streaming service for another $10/mo. In the summer, I might pay $30 to watch the Tour de France online. TL:DR version - "I was paying $245/mo for Comcast + TiVo, I am now $123/mo for Comcast + Netflix + Hulu + a cellular home phone, and I can get it to $58/mo for telco internet 1-or-2-year deal + Netflix + Hulu + cellular home phone." I will spend about $200 one-time for a used modem, Roku, cables to connect Mac to TV, maybe an OTA antenna. We are still figuring out the limitations of Netflix and Hulu. For example, my son asked how he could watch the current season of Doctor Who. Turns out that BBC UK streams it but only to the UK, and by going through a free proxy server in the UK, you can watch it in the US.