While I love the series, the DVD set itself is a giant pain.

The DVDs themselves are printed with nothing on them except a number (1-45)

That number tells you nothing about what episodes are on that DVD, or even what season. (When you put the DVDs into their little “briefcases” it will be clear what season they are from, but that’s hardly helpful when just looking at a single DVD.)

So I made my own, and decided to post it here in the hopes that others might find it useful.

Note: After the DVD number is something like “WEST_WING_S1_D7” - that is how the DVD will appear if you load it into a computer. It should also be the folder name which would be created if you ripped the DVD to your hard drive unless you used an app which tried to give you a “pretty name” which may or may not be accurate.

Warning: if you use RipIt I suggest that you do not have it automatically fetch names for these DVDs, as it gave me some confusing names. The names below are the “canonical” names.

Help!

I realized only too late (after I had ripped them already) that this list would be greatly improved if it included the “Handbrake names”. For example, “WEST_WING_S6_D4-2.m4v” is episode s06e12: “365 Days”.

Adding that info to this list could make it easier to come up with a script which would go through all the output files, rename them, and add the necessary metadata to them. It would also make it easier to process VIDEO_TS folders using HandBrakeCLI if someone wanted to do that.

It’s too late for me to track down all that info, but if anyone else is getting ready to rip them and wants to keep a list, I’d gladly add the info here.

Or if you want to make your own list, I’d gladly link to it.

DVD #1: WEST_WING_S1_D1

• s01e01: Pilot [Commentary]
• s01e02: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
• s01e03: A Proportional Response
• s01e04: Five Votes Down

DVD #2: WEST_WING_S1_D2

• s01e05: The Crackpots and These Women
• s01e06: Mr. Willis of Ohio
• s01e07: The State Dinner
• s01e08: Enemies
• No Special Features

DVD #3: WEST_WING_S1_D3

• s01e09: The Short List
• s01e10: In Excelsis Deo [Commentary]
• s01e11: Lord John Marbury
• s01e12: He Shall, from Time to Time…

DVD #4: WEST_WING_S1_D4

• s01e13: Take Out the Trash Day
• s01e14: Take This Sabbath Day [Commentary]
• s01e15: Celestial Navigation [Commentary]
• s01e16: 20 Hours in L.A.

DVD #5: WEST_WING_S1_D5

• s01e17: The White House Pro-Am
• s01e18: Six Meetings Before Lunch
• s01e19: Let Bartlet Be Bartlet
• No Special Features

DVD #6: WEST_WING_S1_D6

• s01e20: Mandatory Minimums
• s01e21: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
• s01e22: What Kind of Day Has It Been? [Commentary]

DVD #7: WEST_WING_S1_D7

• The Primaries
• The Inauguration
• Capital Beat
• Sheet Music
• Deleted Scenes
• Gag Order
• The West Wing Suite
• Off the Record

DVD #8: WEST_WING_S2_D1

• s02e01: In the Shadow of Two Gunmen: Part 1 [Commentary]
• s02e02: In the Shadow of Two Gunmen: Part 2 [Commentary]
• s02e03: The Midterms
• s02e04: In This White House

DVD #9: WEST_WING_S2_D2

• s02e05: And It’s Surely to Their Credit
• s02e06: The Lame Duck Congress
• s02e07: The Portland Trip
• s02e08: Shibboleth
• No Special Features

DVD #10: WEST_WING_S2_D3

• s02e09: Galileo
• s02e10: Noel [Commentary]
• s02e11: The Leadership Breakfast
• s02e12: The Drop In

DVD #11: WEST_WING_S2_D4

• s02e13: Bartlet’s Third State of the Union
• s02e14: The War at Home
• s02e15: Ellie
• s02e16: Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail
• No Special Features

DVD #12: WEST_WING_S2_D5

• s02e17: The Stackhouse Filibuster
• s02e18: 17 People
• s02e19: Bad Moon Rising
• No Special Features

DVD #13: WEST_WING_S2_D6

• s02e20: The Fall’s Gonna Kill You
• s02e21: 18th and Potomac [Commentary]
• s02e22: Two Cathedrals

DVD #14: WEST_WING_S2_D7

• Featurette on Constructing Two Cathedrals
• Access Granted
• Gag Order
• Deleted Scenes

DVD #15: WEST_WING_S3_D1

• s03e01: Isaac and Ishmael
• s03e02: Manchester: Part 1
• s03e03: Manchester: Part 2 [Commentary]
• s03e04: Ways and Means

DVD #16: WEST_WING_S3_D2

• s03e05: On the Day Before
• s03e06: War Crimes
• s03e07: Gone Quiet
• s03e08: The Indians in the Lobby
• No Special Features

DVD #17: WEST_WING_S3_D3

• s03e09: The Women of Qumar
• s03e10: Bartlet for America [Commentary]
• s03e11: H.Con-172
• s03e12: 100,000 Airplanes

DVD #18: WEST_WING_S3_D4

• s03e13: The Two Bartlets
• s03e14: Night Five
• s03e15: Hartsfield’s Landing
• s03e16: Dead Irish Writers
• No Special Features

DVD #19: WEST_WING_S3_D5

• s03e17: The U.S. Poet Laureate
• s03e18: Stirred
• s03e19: Enemies Foreign and Domestic
• No Special Features

DVD #20: WEST_WING_S3_D6

• s03e20: The Black Vera Wang
• s03e21: We Killed Yamamoto
• s03e22: Posse Comitatus [Commentary]

DVD #21: WEST_WING_S3_D7

• A Property Master’s Story
• The Chief of Stuff
• Documentary Special
• Deleted Scenes

DVD #22: WEST_WING_S4_D1

• s04e01: 20 Hours in America: Part 1
• s04e02: 20 Hours in America: Part 2 (**)
• s04e03: College Kids
• s04e04: The Red Mass
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #23: WESTWING_Season4_NA_D2

• s04e05: Debate Camp
• s04e06: Game On [Commentary]
• s04e07: Election Night
• s04e08: Process Stories

DVD #24: WEST_WING_S4_D3

• s04e09: Swiss Diplomacy
• s04e10: Arctic Radar
• s04e11: Holy Night
• s04e12: Guns Not Butter
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #25: WEST_WING_S4_D4

• s04e13: The Long Goodbye
• s04e14: Inauguration: Part 1
• s04e15: Inauguration Day: Part 2: Over There
• s04e16: California 47th
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #26: WEST_WING_S4_D5

• s04e17: Red Haven’s on Fire
• s04e18: Privateers
• s04e19: Angel Maintenance
• s04e20: Evidence of Things Not Seen
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #27: WEST_WING_S4_D6

• s04e21: Life on Mars
• s04e22: Commencement [Commentary]
• s04e23: Twenty Five [Commentary]

DVD #28: WEST_WING_S5_NA_D1

• s05e01: 7A WF 83429 [Commentary]
• s05e02: The Dogs of War [Commentary]
• s05e03: Jefferson Lives
• s05e04: Han

DVD #29: WEST_WING_S5_D2

• s05e05: Constituency of One
• s05e06: Disaster Relief
• s05e07: Separation of Powers
• s05e08: Shutdown
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #30: WEST_WING_S5_D3

• s05e09: Abu el Banat
• s05e10: The Stormy Present
• s05e11: The Benign Prerogative
• s05e12: Slow News Day
• Political Missteps from “Slow News Day” (s05e12) with introduction by Alex Graves

DVD #31: WEST_WING_S5_D4

• s05e13: The Warfare of Genghis Khan
• s05e14: An Khe
• s05e15: Full Disclosure
• s05e16: Eppur Si Muove
• Political Missteps from “Eppur Si Muove” (s05e16)

DVD #32: WEST_WING_S5_D5

• s05e17: The Supremes [Commentary]
• s05e18: Access
• s05e19: Talking Points
• s05e20: No Exit

DVD #33: WEST_WING_S5_D6

• s05e21: Gaza
• s05e22: Memorial Day
• In POTUS We Trust
• “Gaza” Anatomy of an Episode
• Political Missteps from “Memorial Day” (s05e22)

DVD #34: WEST_WING_S6_D1

• s06e01: N.S.F. Thurmont
• s06e02: The Birnam Wood
• s06e03: Third Day Story
• s06e04: Liftoff
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #35: WEST_WING_S6_D2

• s06e05: The Hubbert Peak
• s06e06: The Dover Test
• s06e07: A Change Is Gonna Come
• s06e08: In the Room
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #36: WEST_WING_S6_D3

• s06e09: Impact Winter
• s06e10: Faith-Based Initiative
• s06e11: Opposition Research
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #37: WEST_WING_S6_D4

• s06e12: 365 Days
• s06e13: King Corn [Commentary]
• s06e14: The Wake Up Call
• s06e15: Freedonia

DVD #38: WEST_WING_S6_D5

• s06e16: Drought Conditions
• s06e17: A Good Day
• s06e18: La Palabra
• s06e19: Ninety Miles Away
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #39: WEST_WING_S6_D6

• s06e20: In God We Trust [Commentary]
• s06e21: Things Fall Apart
• s06e22: 2162 Votes [Commentary]
• CJ Cregg: From Press Secretary to Chief of Staff

DVD #40: WEST_WING_S7_D1

• s07e01: The Ticket
• s07e02: The Mommy Problem
• s07e03: Message of the Week
• s07e04: Mr. Frost
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #41: WEST_WING_S7_D2

• s07e05: Here Today
• s07e06: The Al Smith Dinner
• s07e07: The Debate
• “The Debate” Live from the Director’s Chair

DVD #42: WEST_WING_S7_D3

• s07e08: Undecideds
• s07e09: The Wedding
• s07e10: Running Mates
• s07e11: Internal Displacement
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #43: WEST_WING_S7_D4

• s07e12: Duck and Cover
• s07e13: The Cold
• s07e14: Two Weeks Out
• s07e15: Welcome to Wherever You Are
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #44: WEST_WING_S7_D5

• s07e16: Election Day
• s07e17: Election Day: Pt. 2
• s07e18: Requiem
• s07e19: Transition
• No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)

DVD #45: WEST_WING_S7_D6

• s07e20: The Last Hurrah
• s07e21: Institutional Memory
• s07e22: Tomorrow
• Countdown to West Wing Live

Notes:

1. “No Special Features (Attractive Nuisance)” means that the DVD has a “Special Features” item on the root menu, but it just says “See other discs”.***

2. On the DVD, s04e01 and s04e02 have been combined into one episode.

I’ve also created this in a printable format (US-Letter, landscape, unrestricted PDF).

In the third season, episode 16 “The U.S. Poet Laureate” there is a sub-story about a “fan site” devoted to Josh Lyman called “LemonLyman.com”.

In it Josh falls prey to one of the most sinister traps on all the Internet, summarized brilliantly here in XKCD #386:

Unfortunately for Josh he doesn’t seem to realize the futility of this, and (even worse) ignores the sage advice of the lovely and smarter Donna, who tries repeatedly to warn him.

Enough preamble. Here’s the clip (7min 32sec, about 12.5mb):

Some highlights (note that the times are of the clip above, not from the actual episode):

Starting at 1:33:

Josh: Sit down, we’re going to post a response on the site.
Donna: What site?
Josh: Lemon-
Donna: No.
Josh: Yeah, we gotta post a response to someone.
Donna: It’s a bad idea.
Josh: Why?
Donna: You don’t know these people.
Josh: Neither do you.
Donna: Yes I do.
Josh: What’s wrong with them?
Donna: Nobody knows.

3:00 Donna: [After typing the response Josh insists on sending] What Josh doesn’t know is that some of these people haven’t taken their medication. Let’s watch what happens now.

3:18 Josh: Donna… something weird is happened here.
Donna: What?
Josh: Lemon-
Donna: No…
Josh: They don’t seem to have taken my response in the spirit it was intended.
Donna: Yeah
Josh: Seems to be a very unusual social structure…for instance, there’s a leader who seems to pride herself on her organizational skills and a certain amount of discipline…
Donna: Right, that’s what’s called a “control freak”.
Josh: She does seem to do an awful lot of scolding: “You posted in the wrong place… Stay on topic, people… Don’t use capital letters… I don’t have time to tell you twice” when clearly she does have time to tell us twice.

4:58
Josh: (dictating) “… and I believe I’ll use capital, lowercase, or san-skrit right up until the moment that the ‘font police’ cuff me and read me Miranda.”
Donna: That’ll show ‘em.
Josh: I think these are good people by and large, but they’ve come under the thumb of a dictatorial ruler, so as with a small central american country, my role is to incite the people to topple her.

5:28
Josh: The internet people are going crazy…
Donna: (mockingly incredulous) You’re kidding!
…
Josh: … a page and a half of posts debating whether or not I was mocking Egyptians with the san-skrit reference.
Donna: I told you they were hysterical.
Josh: I thought you meant they were funny.
Donna: They’re not!
Josh: I know they’re not! It’s Lord of the Flies in there!

(Around 6:06 C.J. comes onto the scene.)

6:40
CJ: The people on these sites, they’re the cast of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Brilliant. And just as accurate now as it was six years ago when it first aired. Maybe even more.

ps: “LemonLyman.com” is not a real website, by the way. It simple redirects to Warner Brothers website.

Let me tell you something: ultimately it is not the nuts that are the greatest threat to democracy. As history has shown us over, and over, and over again, the greatest threat to democracy is the unbridled power of the state’s over its citizens, which, by the way, that power is always unleashed in the name of preservation.

– Mandy Hampton (played by Moira Kelly) from “The State Dinner”, Season 1, Episode 7 of “The West Wing” (Original airdate of November 10, 1999), starting at the 20 minute 17 second mark on the 2nd DVD.

Two years before 9/11/2001.

Long before George W. Bush took office, a year before the nightmare 2000 election, and here we have a TV show trying to warn us about the true greatest threats to our democracy, our freedom.

Did we lose more freedom from 9/11 or from the excesses of power that came from the president afterwards?

Did we lose more standing in the world from what happened in 9/11 or from our reaction to it?

Come to think of it, President George W. Bush might benefit from a close watching of “A Proportional Response” (Season 1, Episode 3) wherein President Bartlet is warned about an overreaction in response to military action against those who attacked first, warning that what he wanted to do would be seen as the action of an inexperienced president.

This is why I inwardly roll my eyes every time someone boasts about not watching television.

Enemies (s01e08)

Mandy talking about a bill that the President had gotten passed which would “keep the banking lobby from getting whatever it wants, including total bank deregulation.” (Around the 38:24 mark.)

Original air-date? November 17, 1999.

The Short List (s01e09)

Before sending a judge (who did not believe that privacy was a constitutional right) to the Supreme Court, Sam Seaborn says:

Starting around 36:08

[The right to Privacy is] not just about abortion. It’s about the next 20 years. In the ’20s and ’30s it was the role of government, ’50s and ’60s it was Civil Rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy.

I’m talking about the Internet. I’m talking about cell phones, I’m talking about health records and who’s gay and who’s not.

And, moreover, in a country in a country born of the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?

Original air date November 24, 1999.

Anyone who doesn’t think Sorkin is a genius should have their head examined.

He Shall, from Time to Time… (s01e12)

Around 30:57

Barlet: “What does India want?” Lord John Marbury: “A computer industry. And for that they an infrastructure, and that is what you can give them.”

Original air date: January 12, 2000. Many Americans were still tinkering with their AOL accounts and their first email addresses.

The male anchor (previously seen here) and the female co-anchor.

44 seconds of levity from the local news.

Not the story itself, but when told with a slight lisp (I have a similar one myself) and a certain… punch on a certain line, it made me laugh.

(Oh, I know it cuts off at the end, but there’s no phone number given for the Ashland Police Department. They don’t want tips from slackers who can’t be bothered to look up a phone number.)

First of all, mad props to Ars for going right for the “spanks” joke. It helps to set the tone early, like picking a fight your first day in lockup. Ok, it’s really nothing like that, I may have just been watching too much of The Wire lately.

So “rump shot” — what do we suppose that might be? Someone getting shot in the butt? Surely they weren’t showing anal sex on broadcast television — my God, think of the children, the children!

…the Federal Communications Commission late Friday threw the indecency book at 51 ABC TV stations—citing them for a February 2003 episode of NYPD Blue that showed portions of a naked woman’s derrière.

They showed her what?

derrière |ˌderēˈe(ə)r| noun informal euphemistic term for a person’s buttocks. ORIGIN late 18th cent.: French, literally ‘behind.’

Say what? They fined them for showing “portions” of a woman’s behind?

You are kidding, right?

Boy I hope they don’t find out about all those bidet ads that were all over the web a few months ago. (1) Might have to close the whole thing down. (Huh? What’s that? You can see pictures of what online? You’re kidding. For how much? Free, whaddya mean free? Where? Everywhere? What kind of answer is that? Fine, don’t tell me. Like I’m gonna believe you can see actual pictures of fully naked people on the Internet. Hell if they did that you’d have everyone and his grandfather lining up to get online. Oooooh.)

(As an aside: Regarding those ads, my feelings on them were summarized quite well by Merlin Mann who wrote “Ubiquitous bidet ads have brought an extraordinary number of human asses to my daily web surfing. Not loving it as much as I’d imagine.” My feelings exactly, Mr Mann, my feelings exactly.)

Sure, charge them for showing me Sipowicz’s pasty, lumpy, cottage-cheese ass or Ricky Schroder’s so-glaringly-white-that-it-made-Casper-cringe ass. But a woman’s ass?

“Our action today should serve as a reminder to all broadcasters that Congress and American families continue to be concerned about protecting children from harmful material and that the FCC will enforce the laws of the land vigilantly,” FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate told the press after the agency made the announcement.

Ms. Taylor went on to add that if anyone knew of the whereabouts of any known or suspected witches, they should contact her office immediately.

I suspect what their action will remind all broadcasters is that the USA is so hugely fundamentally tightly wound about anything even remotely sexual that we ought to be standing by with smelling salts, because you never know when Miss Daisy might be flipping though the television channels and accidentally catch a peek at some exposed human skin.

So please, broadcasters, be sure to make sure that you try to limit your programming to only show gratuitous violence, which has never bothered any true red blooded American.

Also, did anyone else note that this was five bloody years ago? We’ve killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in that time, but this is what we’re getting riled up about? Oh yeah, I forgot: violence is OK (especially violence against “The Others” especially if The Others don’t look like us and aren’t Presbyterian.)

The Commission ruled against a February 25, 2003 NYPD Blue scene—broadcast at 9 pm in the Central and Mountain Time zones—in which a pre-adolescent boy accidentally walks in on an older woman undressing in the bathroom. He backs out and apologizes, but not before viewers get a glance at the woman’s naked behind.

A woman’s naked behind! Oh, they said it again.

swoon

What? What happened? How long was I out? Is Bush still president? Damn. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

If anyone knows where we might find a clip of this show, I’d love to know the on-screen duration of a “glance” as measured in real time.

The FCC declared the scene indecent “because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs—specifically an adult woman’s buttocks.”

Phew, “buttocks” back to the safe words again.

Let me pause here to be serious for a moment. I’m almost at a loss for words to express my deep admiration to the FCC for recognizing that a woman’s buttocks are sexual organs. I mean, it’s not every government organization is willing to come clean about anal sex. The FCC has now made it a point of doctrine that a woman’s “buttocks” are sex instruments. I’m quite sure they aren’t actually endorsing anal sex, as, by all reports, the only thing that the FCC thinks should be put up an ass is a head. (I mean a cranium, you sick perv.)

I’m tempted to question whether or not the scene actually showed “excretory organs” as I’ve never considered the buttocks to be involved in the excretion process, other than sorta hiding the actual, um…. what can I call it here without being too graphic…. Um… “portal”? “outbox?” “brown eyed girl?” Let’s stick with “hole.”

ABC attorneys defended the show, arguing that buttocks do not constitute a sexual organ. “We reject this argument,” the FCC declared, “which runs counter to both case law and common sense.”

ABC tried to play dumb about the whole anal sex thing, but the FCC’s ain’t nobody’s fool, they know ABC wantin’ to get all up in dat. (Seriously — you’re the whitest Irish boy I’ve ever met… cut back on The Wire already before you hurt yourself. Go watch some Raymond reruns or something. - Ed.)

ABC also claimed that NYPD Blue’s writers did not intend the scene to be titillating or lewd, but simply to reveal “the complexity and awkwardness involved when a single parent brings a new romantic partner into his or her life.” But the agency turned down that plea as well, declaring that the scene, “which included repeated and lingering images of a woman naked from the back, with close-up views of her naked buttocks, presented adult female nudity in a manner that shocks and titillates viewers.”

Seriously, someone needs to post this to YouTube already. Please? (UPDATE: They did. See below.)

Apparently an earlier draft of the FCC’s report used the phrase “shocks and awes” but they received a memo from the White House reminding them that phrase is reserved for when the President needs to pull it out and swing it around. (What? “It” meaning our military prowess. Seriously, you’re so perverted these days. You’ve probably been watching too much ABC. What? Oh? Nip/Tuck is back on? Gotcha. Yeah, the only thing we watch on ABC now is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Thankfully the FCC will get some of that money that they might have wasted putting more money into that show where all they do is help actual children.)

Lastly, the broadcasting company insisted that it had received only “a modest number of complaints” for the program, to which the FCC replied that the agency received “numerous complaints, including thousands of letters from members of various citizen advocacy groups.” The Commission may have been referring to the TV-indecency busybodies Parents Television Council, whose Web site listed NYPD Blue as number four of the “Top 10 Worst” prime time TV shows for the 2002/2003 season. The PTC has been known for encouraging its members to complain about shows they have not watched.

Modern day witch trials.

There ought to be a law against inciting offensiveness. It’s some form of reverse-entrapment, or a push-poll (stop snickering, it’s a legitimate term and I said “poll” with two Ls not p-o-l-e). “Wouldn’t you be offended if your child saw nudity on NYPD Blue?!?!”

If you didn’t see it, you shouldn’t be able to file a complaint about it. Otherwise it’s like me filing a complain with the Better Business Bureau because a friend of mine bought a used car that turned out to be a lemon.

The FCC asked for a budget of $313,000,000 for 2008. I would like to request that whatever part of the FCC budget goes towards patrolling the airwaves for momentary glimpses of women’s naked asses to be diverted to build new schools, and I will donate the tools necessary to police this particular “problem” for free, right here:

Dear Parents:

1) If you don’t know that a show like NYPD Blue is not suitable for small children, please pack your children up with at least 3 complete sets of clothes and drive them down to social services. You are clearly morons who are unfit to be parents.

2) If you think any child old enough to be watching TV past 9 p.m. on a school night (NYPD Blue aired on Tuesday nights) was seriously harmed by seeing naked butt on television, you are seriously deceived.

(Please note that the east and west coast ABC affiliates didn’t get fined for showing the same episode at 10 p.m. It only fined the “heartland” states, which you are most likely used to only seeing every four years when they are emblazoned in red.)

3) Please stop depending on the U.S. Government to protect your children. That is your job. Sooner or later they are going to see human flesh. You might want to prepare them for it. You might even want to help them deal with any questions that come up about it. If someone comes up to your child in the playground and shows them something inappropriate, sure, get offended, call the cops, do what you have to do. But sooner or later, please realize that the little flashes of color on the television can’t hurt you. If you want to get upset about something, you might turn on the news and see if you can get any shots of dead soldiers or civilians from Iraq who we have been engaged in every damn day since around the time that this show aired FIVE YEARS AGO.

Please note you’ll probably have to search pretty hard to find any of that footage, since BushCo. has worked very hard to make sure that we don’t even see caskets. Actual carnage? Heaven forbid.

As the man said, “What a country.”

UPDATE: Someone pointed out that the clip has been uploaded to YouTube. You be the judge:

UPDATE 2: OK, I watched the clip. My first response is that I would ha

It’s a very nice TV.

BestBuy gets the specs wrong on their website — they claim it has 1 HDMI port but it has 2. Oh well, better than the other way around.

They also have a very nice little sign claiming that if you see the same TV at another store, they’ll match the price plus 10%. Sounds good right? Yeah, until you realize that Insignia is Best Buy’s private label. So you aren’t going to find the same TV anywhere else.

I’ve also found a bug in the TV. Actually 2.

Like many TVs, it has a setting to turn on the captioning when you mute the TV. I enabled it.

Bug #1) I muted the TV by pressing the button. Captioning came on.

I un-muted the TV by pressing the button again. Captioning turned off.

I muted the TV by pressing the button. Captioning came on.

I un-muted the TV by pressing the Volume-Up button. Captioning stayed on.

Oops.

Bug #2) I manually turned the captioning on.

I muted the TV by pressing the button. Captioning stayed on.

I un-muted the TV by pressing the button again. Captioning turned off.

Oops.

sigh

Oh well, still a nice TV.

See more images @ BestBuy.com.

For example, if you want to create a show about using math to solve crime, you could call it “CSI: Math” but then you’d be fighting with the other 72 shows with “CSI” in the name.

So you might call it, um, “Numbers” but then you’d be up against… well, I’m not sure exactly how many, but there are a lot of numbers.

If you were really creative you might come up with something where maybe you do something like changing one of the letters to a number, dang that’d be l33t!

And so the creators of said show came up with NUMB3RS and lo, the Google love was great…

But you know, it’s not always easy getting everyone on board.

For example, we’ve been watching NUMB3RS on DVD which I’ve added to my Blockbuster Queue.

We finished Season 1 and I went looking for Season 2.

Bummer, Blockbuster doesn’t have NUMB3RS Season 2 on DVD.

Well, maybe.

I went to their search engine and plugged in “numb3rs” and found only one hit:

Numb3rs: Season 01 (2005)

so then I plugged in “numbers” and found

Numbers: The Complete Second Season [4 Discs]

which I immediately added to the top of my queue, and here is how it looked:

That’s right, under the heading “Numb3rs: The Complete Second Season [4 Discs]” there are, in fact, 6 discs which are entitled “Numbers” instead of “Numb3rs”

Argh.

Chris, aka “Daughtry”, then added something along the lines of “I know a lot of people on the Internet have been wondering, and the answer is: Boxer Briefs.”

(USAToday.com confirmed my memory with this interview with Daughtry after he was eliminated.)

This season, Chris Sligh was talking to Ryan, who asked a fan question about what they do in their “down time” and Chris said something about sitting around in his boxers playing the bongo drums.

There’s a clear warning here to future contestants: the first rule of American Idol is, you do not talk about Fight Club underwear. Especially if your name is Chris.

You’ve been warned.

(Things worked out OK for Chris D, as his CD currently ranks #9 in music at Amazon. Katharine McPhee is #128. Taylor Hicks is 175, Kellie Pickler is 276. Elliot Yamin is #13 but his CD only came out about a week ago. Daughtry’s CD came out in November. Pickler’s came out in October. Bucky’s comes out in April 17th. So you tell me who’s the real winner of American Idol Season 5?)

Now, can someone please ask Sanjaya about his underwear?

Some have objected to this seeming-monopoly, except one of the suits invested in the deal who responded to questions about consumer choice by saying (essentially) “You want choice? Of course you have choice!” And here’s how that choice looks.

DuPuy said that fans who have gotten the out-of-town games on other providers will still have the option of receiving them this year: by switching to DirecTV or subscribing to MLB.TV to watch the games on the Internet. “This is not a matter of fans being unable to view Major League Baseball’s out-of-market games,” he said. “It is a matter of not being able to watch those games on a particular system.”

For the curious MLB.TV will cost you $15/month or $90/year (note: all costs rounded to the nearest dollar). That’s on top of your high speed internet connection (which I can’t get at home).

If you sign up before April 15th, the DirecTV package will cost you $160 (or 4 payments of $40). After that it goes up another $40 to $200.

The 2007 DirecTV schedule for MLB Extra Innings as of today, March 30th, 2007, has a complete schedule…

…for April’s games.

The other months (May, June, July, August, September, and October) are currently listed as

There are no games listed in the current time period yet. Please check back later.

So let’s recap.

DirecTV has an exclusive TV contract with Major League Baseball.

DirecTV offers one package to people wanting “out of market” games for one price.

On the last business day before the season opener, DirecTV can’t tell me what I’m signing up for.

When I objected to this to DirecTV support, they told me that if the schedule isn’t there, then they haven’t gotten it from the league.

Haven’t gotten it from the league? They worked out a multimillion dollar multi-year agreement, but can’t get a list of what games are available this season?

Hrm, remind me again, who is getting served by this deal?

My thinking is simple: if you can only give me 1/7th of the schedule, let me pay 1/7th of the fee, for the month of April. When you put up the schedules for the rest of the months, then I can decide whether or not to continue paying.

But asking for 100% of the fee when they are giving me 14% of the terms of the contract?

They responded by telling me that I will get “Up to 60 games a week.” I responded that “Up to 60 games a week” is a meaningless phrase invented by someone in the marketing department. All that means is that they have to provide 60 games one week. Then they have lived up to their end of the agreement, right? I mean “Up To 60” can mean 50… or 40…. or 20… or 10.

To be fair there are 350 games listed for April. However, 330 of those games are irrelevant to me, because what I really want are the Red Sox games.

So why don’t I just subscribe to the package that offers me all of the Red Sox games?

Because there is no such offer. DirecTV offers me one package for one price. Or I could go to the office and watch the games on the DSL connection there. They do claim to support OS X if you use Safari but then warn that:

Mac Safari browser users will experience slowness for portions of the site that utilize plug-in technology such as Windows Media Player or Flash Player. This slowness is not specific to MLB.com but to all websites that use plug-in technologies.

Guess what uses plugins? Yeah, the viewer to watch the games. So they are telling me up-front it will be slow.

Customer choice would be that DishNetwork (for example) has access to those games and might offer more customized packages, and I might be tempted to switch to DishNetwork because of that option. Then DirecTV might offer them as well. And the price might be lower. That’s capitalism. That’s a free market. That’s competition - something we ought to value.

This virtual monopoly between DirecTV/MLB serves DirecTV/MLB and only DirecTV/MLB. It does not serve baseball fans. It does not even serve DirecTV customers, and it gives a big giant middle finger to all the baseball fans who are have cable or DishNetwork.