FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — As a New Yorker on a family vacation in Arizona, seeing the sights in Sedona and tromping around the Grand Canyon, but still wanting to keep up with my shows, I had a few dilemmas.
One was keeping track of what the heck time Better Call Saul or Justified were on at our hotel. If it’s on at 10 p.m. ET, and I’m in Mountain Standard Time, not even Daylight Savings Time, does that mean the show starts at 8, 9 or 10 in Flagstaff? I’m not sure I ever did figure that out, though the excellent cable-network practice of running new shows back-to- back helped.
Another was, if AMC or FX aren’t on the cable system here, can I get their TV apps to fire up if I haven’t used them until now? Fortunately the answer there was, yes, I got on and got verified. Whew. So even though I managed to miss Saul when it aired, I caught the replay on my phone in the wee hours of the morning, before family breakfast.
OK, these aren’t huge dilemmas, especially when I could have caught my shows on the DVR when I got home. But a couple of observations:
• Keeping the full ad load on a show watched over the app within the C3 three-day window can be annoying if that means playing the same ad four times in a row, maybe interrupted by a network promo. At least it was an intriguing ad, in the sense that I still don’t know who makes those air-pump sneakers.
• Being unable to access my DVR on the road is a gap in the TV-everywhere ecosystem. Let’s work on that, pay TV folks.
• I really should have packed some more books. See you when I get back.
