HD TV is the saving grace of television, if you buy a set-top box you get all these extra channels which makes the variety alot more watchable. ordinary television is mostly crime shows and cheesy vampire yawn fests. pop idol rubbish. crime shows have been done to death and really its marketed towards the older generation who have nothing better to do then to hop on some boring bandwagon so they can talk about CSI with their friends at dinners or lunches. i was only a kid in the 1990's but i remember it having alot more choice of comedy and programs. its the same with the music industry and mainstream music, it died an ugly death since somewhere around 1997-2002 when they did have the odd decent single on the charts but then that all went downhill. the last great single i remember on radio or the charts was "hey ya" by outkast. most great music of the last ten years has had no coverage at all. so the mainstream music circuit is long dead.
if you;re looking for some great shows, always sunny in philadelphia, curb your enthusiasm, six feet under, 30 rock. curb your enthusiasm is comedy gold, sometimes i prefer it to seinfeld. great raw down to earth programs.