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Sunday, November 05, 2006
MST3K
posted by clake at 7:56 PM
If you knew me in high school, you are probably aware that I am a fan of the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000. MST3K fans in general have a unique dedication to this program. Unfortunately, I didn't have cable during the show's run on Comedy Central. That, in combination with the fact that it was only run in syndication for a short time (available on my local, crappy CBS affiliate), made it so I didn't really have the opportunity to participate in the worldwide tape-trading community. But now, there's the wonderful phenomenon of The Inter-Web 2.0, where it's as easy to post a video online as it is to accidentally cut yourself shaving. With that, I give you some options I've discovered for watching MST3K using only your webternet connection. (I won't mention Bittorrent because that would be the obvious way to share television over the internet. Also, though the speed of download and quality of the files would be outstanding if I got them through bittorrent, I'm nervous that I'll download one movie and then start getting cease-and-desist orders.)
There are a bunch of MST3K episodes and shorts available on Google Video (and also YouTube I would assume, though I haven't taken a look yet). Sure, that means you have to watch them online - OR MAYBE IT DOES NOT! You can copy and paste the URL of a Google or YouTube video into this website I found and download it as an .avi file. Unfortunately, because of some cruddy thing Google does to the file header or something it won't play in the usual suspects - Windows Media Player or Winamp. However, you can download the stripped-down program Media Player Classic and freely play these files. Why download these episodes at all? Because then you can play them back at full screen, and they'll stream better when played locally, and you're an MST3K fan, therefore you are something of an obsessively retentive nerd. (Try to keep that under control, by the way: There's a whole, wonderful world out there.)
Also, if you have the media player Winamp, not only can you listen to internet radio from thousands of Shoutcast stations (and some select XM stations), but some nice folks have put up what appears to be a 24-hour video stream of MST episodes. (Click "shoutcast project" in the sidebar.) The video quality is mediocre. It's watchable, but you will definitely not mistake it for a DVD or even VHS tape. But still, the coolness of being able to do it is worth giving it a shot.
And yes, I have done more than this with my weekend. I drove to Cedar Rapids with my wife to buy rabbit litter and have a meal, I made bean bruschetta, I wrote a kick-ass cover letter, I transferred all three episodes of my old public access show to DVD (okay, that's another nerdy one). I have a rich and full life.
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