Sunrise Earth

We recently moved to a new (to us) home. In the process we kicked Southwestern Bell SBC AT&T DSL along with our Dish Network to the curb in favor of cable (TV and modem). One of the motivating factors was to get more HD content for the shiny "small big screen 42-inch Panasonic plasma we bought last year.

After a month with cable and a two tuner HD DVR I'm pretty happy. One of the ... odd ... programs I came across recently is Sunrise Earth. I can't decide if it's really cool or really a waste of bandwidth. It comes on at 6am here on the Third Coast so just as I'm getting up and building that double cappucino eye opener. Since the view out my windows are of the back fence and a couple of Chinese Tallow trees, I've got nothing to rival the vistas they serve up on Sunrise Earth. I've peeked in on it three times in the last couple of weeks and caught moose in Montana, birds and fish in Maine, and birds and alligators in the Everglades. The picture doesn't just sit on one scene, that would burn in on my plasma. They move between viewpoints every couple of minutes. But with the crystal clear picture I get it's a lot like having a magic window looking out at something much more scenic than the coastal plain urban landscape.

All in all, I guess it's a better use of the TV spectrum than say ... most things on the networks.