On Movie-Watching and Television

I'm house-sitting once again this weekend, sharing my days and nights with a television that gets hundreds of channels. (For those not tuned into my life, I have no TV reception at all at my house.) For years now my TV watching has been limited almost exclusively to sports and old movies. This weekend, I've seen lots of sports, ranging from soccer (Uruguay vs. Columbia) to college football (Ohio State vs. USC) to the LPGA (P&G Beauty Northwest Arkansas Championship). But the sporting events, at least those that interest me, have concluded, and I'm idly surfing the channels looking for a movie to watch.

Now, here's the rub. This TV is a 42" LCD that has a Blu-ray player hooked up to it, which means that the viewing experience is far, far better than on my little 20" set up the road. I have all of my (dozen or so) BDs with me, plus a couple of DVDs from the top of my need-to-watch pile. So why am I surfing? Why don't I just put in a disc? I passed by The Bourne Ultimatum on the program guide, and caught myself thinking "yeah, that's an okay movie, I could watch that." But I own that movie, and if it were sitting here next to Fallen Angels, which I brought with me, I wouldn't think twice about which one to watch. Furthermore, if I'd come across Fallen Angels on the program guide, I'd have thought "oooh, great, I'm dying to see that" and immediately switched it on. But I didn't, and rather than turn on the DVD player and starting the Wong film, I find myself watching the last half hour of The Return of the King.

Why?

Why is it so much more appealing (to me) for a film to show up on broadcast tv than in home video format? Is this some vestige from growing up in a three-channel, pre-home-video era, where the few movies that came on were either from Disney or torn apart by The Ghoul, making a really good movie on tv such a rare treat?

So why would I even remotely consider watching The Bourne Ultimatum, probably with cuts and commercial breaks, rather than Fallen Angels? I wouldn't, and I won't. I'm going to pop in the Wong and enjoy it.

I've just gotta make sure Frodo gets on that boat. And then I'll just check the program guide one more time, to make sure I'm not missing something really special...