Hacker Cinema
Northern Exposure
1990 · TV series · 6 seasons
Created by Joshua Brand, John Falsey
ComedyDramaScience FictionFantasy
After receiving a scholarship from the state, a recent Columbia University medical school graduate is required to set up his practice in an eccentric Alaskan town.
10 positive2 negative15 neutralfrom 27 commenters
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34 comments on Hacker News
Thanks to Jellyfin + Infuse (on AppleTV), even family and visitors have no trouble using my "streaming service". And I can reach it on the road with TailScale. Takes me laughably little time per year to manage (maybe an hour in a normal year, perhaps two or three relatively "hands on" hours in a year I modify the zfs disk pool in some way)
My main motivation for having it is easy access to several things that can't be had legally at all (the best very-close-to-opening-day Star Wars movies in the 4k77/4k80/4k83 series, or uncut Beavis and Butthead episodes, or Northern Exposure with the original music, to pick a few examples) but once you've got it, adding everything to the server is arguably less effort and lost time than using a half-dozen streaming services.
I'd much rather pay, I dunno, $50/month or something for a service that had everything on it, but that doesn't exist, so I have this instead. It's a ton better than a pile of streaming services that are still missing most stuff, plus force you to play the ridiculous "which one had this, again?" game.
The early internet predates imageboards. You found GB/SNES/MD emulators in personal pages. JS was almost not used, active X crap was everywhere. Installing GNU/Linux was really difficult, but you could set it all offline. Getting a multi-CD or DVD release was a bargain instead of downloading everything.
*BSD where for corporations or universities with ISDN/broadband and tons of time to build ports, because OpenBSD CD's were copyrighted. You could get a floppy and netinstall, better if you had a fast connection.
Fora were far more ubiquituous and streaming as they said was so-so. Even 480p was something like "HD" for its day, at least for streamed video for 1024x768 resolutions. The rest was a blocky mess with low bitrate DivX videos. You know what DivX/XVid is right?
The 2000's were more like bridge era as tons of people still pirated tons of good 90's series such as Northern Exposure and The X Files among blockbusters.
Lots of people escaped to the internet to get what they coudln't IRL. Movies, scifi-books, GNU/Linux and indie games, manganimes, a truckload of them.
After that you just got the corporate internet with streaming platforms offering even worse products than the ones we got in the 90's and not to mention the shitty cinema and subpar from the mid 2000's anywhere modulo HL2 and a few exceptions.
You have bug ridden games with DLC's, bot infected propaganda sites like X and walled gardens as Discord and the like.
Yeah thats also how I do it.
I have a cool 16 DVD/Bluray ripping rig. Even have scripts that convert ripped images into MKV's with all audio and subtitles, art, etc. Uploads into my Jellyfin.
And yes, I do buy VHS, DVDs, and Blurays. I have probably 3000 movies in physical format, and 10000 audio CDs. I also rip old VHS, which you usually cant find any torrents of. Again, I specialize in rare stuff you cant buy retail or find.
There's also illegal shows, like the old WKRP in Cincinnati. They licensed for TV only multiple songs. Pink Floyd and other artists refuse to license now. Nobody can legally sell them, even if you have the money. Piracy is the only way for the complete show.
There's also a lot more shows that languished in licening hell for decades, or theyre still unobtainable at any price. Some you can get redacted versions, but the originals are illegal no matter what. And as an (well, illegal, but I DGAF) archivist, having shows intentionally lost due to pervasive greed is just... more wrong.
The Wonder Years - finally published in 2021, LOTS of cuts made
China Beach - published in 2013 after clearing hundreds of songs. 17 segments were cut due to licensing fuckery
Northern Exposure - multiple songs redacted on republishing
Pee-wee's Playhouse - multiple songs redacted on republishing
Beavis and Butt-Head - DVD was a hackjob with dozens of songs changed/parodied.
Cold Case - too much licensed content, cant republish
Third Watch - too much licensed content, cant republish
The Drew Carey Show - massive music rights issues, cant republish
Malcolm in the Middle - massive music rights issues, cant republish
Little Monsters (1989) - massive music rights issues, cant republish
Heavy Metal (1981) - tons of rights issues, cant republish
Kids Incorporated / Class of 1999 2 - tons of rights issues, cant republish
Agree. It's so wholesome, uncontroversially values driven but doesn't feel shoved down your throat like a recent episode of Law & Order might.
If you like Northern Exposure I recommend the other shows that were basically reboots of it: Hart of Dixie (which I prefer to the next) and Virgin River
Funnily enough there's a Northern Exposure episode with a brief Twin Peaks parody. I think it was Russian Flu in season one. Joel and Elaine are on a trip, and they're shown around an area with a waterfall and viewing platform, like The Great Northern Hotel/White Tail Falls.
The scene is a pretty funny Twin Peaks parody, with music and visuals inspired by Twin Peaks, and includes a joke about seeing a woman holding a log... :)
There's a conversation Chris has in an episode called Heal Thyself, I think, where Maggie buys a washer dryer and won't need to go to the laundromat anymore.
Chris reflects that in the future we won't need a lot of things that are part of society, due to technology like fibre optics. We'll watch cinema at home, and he wonders what will happen to these accidental social moments we have in places like cinemas and laundromats.
It was prescient, but the other part of Northern Exposure that sticks with me is the viewer is expected to sit through Chris's other conversations on the radio about Whitman, Jung, mythology, the nature of death, and other philosophical and artistic references.
I enjoy rewatching Northern Exposure, but it's sometimes disturbing how alien it feels today.
As many shows or films from that period the title was "customized" in Poland and "Northern Exposure" was known as "Przystanek Alaska" - "Station Alaska". My dad enjoy it especially credits with moose.
There are more shows, too, including two 3 hour shows with Chris on KBHR Cicely (i.e. Northern Exposure):
https://www.awphooey.com/kbhr
https://www.awphooey.com/retrofit/autumn
Full list at https://www.awphooey.com/retrofit
(I only know this from your post, so thank you. Just mentioning in case KBHR piques someone's interest more than WKRP. I loved both TV shows.)
Northern Exposure had similar problems but, as I understand it, at least some was resolved for the (somewhat relatively) recent DVD box set release.
It just wasn't an issue that was seriously considered by a lot of studios(?) at the time and it's not like back catalog TV shows are usually these big money-makers that warrant a lot of time and cost to get in order.
Last year I was living in a hostel (basically a very cheap hotel) for a few months. About a month in I realized I'd probably be stuck there for a while and started to make myself at home.
I started buying dishes for the shared kitchen. People kept "borrowing" them, so new guests would come, cook something, and have no fork. So I made sure there were always dishes.
The kitchen was a dreadful place. Deathly quiet. This strange tension in the air. Everyone was avoiding eye contact. There was a kind of toxic miasma about the place, and the unspoken agreement was to leave it undisturbed.
I, the heretic: I would greet people! I would greet people who were in the same space as me.
I am told this was considered normal, by our ancestors. In my case, it was partly "it's morally wrong not to greet them", and partly social anxiety around strangers. (In both cases, my autism ;)
So I solved that problem by just saying hello to everyone. I made the tension go away by saying hello.
Two weeks later I had like twelve friends. They started talking to each other, and a whole community formed in the kitchen. It was great.
I thought that was pretty cool. It also got me thinking about how, if I had been able to find a studio apartment or something, I might have ended up with zero friends instead.
In the context of the loneliness epidemic, I have to wonder if the shared kitchen is one answer. More precisely: the absence of a private one. (It sounds harsh, but the alternative... we are currently living through.)
I love this clip from the 90's TV show Northern Exposure on the same subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS2N4VWIbCI
Even doctors who cater to the remote areas where farmers dwell get extra payments from our governments.
Very common in the United States, too.
There are a lot of doctors who get their student loans reduced or paid off by state and local governments in exchange for working a certain number of years in less-desirable locations. I've worked with a number of them.
There was an entire TV show based on it that ran on CBS for five years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure
There have been one or two very popular TV series (e.g. Northern Exposure) that the owners were able to eventually get the music rights sorted on. But I'm sure there are a gazillion random TV shows that a handful of people care about for some nostalgic reason that no one is going to go to the trouble to work out.
I was trying to start working out at the gym and to fight boredom I brought my tablet with me to watch an old show (Northern Exposure). I was on the elliptical watching an episode and up pops a sex scene, and I could see one guy maybe giving me a weird look, but I was uncomfortable watching it because if someone looked at the wrong time it may appear that I was watching porn, and could get me kicked out of the gym (for watching a 30 year old network TV show!)
TV: I’m loving the series Reservation Dogs right now (not to be confused with Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs). It’s about some kids living on a Reservation in Oklahoma. It feels like a mix of the vibes of Freaks and Geeks and Northern Exposure, with lots of magical realism. Seems to be critically acclaimed but I don’t see a lot of buzz about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_Dogs
Similarly, Atlanta was fantastic, challenging, and seemed to throw something completely different at you in every episode. I think Hiro Murai is going to be one of the great filmmakers of his generation.
I guess it’s a stretch to call it underrated because it was overwhelmingly critically acclaimed, but I feel it belongs to be talked about alongside the all-time greats when anecdotally I don’t hear much about it. For example, I’ve heard several casual references to Mad Men in the past few months, whereas I have never heard anyone mention Atlanta except when I have brought it up. Could just be my perception that’s off, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_(TV_series)
> I don't know exactly when that episode of Northern Exposure aired but this story dates back to 2nd century BCE[1]
> [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
That Wikipedia page was created in 2020. Northern Exposure predates that.
Going with the OP's theme: if we repeat the GP's comment enough times, over a long enough period, we can change history and then history would really show it to have originated from the "story "Ed" told in the TV show 'Northern Exposure.'"
I don't know exactly when that episode of Northern Exposure aired but this story dates back to 2nd century BCE[1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
This is a rip off of the story "Ed" told in the TV show "Northern Exposure", but it has always been one of my favorites from that show.
Something that falls through the cracks is content that isn't available on streaming or VOD.
Like take Northern Exposure, a huge hit TV show in the early 90's. It's not available anywhere except out of print DVDs because it features a lot of music, and the license for that music needs to be renegotiated. So it's lost to time basically. This is just one example, there's countless others.
Not to mention all the older films/tv shows that no streaming company wants because they don't think it would attract anyone.
Piracy is actually keeping this content alive... It's nuts.
For that matter, the licensing of the music on certain TV series didn't anticipate DVDs. Northern Exposure and WKRP Cincinnati were missing a lot of the original music on the DVDs--although this is apparently partly corrected in the newer complete series releases.
This also happened with the TV show Northern Exposure, which had a notably great soundtrack. They couldn't get rights to a lot of the music, so it was replaced with more mediocre stuff on the hardcopy releases.
Apparently, it's happened to other shows, too: https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7145231/shows-not-on-dvd-music-rights-wonder-years-wkrp
Northern Exposure did this - another TV show that had a spectacularly well considered soundtrack, but licensing costs were onerous.
Though evidently the first season release did include original music, but had an exorbitant (retail) price - subsequent seasons they did the ol' elevator music swap-in.
Aside - it explains why, so I've been told, there's two similarly popular torrents out there, one high-quality DVD-rip with a bad score, and one low-quality VHS-rip with the original score.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure#Home_media
A TV series set around the journey of policemen in Nigeria or like "Northern Exposure in Abuja" could be incredible.
>there will be performers and musicians and other contributors who may have various rights that need to be identified and negotiated before a legitimate streaming site can air it.
For example, there are pretty well-known TV series like Northern Exposure and WKRP in Cincinnati that are only available in essentially bowdlerized form because the music that was such a key part of the shows was never licensed beyond original TV use.
And to a related point, there are TV series like Northern Exposure where the music was pretty integral to the show but don't have the rights to, so apparently the DVD releases are pretty compromised.
In Northern Exposure season 4 episode 3 ("Nothing's Perfect"), a grad student comes to Cicely to study Pi.
"I just have this feeling if I take pi, well past all this static, take pi to 10 million, 20 million digits, that I'll find something really incredible. Not just a pattern, not just an order, but a sign. A mathematical sign."
https://moosechick.com/43.html
Cute. It is around 8 feet long and per the comments, it throws tennis balls. Throwing a tennis ball at supersonic speed is nothing to sneeze at, but the really impressive thing about historical and modern trebuchets is how big some of them got. They could throw things like pianos, as in a famous Northern Exposure episode. Doing that supersonically would have really been something ;).
This has happened to TV series too, like "Northern Exposure", where for the DVD release they replaced a lot of the music with public domain "elevator music":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure#DVD_releases
You know, I never though of this before, but I'm sure there was an episode of Northern Exposure that ended with Etta James's "At Last," and I'm positive that the DVD version doesn't have the song.
I remember it because it was one of my favorite episodes. I lost my box set years ago, so I guess I won't be verifying that.
It's the pub from Northern Exposure TV show.
Roslyn is also where a some of the tv show "Northern Exposure" was filmed. It's reasonable close to Seattle.
And much of it predates people even thinking about this stuff. Thus, you have a TV series like Northern Exposure for which the music was a fairly integral part and you can't even buy DVDs with all the original music included.
Even today, I was reading that one Black Mirror episode for which the closing song was just so on had licensed it for 15 years. Which is a long time but hardly forever.
Even now that there are finally published DVD's -- I guess this is some years ago, already -- I find they aren't worth it. Because they removed so much of the original music. I remember watching the first episode and wondering, "What the hell is wrong with this?" Then it clicked.
As far as I am concerned, I think this is downright wrong. "Northern Exposure" -- pop culture though it might be labeled by some -- was a significant contribution to contemporary culture for many of us. It was one of those "water cooler" shows, around which everyone would be discussing it in the days following broadcast.
The fact that a private entity can simply "remove" such a element from our public culture and ongoing conversation -- or edit it into something else -- is, in my opinion, not something that was intended with "intellectual property".
Paying a reasonable fee is one thing. No (legal) access, whatsoever? That should not be permitted.
P.S. For those who are not familiar with it, in "Northern Exposure" a thoughtful and thematic selection of music became akin to another (omni-present) character. Removing those choices is akin to ripping (editing) a major character right out of the finished work.
I have 400 laserdiscs and 700 DVD cases (some are TV shows with multiple discs or films and their sequels). I stopped buying DVDs many years ago, but then again Netflix hasn't been acquiring recent films either - one example article http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/02/02/netflixs-lousy-selection-of-movies/
I also haven't had TV service since 2003 and don't torrent or similar - all my viewing has been by buying DVDs, seeing things at the cinema/on planes etc or on Hulu.
And once I did sign up for Netflix I did catch up TV shows (eg the new series of Futurama). Out of your examples I already own BSG on DVD. The others don't really interest me as I'm not a particular big fan of them. (I'm British and have lived in the US for over a decade, but my tastes don't really go for the things you list.)
To be clear there is a heck of a lot of stuff I did want to watch. When I first signed up for Netflix I spent several weeks typing things into their search engine only to get responses along the lines of available for mail order only, or doesn't exist. Following recommendations etc did mean I ended up with a queue, but it is mediocre stuff. So I gave up and read more books instead.
Two random content examples for you. Try to find "Northern Exposure" (TV series) or marvel at how Netflix thinks Keanu Reeves has only ever done 6 films.
The version of this that I've seen work is the "Northern Exposure" one (remember that TV show?).
I had a friend whose MS in Nursing was paid for by a state government and in exchange she had to agree to work for a number of years (I think 3) at a hospital in a low-income neighborhood that was having trouble attracting good nurses. Yes, she was paid, etc! It worked out great since she got a free education and found out that she enjoyed working with that particular population and the state had one more highly qualified nurse on its roster.
Win-win incentives like these have a fighting chance, "opportunities" that are heavily weighted in one party's favor tend to not do so well.