For a while now I’ve said that I don’t watch regular television programming anymore because I’m turned off by the need to watch every week on a schedule, and that my interests have turned to sports and news.

As of the last two years or so, my habits have expanded.

I mean, I catch MTV now and then, and MTV seems to cater to my schedule disdain because they often show, say, this week’s The Real World at 9:30 PM on Tuesday, and they’ll show the previous three episodes, in order, starting at 8. It’s great. You can watch once a month and never miss a thing.

To be honest, I also watched a marathon of the entire Las Vegas season (had to record the last couple episodes) and watched the Paris season every week, but at that time I was watching a lot of stuff every week. The latest thing I enjoyed was Inferno 2.

Back to now. X-Play. It used to be called Extended Play, and it started on TechTV. I have posted about TechTV before. Back in my senior year of college I would watch Call For Help on TechTV with Morash. It was very dorky, and most of it was stuff that wasn’t new to me. But about once a week there was something interesting that I had never seen before, and even the stuff that was familiar was attractive because programming like that was available nowhere else.

I remember watching Extended Play when it was new (during senior year) and Adam Sessler was the host. I remember thinking how awful the show was. Then a few months ago I realized that I enjoy the program, and I respect its opinions. At some point (maybe when they changed the name), X-Play added Morgan Webb as Adam’s co-host. You might have heard of Morgan when Madonna’s website got hacked a couple years ago — one of the hackers posted a marriage proposal to Morgan Webb on Madonna.com. Also, Morgan was one of Maxim’s 100 most beautiful women or something.

Now because of X-Play I find myself watching other G4 shows. I can’t stand Cheat!, but Attack of the Show is sometimes bearable and there is a drift racing show that I find interesting if for nothing else its unique content. I’ve never seen G-Phoria, but I’d like to.

With the praise, I have to bash a little. The other game review shows on G4 suck. All of them. X-Play is the only good one.