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Last week I bought the first four seasons of "House M.D." from Amazon VoD for a total of $20. It only took a little over a day to download all 22 episodes to our TiVo. We talked about starting to watch the series before, so when I saw this deal, I couldn't pass it up. Needless to say, we're addicted to it and we're watching at least one episode every night.

One thing we noticed immediately is that the video is so much clearer than anything we record off our analog cable. I've been thinking about subscribing to Netflix just to watch movies with good video and surround sound. Perhaps watching "House M.D." will push me far enough to just do it.

I'm surprised that I haven't written about The Big Bang Theory yet. It was our favorite new show from last season and this season has started off great too. It's totally hilarious, especially for a geek like me. I highly recommend it.

The Amazing Race 13 starts tonight. It has been a long time since we've watched TAR. We didn't see last season because we moved when it premiered and didn't want to start it part way through.

This week we watched the first episodes of two new shows with the exact same premise, "how well do you know song lyrics?" We saw the promo for NBC's "The Singing Bee" first a few weeks ago and TiVo'ed it. At the beginning of this week we saw that Fox was going to air a similar show, "Don't Forget the Lyrics!" The shows couldn't be more different.

"The Singing Bee" is a very up-beat show. It starts out with the whole audience singing and the host running around the audience and picking out contestants. From there it's a fast paced show. The contestants are competing directly with each other. The field of six quickly gets cut to two, the two have a head to head, then the last person tries to get a $50,000 prize. The song clips are short, the contestant only sings the lyrics after the band stops, and they only have one chance to get it right. It's a quick half-hour show.

"Don't Forget the Lyrics!" feels like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" There is only one person who is working up a ladder of cash which ends at $1,000,000. The song clips are much longer and the contestant is singing the entire time. After the contestant fills in the blanks they are allowed to change their mind before they "lock in the lyrics." They also have three "backup singers," a.k.a. life lines. The format makes the show come to a grinding halt and since the show is only a half-hour, you have to catch the next show to find out what happens.

If I didn't know which networks the shows were on, I would have placed DFTL with NBC and TSB with Fox. TSB is fresh and imaginative. DFTL feels recycled. I'm not sure if I'll continue watching either one. TSB seems like the better show, but it might be a little too giddy for me.

I saw on PVRBlog that TiVo and Amazon launched their video download partnership. Now you can go to Amazon Unboxed and buy or rent movies and TV shows. After you link your Amazon account with your TiVo account, they'll download directly to your TiVo. I got a $15 credit for signing up before April 30th so I rented The Devil Wears Prada. Heather and I watched it Friday night and it was great. The sound and video were great. Keep in mind that we still haven't joined the HD generation yet. I think this is a great way to rent movies.

I found something else cool while looking through the video selection. Smith season one is available for download. This show only made it three episodes before being cancelled. You can download episodes four through seven.

We finished watching the first episode of The Apprentice: Los Angeles tonight. It has been such a long time since the last season of Apprentice that I wasn't all that excited about this one. There are a lot of new twists in this season.

• George and Carolyn are gone, replaced by Trump's daughter, Ivanka.
• The project managers remain project managers until they lose.
• The losing team lives outside in tents while the winning team lives inside a mansion.
• The winning project manager joins the Trumps in the board room to fire one off the opposing team.

I think this will make this season more interesting and worth watching. The first board room alone made the episode worth watching. I think Trump changed his mind at least three times during the free-for-all. I was rooting for Martin for most of it. I don't really like Frank. He's too loud and abnoxious. I thought he was a very poor speaker, always interupting Mr. Trump and tripping over his own tongue. Martin was calm and collected, but a little too sly for his own good. He was probably the "evil mastermind" of the group. I'm interested to see who takes over as project manager from Frank and if they can get out of the back yard.

Weird Al has a new video out. I caught it on VH1 and had to show Heather. It's called "White and Nerdy" and it's hilarious.

Last year we watched the last episode of The Amazing Race: Family Edition because one of the challenges was curling. Since then we watched race 9, the entire Family Edition, and attempted to record races 7 and 8 on GSN. We're completely addicted to the race and looking forward to race 10 which starts tonight.