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TV May Die Soon

shellypalmer.com

31–40 of 75 posts

Re: TV May Die Soon

#31
post #8

AM radio hasn't died yet. Heck, books haven't died yet. New media doesn't always kill old media.

AM is dead. Listen to the ads, not the god awful programming sometime. There's only so many prostate pills to be sold... I don't think it's a real business anymore, IMO there are a few ultra conservative types supporting the whole thing.

Isn't AM where Sports radio lives?

Re: TV May Die Soon

#32
post #8

AM radio hasn't died yet. Heck, books haven't died yet. New media doesn't always kill old media.

AM is dead. Listen to the ads, not the god awful programming sometime. There's only so many prostate pills to be sold... I don't think it's a real business anymore, IMO there are a few ultra conservative types supporting the whole thing.

If there are ads at all, somebody sold those & got paid.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#33

If Net Neutrality goes away TV will thrive. This battle is far from over.

TV may thrive again if they improve the content. The biggest hurdle network TV has right now is that people are leaving because there is nothing to watch.

It's the classic death spiral. Fewer viewers means less money from advertisers, which in turn means less money for content.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#34
post #29
post #27

Television isn't dying. Over the air TV though is on life support. Just like gas stations someday soon local TV stations will be ancient history.

What's the story with gas stations in the US? Are they dying out / being replaced by something else as well?

Observationally: No. If parent was referring to less vehicles due to advances in transportation technology and pattern optimizations...I think broadcast TV dies much sooner than gas stations.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#35

If Net Neutrality goes away TV will thrive. This battle is far from over.

As an optimist, I hope the NN disappears as a policy and creates the catalyst to enforce it technologically instead. It's a hard problem to solve but I think the pieces are there.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#36

We keep getting "TV is dead/dying/will live forever" stories on HN. tl;dr of all of them is essentially: TV, as a non-time-shifted non-live broadcast medium, is dead: Netflix et al, Youtube, Torrent, and at the very least, DVRs, killed it; people watch non-live content how they want, when they want, frequently choosing to just "Netflix binge" it. TV, as a live broadcast medium (eg, emergency news), will never die in…

> TV, as a live broadcast medium (eg, emergency news), will never die in that sense: I can watch Presidential addresses via the White House's Youtube channel via Youtube's Live feature as well as many local OTA broadcast channels.

I think that misses the point a little. Live events will always be a thing, and we're seeing a huge push for that on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. But many of these events are not available on those platforms yet, and that's the problem.

TV networks hold onto these events as a reason for people to buy a cable subscription, but I would rather watch it on the Internet, and I'd happily pay a fee for it. That's the missing piece that hasn't been figured out yet.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#37

We keep getting "TV is dead/dying/will live forever" stories on HN. tl;dr of all of them is essentially: TV, as a non-time-shifted non-live broadcast medium, is dead: Netflix et al, Youtube, Torrent, and at the very least, DVRs, killed it; people watch non-live content how they want, when they want, frequently choosing to just "Netflix binge" it. TV, as a live broadcast medium (eg, emergency news), will never die in…

And the article says as much: >"Traditional (linear) TV audiences are declining at a significant rate, and they are practically aged out of key demographics. Cable customers are also declining." Note its qualifying the statement with the word "linear."

So in other words, more and more people are using DVRs and subscription services?

Re: TV May Die Soon

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue is, even when you have clear signal conditions, even if you're dialed into a channel that is broadcasting HE-AACv2 (aka HE-ACC+ or eACC+) and your radio decodes it natively as HE-ACCv2... it's still a goddamned 128kbit or less stream. Arguably, this is worse quality than ye olde FM on average. I mean, I could get behind a transition if they were using Opus instead of a nearly decade old hack of an e…

> ... it's still a goddamned 128kbit or less stream. Arguably, this is worse quality than ye olde FM on average. I don't claim to be a "golden ears" or anything, but I find 64 kbps HE-AAC to offer better-than-FM quality. (HE-AACv2 benefits really only make sense at 48 kbps or lower.) Hydrogenaudio tests showed that a good HE-AAC encoder does just slightly (imperceptibly) worse than Opus at 64 kbps[1]. [1] http://list…

The problem with those listening tests is the playback medium is not controlled: ie, what were they using (what headphones, what headphone amp, what DAC, etc; or what speakers, what speaker amp, what DAC, was the room properly treated, etc); and what is their level of hearing damage (ie, their age)?

If everyone is taking their test on their phone with low grade earbuds plugged in, or exceptionally bad car audio systems, everything sounds bad, ergo, the same.

I own a pair of Stax, among other higher end headphones, with the proper gear to drive them. I can tell the difference between modern-LAME-encoded 320kbps MP3 and lossless, albeit just barely, in an ABX test. Everything 64kbps sounds bad unless it's something like Opus doing conventional speech.

I know I'm setting the bar high, but I don't think I even have "golden ears", I think anyone can reasonably hear the difference, they just need to quit bothering with low end gear.

I mean, people just on HN buy Tesla Model Ses for $100k+ without even thinking twice, I find it hard to believe they won't also drop $1k on headphones and headphone gear at the very minimum if they care about audio.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#39
post #29
post #27

Television isn't dying. Over the air TV though is on life support. Just like gas stations someday soon local TV stations will be ancient history.

What's the story with gas stations in the US? Are they dying out / being replaced by something else as well?

They're doing fine for now. Electric-car optimists think they'll be replaced by charging stations. Apocalyptic doomsters think they'll be replaced by a place to feed & water your horse (or by nothing at all). Both camps seem to agree petroleum fuels are a temporary thing.

Re: TV May Die Soon

#40

We keep getting "TV is dead/dying/will live forever" stories on HN. tl;dr of all of them is essentially: TV, as a non-time-shifted non-live broadcast medium, is dead: Netflix et al, Youtube, Torrent, and at the very least, DVRs, killed it; people watch non-live content how they want, when they want, frequently choosing to just "Netflix binge" it. TV, as a live broadcast medium (eg, emergency news), will never die in…

I wonder if YouTube Live and other similar services could scale up to serve in a time of true crises. Back in 2001 the web's bandwidth limitations were laid bare on 9/11 and that was with static text & pictures. CNN had to go to a "bare bones" text site and even that had trouble.

Things have improved dramatically since then of course but delivering live video to billions of users simultaneously?

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