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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#51

Post by yabai »

I have given up on most TV - especially cable TV. Almost 3 years ago my wife and I moved and decided to not startup cable TV. I setup an antenna and run MythTV, Boxee and anything else that will run on a browser + flash. I run a virtual machine for Netflix. When we started this experiment, I thought we might go running back to cable. What we discovered is that there is a ton of content available. The Mythbox nicely removes commercials.

When people hear that I don't have cable, many are confused that I can receive HD programming over the air. The cable companies have done a brilliant job confusing the public into believing that you must have cable to watch TV and/or access HD content.

We couldn't be happier. I challenge anyone to give up paying for cable tv. Good luck!

Re: TV is broken

#52

Post by mbreese »

VikingCoder wrote: post #39
mikeryan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed. Not sure your market or cable company. But in Berkeley (and SF) with Comcast under on-demand I have a section called "TV Shows", the "All Shows" section lists about 300 TV shows.Each with about 8-20 episodes. All On-Demand all with rewind, pause e…

I have money, and I want to watch Season 2, Episode 2 of the West Wing, which my friend just told me is worth watching. I cannot give them my money, to watch it. I could wait a couple days for Netflix to mail me the DVD, but by then the impulse might pass. TV is broken.

How does this mean that TV is broken? Because you can't get instant access to every show ever created? That's not a TV problem, that's a you problem. That says nothing about TV. It does point to a weakness in distribution, but there are a variety of ways to get legally content these days: over the air, cable, satellite, online streaming (Hulu, Netflix), online purchase (Amazon, iTunes), buy or rent a DVD of a season of a show, etc... all of which can be played on a traditional TV.

If you want to make an argument, argue that distribution is broken. TV as a content production industry is still doing okay.

BTW - that was a good episode of the West Wing. While it was all done in flashbacks, you get to see the history of how people came to work in the West Wing. Donna's character particularly got more interesting after that episode. But you probably don't want to watch just that episode, it was the second half of a two-parter.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745640/

Re: TV is broken

#53

Post by king_jester »

PaulHoule wrote: post #24

The real issue with TV is that the audience is aging and eventually dying off. TV viewership in hours per week is pretty stable because as boomers retire and become disabled and unable to do anything else, they watch more TV. Young people, like under 50, are turning away from TV. Generation X and younger people have been falling out of love with TV for a long time. In my case I remember sharply losing interest in TV…

> Generation X and younger people have been falling out of love with TV for a long time.

This is definitely not the case. People still like watching television and consume those programs, but now people are finding other options besides cable to fill that role, such as streaming and digital purchase (and piracy).

Re: TV is broken

#54

Post by groby_b »

mikeryan wrote: post #30
VikingCoder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tomorrow, Hacker News will be discussing a story about a 14 year old boy who discovered that some rats prefer raspberries. If you'd like to discuss something else, try using a different web site, that will also be discussing one and only one story. TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed…

TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed. Not sure your market or cable company. But in Berkeley (and SF) with Comcast under on-demand I have a section called "TV Shows", the "All Shows" section lists about 300 TV shows.Each with about 8-20 episodes. All On-Demand all with rewind, pause e…

I've got no problem paying $40 for a season pass of a show I like on iTunes. I think I'd be happy to pay that via Comcast too, if they had a decent interface. (I am however _not_ willing to pay $9.99 to watch a 5-year old movie "on demand". Not worth it)

The part that the cable companies don't get is that customers don't want a buffet. They want a la carte.

And they want pricing that is related to the value of a movie or a show. I don't mind paying premium price for something that's still out in theaters. But once that's gone, drop the price, will ya?

Re: TV is broken

#55

Post by joezydeco »

noblethrasher wrote: post #43
PaulHoule wrote: post #24

The real issue with TV is that the audience is aging and eventually dying off. TV viewership in hours per week is pretty stable because as boomers retire and become disabled and unable to do anything else, they watch more TV. Young people, like under 50, are turning away from TV. Generation X and younger people have been falling out of love with TV for a long time. In my case I remember sharply losing interest in TV…

>TV for kids just sucks these days. The audience isn't kids, it's grandparents who imagine that their grandkids will be entertained by it. I am curious about what you mean by 'TV for kids'. It seems to me that 'kid shows' have been pretty good since the early nineties (Ducktales, Animaniacs, Gargoyles, the DC Animated universe cartoons). More recently: Kim Possible, Spectacular Spider-Man, Samurai Jack, Sym-Bionic Ti…

And I would give credit to Disney and Viacom/Nickelodeon for trying to create entertaining sitcoms for kids. It can't be Spongebob and Phineas and Ferb 24 hours a day (although it sure seems like it).

You may think it's crap, but go back and watch the sitcoms you watched as a kid (Brady Bunch for me). It's even worse than you remember.

Re: TV is broken

#56

Post by revelation »

yabai wrote: post #51

I have given up on most TV - especially cable TV. Almost 3 years ago my wife and I moved and decided to not startup cable TV. I setup an antenna and run MythTV, Boxee and anything else that will run on a browser + flash. I run a virtual machine for Netflix. When we started this experiment, I thought we might go running back to cable. What we discovered is that there is a ton of content available. The Mythbox nicely r…

This isn't about cable. It's about the whole model of unidirectional media. Dieing out, if you have not noticed.

Re: TV is broken

#57

Post by droithomme »

There are many other things that are broken too.

My fancy expensive name-brand digital TV takes a full minute to boot up from a cold start, longer than it took my tube based TV from the 1950s to warm up.

Once on, it takes almost a full second to change channels while it rebuffers the stream of the channel being changed to. This prevents quickly flipping through channels to see what is on.

As a result I just don't bother most of the time. Which is fine, I watch much less TV.

We won't even get into how 720 screens don't really have 720 display pixels so even perfect size matches are resampled and interpolated, or how often I find I have to manually change the aspect ratio because it wasn't able to figure it out on its own.

Re: TV is broken

#58

Post by PaulHoule »

noblethrasher wrote: post #43
PaulHoule wrote: post #24

The real issue with TV is that the audience is aging and eventually dying off. TV viewership in hours per week is pretty stable because as boomers retire and become disabled and unable to do anything else, they watch more TV. Young people, like under 50, are turning away from TV. Generation X and younger people have been falling out of love with TV for a long time. In my case I remember sharply losing interest in TV…

>TV for kids just sucks these days. The audience isn't kids, it's grandparents who imagine that their grandkids will be entertained by it. I am curious about what you mean by 'TV for kids'. It seems to me that 'kid shows' have been pretty good since the early nineties (Ducktales, Animaniacs, Gargoyles, the DC Animated universe cartoons). More recently: Kim Possible, Spectacular Spider-Man, Samurai Jack, Sym-Bionic Ti…

Where do you see these?

I certainly never see them on cable when I visit friends and family. I saw Kim Possible once a long time ago, and I also was really impressed with Teen Titans, enough to get the box set.

Are these on a channel they don't get? On AMZN or Netflix? Or do you just have to get them through BitTorrent?

There might be some good stuff, but it's never on. Spongebob Squarepants is always on... I wonder if there's a connection.

Re: TV is broken

#59

Post by w1ntermute »

zerostar07 wrote: post #28
w1ntermute wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (btw that illegal torrent u suggest is still going to take hours to download) I think you need to double-check your math. I just found a Bluray rip of the Hurt Locker on a torrent site that is 3.78 GB. Using my 24 Mbps fiber connection ($55/month, in America), it would take: 3.78 GB * (1024 MB/GB) * (8 MB/Mb) * (1 s/24 Mb) * (1 min/60 s) = 21.5 mins Hardly the "hours" that you suggested. And considering that the ad…

out of curiosity are you getting the full 24Mbps when downloading torrents? Also, what about the illegal factor?

> out of curiosity are you getting the full 24Mbps when downloading torrents?

Yes, I use a private torrent site that I've been a member of for more than 5 years. Speed is never an issue.

> Also, what about the illegal factor?

As I said, I use a private torrent site. The risk is minimal when most anti-piracy organizations will be focusing on low-hanging fruit like public torrents and file hosting services (such as Rapidshare and the now-defunct Megaupload).

Re: TV is broken

#60

Post by _feda_ »

The problem with tv for the past 50 years or so is that it has encouraged a passive relationship between culture and its consumers. It kills conversation, discourages activity, its one-sidedness is bad for people. The internet has come to the rescue, allowing people young and old to be more active participants in their own culture. Hopefully this unidirectional mode of content delivery will die off completely within in the next 50 years.
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