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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#121

Post by jpdoctor »

dpark wrote: post #114
jpdoctor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Since there's nowhere near 720 pixels x 60 frames/sec worth of information being sent to your TV, who cares?

Maybe because resampling and interpolation are more damaging to lower-resolution streams? Also, depending on the video source, there might very well be a 720p x 60Hz signal being sent to the TV.

> 720p x 60Hz signal being sent to the TV.

Let's do the arithmetic:

720p is 1280x720 pixels

RGB = 24 bits/pixel

60 frames/sec

1280x720x24x60 = 1.3 Gbps

For comparison: Full broadcast HD is around 15 Mbps

Why people think they can see full 720p worth of information is beyond me.

EDIT: Pay attention to the last sentence and the posts above. Of course I don't think people can see 1.3G worth of info.

Again: Why people think they can see full 720p worth (=1.3G) of information is beyond me.

Re: TV is broken

#122

Post by rdtsc »

SiVal wrote: post #113
droithomme wrote: post #57

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 bot…

Here's a question for my fellow amateur economists: What happens to the quality of broadcast television when you increase the supply of broadcast channel-hours by a factor of 50 and you don't increase the supply of viewers at all? I used to watch TV, like most people. Then, in the 1990's, the number of channels started increasing. More options, great. Twice as many channels did allow for more specialization, so maybe…

I have a TV but I am not using it to watch cable broadcast. I have cable but just because it came in a stupid bundle with the internet. So the TV is there but it is used to watch Netflix, Youtube, Amazon and Hulu videos. It is used for games, skype (there is a camera attached to it), also used to browse pictures (since it has a better resolution and color profile than my laptop).

And I have noticed the same effect in respect to commercials. I cannot stand watching them and refuse to watch anything that suddenly interrupts and starts showing commercials (so I stopped using Hulu eventually as well because of it). Extended family members think I am crazy for being so "fussy" and I think they are crazy for putting up with annoying commercials.

Re: TV is broken

#123

Post by icebraining »

ricardobeat wrote: post #86
cafard wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But imho it's not so much TV that is broken. It's advertising. In today's world of on-demand personalized information, advertising has zero value." What happens to Google & Facebook without advertising?

Their advertising is less broken. I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads.

I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads.

You can; it costs $50/year, though: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/features.html

Re: TV is broken

#124

Post by eridius »

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…

Don't forget Avatar (which has an upcoming sequel show) and the new My Little Pony.

Re: TV is broken

#125

Post by sukuriant »

PaulHoule wrote: post #58
noblethrasher wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Kim Possible: Disney Channel Sponguebob Square Pants: I think Nickelodeon Teen Titans: I forget, probably Cartoon Network.

Honestly, the only way I'd ever go back to cable is if I had an a la carte system; and then I'd take Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, G4, Discovery Channel and their affiliates. I don't want/need the rest...

(also, haven't paid for cable in > 2 years. Netflix, Redbox, Vudu are my friends)

Re: TV is broken

#126

Post by Periodic »

nollidge wrote: post #91
lukifer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's advertising. Agreed. It's simply a bad business model; you're the product, not the customer, etc. It also has a hugely distorted effect on content production, incentivizing shows to shoot for safe returns and broad appeal instead of monetizing hardcore fans of innovative niche programming. Put simply, I want businesses to care whether they have my money, not my eyeballs. I cut most forms of advertising out of…

> no radio There's definitely quality non-profit radio stations (NPR affiliates, for example) depending on where you live. At worst you get the fund drives that are annoying (but understandable) for a week. EDIT: This assumes you're in the U.S., though.

I listen mostly to NPR. Occasionally (pledge drives, reruns, shows I don't care for) I will turn to traditional radio to fill the void while driving (older car with no MP3 interface). It's amazing to me how many commercials they have! They feel interminable and it feels like at least half the channels have commercials playing at any given time. It really makes me appreciate KQED (local NPR station) and is the reason I support them.

Fortunately, I'm seeing more and more cars support USB interfaces. Now I can just load up a USB stick (they are so cheap) with my music and old episodes of This American Life and I'm good to go for hundreds of miles.

Re: TV is broken

#127

Post by ilaksh »

TV is outdated, but so are a lot of more important things: cars/transportation, government, "economics", agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, humans, natural language.

Re: TV is broken

#128

Post by WiseWeasel »

droithomme wrote: post #57

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 bot…

For the latter issue (and possibly slightly helping the first issue as well), switch your TV to 'game' mode. This is a low-latency mode that eliminates certain image processing in order to reduce the lag between signal and display. That should allow you to change channels faster.

Re: TV is broken

#129

Post by tomjen3 »

awj wrote: post #63
tomjen3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody is a hipster :) I actually like the action movies where you know that the guy gets the pretty girl once he is done blowing things up. And recently the explosions have become more awesome, so I prefer the never movies. You keep Casablanca, if you want.

> I actually like the action movies where you know that the guy gets the pretty girl once he is done blowing things up. Die Hard is "years old" (24 of them, actually) and is an awesome movie in this genre. In fact I am going to preemptively declare you to be an action movie hipster if you like them but not Die Hard. Being old doesn't make a movie bad. Being bad makes a movie bad. Sometimes that's because the times ha…

It is okay, but the CGI explosions aren't as good as in the new movies (they properly wasn't even CGI then).

Re: TV is broken

#130

Post by tsotha »

wpietri wrote: post #111

Broken for whom? Beatrix isn't the customer. She's the product being sold. TV is only broken if the customers (advertisers) start to lose their ability to manipulate a lot of people into buying things. Hopefully young Beatrix is an outlier like her parents and she'll never get hooked. But it could be that, like most adults, she'll get used to sitting there through the commercials, wasting 8 minutes of her life to get…

>TV is only broken if the customers (advertisers) start to lose their ability to manipulate a lot of people into buying things.

That's exactly what's happening, though. Most adults don't sit through commercials any more. The percentage of people who don't get their shows through the internet and don't skip over commercials with a DVR is something like 33%. I'd bet my last dollar that demographic skews elderly in a major way, too.

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