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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#131

Post by agscala »

jpdoctor wrote: post #121
dpark wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

If you don't think it's compressed, you're kidding yourself

Re: TV is broken

#132

Post by dpark »

calloc wrote: post #17
geophile wrote: post #7

It's not really TV, it's TV networks that are broken. Hulu (and other online archives) may be even more irritating than broadcast TV. It's difficult to find what you want; you are hit by download limits in the middle of a program; there are still commercials, and it's the same ones over and over and over, and the repetition can drive you nuts; browser crash means starting over sometimes, or if you can go to where you…

Hold on ... Hulu has download limits in the middle of watching a program? I've watched Hulu from 5 AM till 5 PM almost uninterrupted, the only interruption is between shows they will say "You've been watching for 3 hours, are you sure you don't want to take a break?". That repeats every two hours or so. Yes, the commercials can be grating, and are still annoying but I think that is a small price to pay for streaming…

I really wanted to like Hulu. I even paid for Hulu Plus so I could watch it on my PS3 and get access to the larger library. But on my PS3, Hulu streaming was flakey. And then the commercials. The commercials ended it. After watching on Netflix, I just couldn't deal with Hulu's commercials. They're nearly as grating as cable TV, and for some strange reason they always seemed to be inserted 5 seconds away from where the content was written for them to be inserted: music, COMMERCIAL, finish music, fade through black.

I would happily pay for Hulu Plus Plus, where the extra plus means I pay more and they turn off the commercials. But I'm unwilling to pay for Hulu Plus at all.

Re: TV is broken

#133

Post by somedayme »

I paid for Directivo for 10+ years, long before HDTV. $100+/month.

Now, I have a Samsung 55" LED with a beautiful picture that I bought online for cheap. I plugged an older Macbook Pro into it via hdmi. Couch Potato, Sick Beard, $7/month lifetime unlimited usenet account from a thanksgiving special, mplayer extended to play it all. I haven't seen a commercial in years. As the author says, if it isn't online, I don't watch it.

TV isn't broken, cable companies are.

Re: TV is broken

#134

Post by yason »

This sounds stupid but I always thought there weren't commercials for channels that you actually pay for? That the advertisements were to compensate for channels that didn't cost anything?

I haven't really watched tv since the mid 90's and never in the USA so I might miss something obvious here. But where I lived, regular channels were broadcast nationally over the air and they had commercials. I always thought the popularity of cable/satellite subscription was based on you getting rid of the commercials, not paying for seeing more commercials on more channels?

Re: TV is broken

#135

Post by TylerE »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #128
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.

No, it won't. Game mode reduces latency on the order of 2-3 frames, so a 0.1sec or less. The issue is that the tuner has to consume a complete data frame before it can start displaying, since it needs to get a keyframe for the codec to start working.

Re: TV is broken

#136

Post by larrik »

blogimus wrote: post #94
potatolicious wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why I groan when Samsung easily dismisses rumors that Apple is about to enter the TV space. The UX around TVs is horrific right now, and people put up with it because that's how it is. There's enormous room for a dramatic UX improvement and it doesn't seem like the incumbents realize this.

Like climate control in your house

I know what you are referring to, but I would say no. Not like that at all.

The ideal climate control interface should never even have to be looked at. It should just know what to do with your heating/cooling equipment to make your house comfortable.

A ideal TV interface should help you do a lot of things, and ideally be fast in the process.

(The article was down while I was writing this comment, but cable equipment and TVs drive me nuts.)

Re: TV is broken

#137

Post by rogerclark »

this story seems a bit manufactured. i get that the kid makes the whole thing more endearing and maybe more poignant, but the writing seems inauthentic and intentionally crafted to drive home the obvious point (a point that every tech-savvy person in our modern world already agrees with)

Re: TV is broken

#138

Post by dpark »

jpdoctor wrote: post #121
dpark wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 1280x720x24x60 = 1.3 Gbps

So your argument is that compression doesn't exist? Do you also listen to 128kb WAV files and argue that they are equivalent to 128kb MP3s?

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

From a distance of about 8 feet on a TV about 50 inches in size, the difference between 720p and 1080p is visible to a person with 20/20 vision. The eye cannot perceive 720p worth of pixels at once, but in the small spot the center of a person's vision is on, pixel density matters a lot.

Re: TV is broken

#139

Post by hweuifhaisuh »

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 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.

Proof?

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

Proof?

>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.

Proof?

>Much like the music industry, the TV industry has been losing it's audience for a long time, and one day they will wake up and realize that their frog has been boiled -- and find somebody else to blame.

Not watching tv doesn't make you cooler.

Re: TV is broken

#140

Post by kgo »

I made nachos for my niece once. Put Doritos on a cookie sheet, smothered them in cheese, and put them in the broiler. She thought they were weird and broken because I didn't use the normal plain-style tortilla chips. Her mom made her a new batch the right way.

Young children have a tenancy to think that the rest of the world is exactly like their home, because that home is their world. Then when they experience the outside world things seem strange.

Like the above anecdote, I remember thinking it was weird when a neighbor made Taco Salad with Frito's instead of Doritos.

I remember how weird my grandmaa's house seemed all around when visiting. The food was different, the board games were different, it was all strange.

I think this anecdote is the same. Its not so much a case of the wisdom of the children, but just another example of a child not understanding that the entire world isn't like their sheltered existence. [I don't intend sheltered as a pejorative here.]

I'm sure there were plenty of other things on the trip that seemed broken, but none happened to be as evil as commercial TV.

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