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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#141

Post by tissarah »

mbreese wrote: post #37
TheFuture wrote: post #23

Almost all my big screen watching is through Roku of mainly Netflix streaming. I cut cable over a year ago and very rarely watch network TV (NFL football games are main thing I watch over the air). I feel like the young girl every time I'm at a friends house and trying to navigate whatever cable/sat guide they have. Seriously, it's 2012 and I'm paging through this endless list of "channels" labeled by NUMBER and a CA…

The best app I've seen for this is HBO Go. It has a huge back catalog of HBO content and a revolving set of movies. It pairs great with an iPad. But, in order to get it, you still need a cable or satellite subscription (and HBO).

Absolutely agreed - phenomenal. I also have enjoyed the additional content they sometimes add for HBO Go users.

Showtime has started doing this thing where you logon to their website while the show is premiering to do/see something but I've never done it because I DVR Showtime shows. Showtime had a press release that they were going to launch their own version of HBO Go but I've not see anything.

I'm excited. I think premium channels like this are going to be the change.

Re: TV is broken

#142

Post by Splines »

eridius wrote: post #124
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…

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

> the new My Little Pony

Which is extremely entertaining, by the way. Also, oddly enough, it has formed quite the internet cult following. I think it's quite the cute show.

It's annoying that my kids and I can only watch it in letterboxed SD. I've torrented HD versions (from an HD stream of the same channel, no less), and it looks great.

Re: TV is broken

#143

Post by finnw »

I'm in the UK.

Until a few years ago I didn't really mind ads - I would happily sit through them until my show came back.

Then in mid-2009 gocompare.com launched their ad campaign (with Wynne Evans singing.) They pushed it really hard - it was on nearly every show on every channel. The song was so irritating that I got into the habit of muting the TV during the commercial breaks.

If I had been a TV network executive, I would have refused to run those ads. They are so awful that they encourage viewers to avoid ads, and I'll bet it has decreased revenue from other advertisers.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-9QFvhQWo&noredirect=1

Re: TV is broken

#144

Post by stinkytaco »

PaulHoule wrote: post #100
stinkytaco wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>TV for kids just sucks these days. You are clearly not watching excellent kids shows like Dinosaur Train , Sesame Street , or Word Girl . Of course, these are all PBS show... interesting. We don't get cable and only sometimes catch an episode of something else on Netflix, so maybe you're right, but PBS is still putting out top notch stuff.

He's nine now so he's a little past that. Back when he was young (three) I could never get him to sit still in front of that stuff. From my point of view, all of that e/i stuff on broadcast was invented by some liberals who want to turn off the next generation to TV.

>Back when he was young (three) I could never get him to sit still in front of that stuff.

Have you considered that it may not be the quality of the TV, it may be him? Some kids don't want to consume, they want to do. It's not bad, but trying to get a kid like that to watch TV will be hard no matter how good it is.

You're right though, that is a tough age. Part of the problem is that kids in the 9-12 range don't want educational. You can grab DVDs of the old Batman animated series or similar, but if you want educational you are stretching. Most local stations have to purchase e/i programming themselves to meet their requirements, so the production qualities tend to reflect "local budgets". There is some good stuff out there (Aqua Kids used to be pretty good, but it's been a couple of years) but it's so hit and miss. If you think what you've got is bad, look through the catalog sometime and see what your station rejected...

That's one of the reasons I like PBS so much. He could still do Arthur, WordGirl, Cyberchase, The Electric Company or Fetch! (which is not my favorite show, but I bet a nine year old would like it). If he's not digging those, have you tried Nova ScienceNow? That one has the added benefit of Neil Degrass Tyson.

Re: TV is broken

#145

Post by wpietri »

tsotha wrote: post #130
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 ma…

Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

When visiting DVR-using friends, I see them watching some commercials (especially, if it's interesting, the first one of a group). And I know that some people who get their TV over the Internet end up seeing ads (e.g., Hulu, YouTube, network sites).

So I suspect that a fair number of ads still get watched, but I can't quickly find any data on how many versus past years.

Re: TV is broken

#146

Post by hweuifhaisuh »

PaulHoule wrote: post #21

My nine year old has never been entertained by cable or broadcast TV. On broadcast TV there is nothing but the e|i junk that is so unwatchable that the category must have been invented by the author of "four arguments for the elimination of television". On cable there's an amazing number of channels, but the only sure things are Spongebob Squarepants (yuck!) and those live action dramas by Disney about impossibly ric…

>On cable there's an amazing number of channels, but the only sure things are Spongebob Squarepants (yuck!) and those live action dramas by Disney about impossibly rich teenagers who have no discernable problems.

>At least kids in Japan get to watch animated shows about cute girls who beat up the bad guys that are formulaic but have a level of art, writing, and voice acting that make American TV programming look like the stuff I make with a cheap camcorder.

Weeaboo

Re: TV is broken

#147

Post by caw »

Periodic wrote: post #126
nollidge wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Where I am it seems like the commercials are synchronized across stations so you can't flip through radio stations and listen to music.

I've switched to Pandora and my mp3 collection on my phone. I pipe that to my car stereo, which works well enough.

Re: TV is broken

#148

Post by awj »

tomjen3 wrote: post #129
awj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

> they properly wasn't even CGI then

I'm going to choose to pretend that wasn't a typo. ;)

Seriously though, there are some great older action movies out there. There's some pretty top notch new ones, too. It's all good.

Re: TV is broken

#149

Post by nessus42 »

I have a TiVo and TV works just fine for me.

(It's hard to fathom now, however, how I ever coped with TV before getting a TiVo, which I've had for more than a decade now.)

Re: TV is broken

#150

Post by niels_olson »

My favorite experience is when the iPad runs out of batteries (blessedly more frequently now) and the kids realize they have nothing to do but read.

Throw away your TV? So 2006. You want to take care of your kids? Cancel your streaming video accounts.

I like Shiela Ash's question about cigarettes: "Why would you pay for something that goes up in smoke?!"

Modified for streaming: "Why would you pay to rot your kids' brains?!"

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