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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#181

Post by TylerE »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #163
TylerE wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, I think I may have noticed that issue switching between HD channels at times, but SD channels maybe don't have the same issue? I guess the time before a key frame appears can vary from up to a second to as low as 0, depending on when you happen to switch. It could be that a few frames, or 0.1 seconds becomes significant at that point, though you're right that it's likely to make little difference. I was not awar…

Basically the way modern video codecs work is that they only fully encode every Nth frame, where N is some smallish integer - 15 or 30 is common. From one keyframe to the next, they essentially encode a diff from the prior frame. The idea is that most of the regions of the frame have very little change over short timescales.

It's a tradeoff. More keyframes means faster seeking (when you seek in a video, it has to start from a keyframe too, for the same reasons), but larger data rates for the same image quality.

Re: TV is broken

#182

Post by w33ble »

jerf wrote: post #20

I would observe that in some sense this isn't just a "kid growing up with different tech gets it better than the adults" story. My wife and I both feel the exact same way about TV, in our mid-30s. We just have the historical perspective such that we don't have to ask "why". Also it's less cute when we ask why. But otherwise the same.

Early 30's here, and 3 years without cable service. I get exceptionally aggravated when I'm at a a bar or a friends house watching something because I can't stand the interruption of commercials anymore. It's amazing how fast you get used to just watching something straight through and how annoyed you get when you can't. It blows my mind that in the age of Netflix other people can still tolerate commercial broadcasts.

Re: TV is broken

#183

Post by r00fus »

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #172
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.

IMO there is a strong correlation between the mobile phone landscape circa 2007 iPhone release and the television landscape today. Pretty much the same players, mostly vying for market share based on kitsch features... No true innovation. Without having read the article I'm guessing Apple will introduce something along the lines of 'Siri TV' dispensing with the remote control as they did with the stylus but instead o…

> Siri TV

First off, iTV or whatever it's going to be called, doesn't need Siri yet - see this: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2671593&#3...

Siri is a game changer, but Apple's current implementation on the 4S isn't adequate. Whether it's bandwidth problems (due to bad coverage) or misunderstood commands due to noise, my experience with Siri has been mixed - it's a tough problem, but the results aren't there yet, at least for basics such as "(find|what is the|call) number of $mycityname water department". Strangely, the "speak text" feature seems to work pretty well almost anywhere... I have no problems editing contacts in the car.

Re: TV is broken

#184

Post by yabai »

revelation wrote: post #56
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.

I complain about cable television in any conversation about TV!

Re: TV is broken

#185

Post by ericng »

Some people have mentioned the cable boxes are the issues but no one has mentioned Scientific Atlanta by name. If I'm not mistaken they have been producing horrible boxes for multiple carriers for years!

As a Cablevision/Optonline subscriber, I find that using their iOS app is way ahead of using the actual cable box interface.

Is it IR that just makes the interface slow or is there some other hardware constraint that?

Re: TV is broken

#186

Post by DanI-S »

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…

Some validation: In the UK, the BBC has a pretty fixed budget, a pretty fixed (low) number of channels and a pretty fixed audience. They have continued to produce a high quality output of world-class educational and entertainment TV for a good chunk of the last century.

They also managed to build a free streaming service superior to Hulu, and a bunch of great websites.

It costs $230 per year ($19 per month). And there will never be any ads.

Re: TV is broken

#187

Post by shalmanese »

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…

According to most people who follow TV closely, it's lead to a TV renaissance. Most people agree that, post-Sopranos, we've been living in a golden age of television with shows like The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, Community & Louie all being an order of magnitude better than what's gone before it. We're currently suffering from a glut of amazing television and if you haven't been paying attention, that's your fault, not TVs.

Re: TV is broken

#188

Post by vacri »

I then do what I should have simply done in the first place. I hook up the iPad to the free hotel wifi and hand it to her. She fires up the Netflix app, chooses a show, and she is happy.

No. You shouldn't have. Thanks for making the free hotel wifi choked for everyone by pulling down a long-term video. What you should have done was bring along some videos of your own.

Re: TV is broken

#189

Post by DanBC »

DanI-S wrote: post #186
SiVal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some validation: In the UK, the BBC has a pretty fixed budget, a pretty fixed (low) number of channels and a pretty fixed audience. They have continued to produce a high quality output of world-class educational and entertainment TV for a good chunk of the last century. They also managed to build a free streaming service superior to Hulu, and a bunch of great websites. It costs $230 per year ($19 per month). And ther…

Legally I don't need a licence but I buy one anyway.

Re: TV is broken

#190

Post by Game_Ender »

lukifer wrote: post #87
rickmb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no age limit her. We're in our 40's, we watch a lot of series and movies, but we've rarely seen commercials in the past 10 or so years. Sometimes we start watching a show or movie more or less by accident, but that usually ends at the first commercial break. Both of us find it hard to imagine people can actually tolerate watching TV that way, even though we've done the same for a long time. But imho it's not…

> 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…

I feel like using AdBlock is unethical. You are using a sites resource, while depriving them of the revenue they need to provide you that resource. I vote with my feet so to speak, and stick mostly to sites with subdued advertising.
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