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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#231

Post by tomjen3 »

ShardPhoenix wrote: post #195
TeMPOraL wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is akin to saying that the internet is broken because some videos are prefaced by a commercial. Youtube showing mandatory, non-skippable video commercials before the video you want to watch is the single most annoying thing that happened on the Internet in the last few years. I still haven't figured out how to get rid of them, but if I ever find out, I won't hesitate to do so.

Ablock Plus gets rid of them.

Thanks. I couldn't understand what people were talking about because I haven't seen any of those forced ads.

Re: TV is broken

#232

Post by justincormack »

naner wrote: post #166
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…

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. This is a feature not a bug. Most people don't understand aspect ration and in fact will get upset if a standard def video doesn't fill the HD screen. Actually, it is probably just laziness on the manufacturers part but it works out well for most consumers.

Also because there were no standards for widescreen in analogue times. Even broadcast TV sometimes mixes aspect ratios incorrectly.

Re: TV is broken

#233

Post by justincormack »

bicknergseng wrote: post #95

TV might be broken, but the inability of a child to focus on something for more than a few minutes at a time isn't the best evidence. It definitely brings up some interesting things to think about, though. First, while the attention span of adults is normally quite a bit better than that of kids, the digital age is eroding our ability to focus on one thing http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312119/Faceb.…

Do not cite the Daily Mail. It is not a news source or source of information about science.

Re: TV is broken

#234

Post by cjrp »

DanI-S wrote: post #219
DanBC wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm British, but I live in California, and I'm eagerly awaiting the day that I can pay monthly for BBC iPlayer (their streaming service). There are sketchy proxy services available, but it feels terrible to be paying a third party and effectively stealing the content.

iPad only, but I guess it's a start: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14322604

Re: TV is broken

#235

Post by [deleted] »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #41
zerostar07 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Torrents are typically the fastest things on the web because you're pulling from so many sources; in effect, a peer to peer CDN cluster :) Also, there are plenty of fly-by-night sites that have full episodes of most shows that people care about. I won't link to any here, but just Google "watch full episode" and you'll see what I mean. >"Also, what about the illegal factor?" As long as gullible sheep continue to finan…

[deleted]

Re: TV is broken

#236

Post by zerostar07 »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #41
zerostar07 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Torrents are typically the fastest things on the web because you're pulling from so many sources; in effect, a peer to peer CDN cluster :) Also, there are plenty of fly-by-night sites that have full episodes of most shows that people care about. I won't link to any here, but just Google "watch full episode" and you'll see what I mean. >"Also, what about the illegal factor?" As long as gullible sheep continue to finan…

To hell with imaginary property.

Then i suppose you also give your work away and your house doesnt have windows or doors, and your life is not really yours alone (all property is imaginary, it's just a convention).

Re: TV is broken

#237

Post by dmoo »

mbell wrote: post #179
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…

This is generally not an issue with your TV (unless you using an internal OTA HD tuner) but rather a poorly made cable box. Generally the cable box is responsible for channel changing, buffering for decode and other things. The stream is sent, uncompressed, to the TV over HDMI. Now your TV may be trying to do some processing on the HDMI signal but that should not effect channel changing at all as the TV isn't changin…

I'm guessing that most of the lag is in decrypting the broadcast stream on the fly from nagra 3 or whatever the current version is. For sure in Ireland there was a big business in selling 'dodgy' boxes which could decrypt all channels when you had paid for only a basic subscription to cable. The encryption upgrade a few years ago killed all of them but made the cable boxes run as slowly as treacle when it came to epg or channel switching

Re: TV is broken

#238

Post by billybob »

Game_Ender wrote: post #190
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…

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.

I disagree. No site has a right to force me to look at ads. And I don't have a right to force them to provide a service. Their offer is "come here for free, and we're hoping you'll look at these ads." They could change their offer. They could require payment. Maybe their service is something people will pay for and maybe not. If I don't pay and I don't look at ads, I have no right to expect the site to keep existing. But that's OK with me.

It's like a casino that sells cheap dinners. Clearly, they want you to eat the cheap dinner and lose much more money gambling. But you're allowed to eat it and leave. If they wanted to prohibit that, they could make the dinner available only to those who gamble. But if they haven't set that condition, you don't have to obey it.

All that said, I don't mind tasteful ads. I don't block ads on StackOverflow because they're interesting. I do block ads on Yahoo Mail (on the rare occasions that I log into my throwaway account there) because they're annoying and often offensive. If Yahoo says to me, "we're closing your account because you block our ads", I will say "that's fine."

There are services I'm willing to pay for and services I'll only use if they're free. Looking at ads is a form of payment. Some sites are worth it, and others aren't.

Re: TV is broken

#239

Post by billybob »

dpark wrote: post #118
kbruner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my least favorite argument when talking about removing advertising from my life. Facebook and Google will simply do something else. Why is "ad supported" always considered the only business model?

What business model do you see for Google that doesn't involve advertising but would allow them to continue providing Gmail and search? Yes, they might conceivably charge $15/mo for a while. But then Comcast will come along and say, "Hey, here's a (mediocre) search and email service that we will bundle for 'free'!" and just like that, Google basically stops providing search and email (or provides it only to bundling…

>>>But then Comcast will come along and say, "Hey, here's a (mediocre) search and email service that we will bundle for 'free'!"I don't know about you, but I would pay for Gmail in a heartbeat. It's a great service. I can guarantee that Comcast would make something 1,000 times crappier and that I'd waste hundreds of hours of my life fighting with it.

In fact, I'd rather be paying for Gmail so that I'd be their customer and not their product. I'm happy that I pay for Pinboard because I know that it motivates them to please me and not someone else to whom they can sell my data. And I'm happy because my payment is an investment in the continued existence of a service I value.

You're asserting that Gmail and Google search aren't valuable enough for people to pay for them. If that's true, they shouldn't exist in a free market. But I don't think it's true.

Re: TV is broken

#240

Post by jwr »

I had exactly the same problem with my daughter (now 3 years old). She grew up playing with an iPhone and an iPad. The TV was broken in two ways:

1. Touching the screen (and swiping) didn't do anything.

2. The concept of having to wait until a specific time to see a show was completely alien.

Thank heavens we at least don't have commercial breaks in kids programs (Poland).

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