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TV is broken

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Re: TV is broken

#41

Post by seanp2k2 »

zerostar07 wrote: post #28
w1ntermute wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (btw that illegal torrent u suggest is still going to take hours to download) I think you need to double-check your math. I just found a Bluray rip of the Hurt Locker on a torrent site that is 3.78 GB. Using my 24 Mbps fiber connection ($55/month, in America), it would take: 3.78 GB * (1024 MB/GB) * (8 MB/Mb) * (1 s/24 Mb) * (1 min/60 s) = 21.5 mins Hardly the "hours" that you suggested. And considering that the ad…

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 finance shows by paying to watch ads on cable, I'll continue to not waste my life watching ads or waiting for them to play what I want to watch. To hell with imaginary property.

Re: TV is broken

#42

Post by seanp2k2 »

Craiggybear wrote: post #25
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'd not think that at 52 I was anything that could be remotely described as a 'hipster'.

boop boop boop "I WAS WATCHING MOVIES BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN"

so hipster :D

Re: TV is broken

#43

Post by noblethrasher »

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 Titan, Transformers Animated, the Avengers and Young Justice have been phenomenal with respect to writing, voice acting and animation. This is one area where I'm a little envious of kids these days.

I grew up with cartoons made to sell toys. They get shows made to tell (good) stories.

EDIT:Spelling

Re: TV is broken

#44

Post by mbreese »

VikingCoder wrote: post #36
mbreese wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed. And that is why we have a DVR. It lets you pause, rewind, watch something you missed, and the networked one in my bedroom has every episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ever broadcast for my son to choose which one he wants. The only "live" TV that…

With a DVR, you can not watch something you missed. You can watch something that you remember ahead of time to tell your DVR to record for you, or that miraculously it thinks you might be interested in. TV has fundamental flaws, compared to other technologies that exist... It's broken.

Right, if you miss it, you miss it. It has other flaws too - I have shows recorded on my DVR from last summer that I thought I would watch. They've sat at the bottom of the list since then.

But, when you take the subscription for what it is - the best delivery vehicle a wide variety of HD content - then it isn't bad. You just have to live with the limitation. It's not like streaming content online isn't without it's limitations.

If I missed an episode of "Top Shot" for example on History, I still couldn't see it on Hulu until the next day.

Re: TV is broken

#45

Post by jrwoodruff »

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.

Same here. I actually just participated in a Nielsen tv ratings survey, which asked about DVD players, VCRs and DVRs connected to the tv. No spot for Roku, Apple tv or Netflix enabled sets.

Re: TV is broken

#46

Post by TechNewb »

Bloomberg offers a great iPad app, where you can live stream, or watch episodes on demand. The future of channels are apps.

I've never personally ordered cable, and grew up with out it as well.

Re: TV is broken

#47

Post by mbreese »

waterside81 wrote: post #3
dwc wrote: post #2

I've had almost identical conversations with my child in the past, which is not surprising since we do not have cable or an antenna. Who would easily accept the broadcast model who was not brought up with it? Perhaps more interesting is my older brother (approaching retirement age), who doesn't stream content but consumes through cable. Even when watching currently playing shows he records to DVR and delays watching…

The behaviour of your brother is one I see amongst my friends & I. We routinely watch sports on tape-delay (particularly NFL which has an amazing ability to take commercials right when things are getting exciting) just so we can skip through commercials.

My wife and I try to do the same. We like to try to time things just right so that we could still watch the ending in real-time. Starting a football game at halftime usually works pretty well.

This year, I watched all NFL through the RedZone channel. It increased the amount of games that I could follow, but eliminated all the commercials. It does take some of the suspense out of it though, since you don't really get a good flow for a single game. It also helped that I recently moved to CA from Indy and got DirecTV Sunday Ticket to watch Colts games. That was before we knew how bad their season was going to be, so I wasn't too invested in following particular games.

Re: TV is broken

#48

Post by ChrisLTD »

VikingCoder wrote: post #39
mikeryan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed. Not sure your market or cable company. But in Berkeley (and SF) with Comcast under on-demand I have a section called "TV Shows", the "All Shows" section lists about 300 TV shows.Each with about 8-20 episodes. All On-Demand all with rewind, pause e…

I have money, and I want to watch Season 2, Episode 2 of the West Wing, which my friend just told me is worth watching. I cannot give them my money, to watch it. I could wait a couple days for Netflix to mail me the DVD, but by then the impulse might pass. TV is broken.

It's not ideal that you have to use a mishmash of services to get what you want when you want it. But there are multiple delivery mechanisms for a lot of popular content.

For instance, you could watch the West Wing Season 2 on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-west-wing-season-2/... Or Amazon Instant Video: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0047N63NE/ref=tmm_aiv_titl...

Re: TV is broken

#49

Post by VikingCoder »

mbreese wrote: post #44
VikingCoder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a DVR, you can not watch something you missed. You can watch something that you remember ahead of time to tell your DVR to record for you, or that miraculously it thinks you might be interested in. TV has fundamental flaws, compared to other technologies that exist... It's broken.

Right, if you miss it, you miss it. It has other flaws too - I have shows recorded on my DVR from last summer that I thought I would watch. They've sat at the bottom of the list since then. But, when you take the subscription for what it is - the best delivery vehicle a wide variety of HD content - then it isn't bad. You just have to live with the limitation. It's not like streaming content online isn't without it's…

...the fact that you can't watch it on Hulu until the next day is NOT a technology problem.

Re: TV is broken

#50

Post by lbotos »

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…

I don't think it is fair to make the comparison between TV and music industries. While they are both being slow and TV is getting outmoded by the internet listening to music is not dying. They are both media industries and we are just seeing the shift from monolithic distribution channels to a more federated internet distribution model. The audience is still there, they just aren't facing the TV set anymore. Their eyes are glued to a monitor instead. :)
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