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TV Isn't Broken, So Why Fix It?
PolygamousRanchKid sends this quote from a contentious article at CNN that questions the need for further development of TVs and the entire TV-viewing experience.
"The technology industry is absolutely bent on reinventing television. ... But nobody seems to be able to answer the big question: what exactly is so broken about TV anyway? The tech industry is filled with engineers and geeks. They naturally want to optimize the TV experience, to make it as efficient and elegant as possible, requiring the fewest number of steps to complete a particular task while offering the greatest number of amazing new features. But normal people don't think about TV that way. TV is passive. The last thing we want to do is work at it. ... As long as there's something on — anything — that is reasonably engaging, we're cool. Most of us are even OK spending a few minutes just shuffling through channels at random."
So, what do you think is broken about TV right now? Is there a point at which it'd be better for us to stand back and say "We've done what we can with this. Let's work on something else"?
Have you SEEN what's on TV?
Now a 3-d tv, thats a good reason to spend 2k on right?
Right?
TV is broken because, with a few exceptions, content is tied to a specific time and location.
I want to be able to watch my favorite shows when I remember I want to watch them, not a time set by someone else. I also don't always want to watch them from home.
Take away Tivo, Slingbox, etc and these things are not possible.
The only thing broken about TV is the massive proportion of it dedicated to advertising instead of actual content.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I'll take a crack at this.
It's expensive as hell.
The cost exaggerates how much crap there is to sift through to find anything worth watching.
Often the "worth watching" query comes back empty.
The STB's are universally awful.
Even if you DVR and FFwd, the commercials are an annoyance.
I'm sure there's more... but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.
Commercials, among other things. Because everything has to be dumbed down to gain mass market appeal and advertising dollars, there is a real lack of quality programming. But hopefully we may see the internet change all that, once all the DMCA type shenanigans come to an end, and people figure out that you can still charge for content even if people steal it.
Too many fake reality shows. Way too many. Less Jersey Shore, Lady Hoggers, and the like, and it will be just fine.
Because it is passive, they cannot measure the degree of effectiveness of their mass control initiatives, resulting in more time and money spent to repeat the message enough to guarantee assimilation. They want ways of getting feedback.
Why should I pay for a bunch of channels and service I don't want?
If they offered modular, on demand service I wouldn't have to monkey around with xbmc, encoding etc.
Services like on-demand streaming of movies/tv where you pay exactly what you want are the future. The cable company can't let go of their monolithic 'screw you cuz we can & always have' thinking. Eventually they will go the way of the labels as far as monopoly via audio CD's - technology will evolve past them (already is/has) and they'll just be left waving their wizened fists angrily, struggling for relevance and trying to screw people over with control of cable internet.
If you haven't turned the TV on in five years, how can you know the shows aren't worth watching? Or are you just rambling the way old people always do "things were so much better before"...
What's broken about TV? This: the vast majority of the content is utter crap pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Nothing.
THAT'S THE PROBLEM.
How's a TV manufacturer supposed to get more money if people aren't buying new TVs/their current doesn't have planned obsolescence?
Then there's that pesky "internet" that's killing the cable cash cow.
About half of TV is not "watched". It's just "on". (Radio is almost entirely in the "just on" mode today.) A sizable, although shrinking, fraction of the population likes the rigid schedule of TV shows.
3D TV was an awful idea. Everything, including the viewer, has to be positioned properly for it to work. If you lie down on the couch watching a 3D TV, you will have an eyestrain-inducing experience as your eyes try to converge on misaligned images.
The model itself.
Originally it was said it'd be subsidized by ads. Try running a stopwatch during primetime...at least ten years ago you could get nearly 45% or more advertising in movies, and 30% plus in 30 minute specials.
In theory--cable would cover this cost. Except instead you just get more channels with the same unsolicited bulk broadcast.
To go away from that, you need...oh... pay per view. Costs as much as renting the fucking thing, plus delivery.
Or you can get HBO or cinemax which at a minimum of about 15 a month is near worthless assuming you want to watch a movie once a week, but are only a 1 in 4 chance of enjoying any given movie.
So you get to pay about $100 a month or more in order to have irrelevant ads slung at you. And then you have that nice awkward experience of sitting down to watch something with your parents when a 'little blue pill' commercial comes on. Or a public service announcement. Or somebody asking for my money to feed children so they can take their 80% administrative fee.
Let's try to sum up the problems with TV:
- too much advertisement
- not enough relevant content
- cable top boxes making it hard to space shift in my home
- artificial difficulty in time and space shifting
- viagra
- inability to watch when I want
- insufficient box office content
- serials pushed all over the fucking place by sports
- networks moving things to different times, days, or even other networks
- reruns.
- It's damned near impossible to get a tv guide in paper.
- The digital tv guides don't work reliably unless you have a cable box (and those are hard to scan quickly since the boxes are slow)
- Oh yeah, the boxes are slow
- A thousand other things
Please, can we just brutally fucking murder the entertainment industry for holding something that was a simple, easy, functional service utilizing public spectrum utterly hostage?
The way TV currently works I'm asked to conform to a schedule set by an Exec that thinks will bring in the most eyeballs. When I was growing up (before we had a VCR) we would schedule our lives around what TV shows we wanted to watch. I remember that Monday was usually take out or quick meal night because that's when my mom wanted to watch her shows. New TV shows were introduced after the old ones we already liked. How many sitcoms were stuck in the spot after "Friends" in the hope that it would draw people too lazy to change the channel?
My setup right now is SickBeard to Sabnzbd+ to XBMC. I paid $50 for a block of 1TB that I've been using since the middle of last year. I don't know and I don't care when most of the TV shows I watch are on. My TV time is usually midnight to 4 am. I'm in grad school, work and do a ton of other stuff on campus (Swing Club, international cooking classes, hang out with friends).
Every TV show I currently watch has come from a suggestion from a friend, Slashdot, Reddit, or Fark. To avoid the disappointment that follows numerous shows I usually wait until the 3rd or 4th season to get into them. I just started Dexter this year. I watched all previous seasons in the span of 3-4 months. I literally just started Farscape. Breaking Bad, Community, Game of Thrones, It's Always Sunny, Chuck, etc. All came from suggestions.
Then you have "Well if it's not in the #1 spot, it's failing" mentality of broadcast TV. Community is one of my favorite shows. Season 1 had me in stitches with some of the episodes. I lost it at the first Halloween episode when Abed was Batman. But NBC decided to bench it so "Whitney" and some other female comedian can get a boilerplated TV show. Cable TV is much better. HBO & Showtime seemingly don't care their global rankings but more about if they can get a core group of die hard fans. But those are "premium" channels and I'm sure as hell not going to pay $100+ a month to get them (because you need to add all the other channels I don't want). Chuck was brought back by a fan campaign and I'm glad taht it's going to get a proper final season but NBC seems intent to kill it anyway I heard they shifted it to something like Fridays. Because 18-30 year olds aren't doing anything else on Fridays? Seriously.
Give me a legal torrent seconds after the TV show ends leave in the commercials and I'll watch it. But until then I can't imagine going back to "Oh, this airs Thursdays at 4"
A thing does not have to be "broken" in order for change/progress to be made. Telephones weren't "broken" when cellular phones were invented, and the horse drawn carriage wasn't "broken" when the automobile was invented. It isn't broken, companies are just trying to make money by making progress in a technology that people are interested in.
There is absolutely no reason in with today's technology that we can't have real video on demand. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to watch any show I want, whenever I want. If the providers want to include commercials, then so be it, but they're delaying the inevitable and forcing people into piracy with limited availability of programming online and by only allowing viewing within a limited window. The major television providers now offer "on demand" services, but these have serious limitations. All they're doing is giving people a taste for what could be. A cable company that offered true video on demand could absolutely clean up in the market, but the content providers are far to unwilling to shift their business models to match the desires of consumers. 50 years from now, children will express disbelief when told that you had to wait for a specific time to watch your favorite program, much like I had a hard time I had as a child grasping that television used to be only black and white.
The very fundamental principle of using television as a revenue generator is broken. I would gladly pay for a service that allowed me to watch whatever shows I wanted, when I wanted, with no commercial interruption. I am not willing to pay for a service that forces me to watch three minutes out of ten of commercials, and I certainly don't like to adjust my viewing schedule to accomodate the shows I want to watch! It is much easier for me to download shows and watch them later than it is for me to be in front of my television while they are being broadcast. If I want to watch a live event, such as a sports game, I can always head to the local pub and watch it there. I currently have basic cable and I pay ten dollars a month for it. The only reason I have that is that I purchase my internet through the cable company and, even paying $120 for the whole year, I was able to save a bunch of money on my Internet services ($300 off over three months, plus a 5% discount on my total bill, that amounts to a savings of $240 over the course of a year). I rarely turn it on. Not even for sporting events. Fix the delivery system and make it more accessible. Charge based on what you watch, rather than what channels you watch. If I was charged $0.25-0.50 per show I watched I would be inclined to watch more. But paying a monthly fee for a bunch of stuff I will never watch? Not worth the money.
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"So, what do you think is broken about TV right now? "
I'm a spectator so maybe that question could be answered by a different type of stakeholder. The stakeholder who might be interested in using the Kinect to ensure that adverts stop while the spectators go to the toilet; or that stakeholder who wants internet streaming to be protected from skipping the commercials. That stakeholder will find plenty things broken in the current state of the TV technology.
Even Apple knows that you wouldn't spend $1500 for an Apple TV. That's probably why that product is $100.
Just discovering what programs are available is a huge problem outside of the conventional broadcast TV paradigm.
Set-top box program schedules stink. Nobody buys the TV Guide any more. Yea, there are third-party (and cable-company supplied) program schedule apps, but most of them stink too. (Anybody else try the useless Cox schedule guide on iPad?) If you're really into it, there are web sites that discuss shows ad-infinitum I'd imagine, but most people won't bother, and don't want to sift through the crap.
Finding on-demand programming is a hassle. You have to navigate with a horrible on-screen interface, and most people don't know what network a show they've heard about is on. So, they have to do a search, which is horribly painful. Click, click, click, click, there's ONE LETTER.
Program discovery is so bad that most people revert to "what's on?" and flip through the channels. Even if a show is marketed heavily, and you see a banner drug by an airplane and wonder what's up with the guy that thinks he sees a dog, how many people are going to bother to painfully type-in "W _ I _ L _ F _ R _ E _ D when they get home, and then go through the rigmarole to set the VCR?
The big problem is, there are so many choices that it takes major time to sift through them. You have to know what you are looking for, but how do you know what you are looking for in the first place? Sure, I can go to NetFlix and decide I want to see a Fellini film easily enough. (Though I'd be best served by going to the website and putting it in my Instant Queue than by navigating the horrible on-screen interface.) And, oh, BTW, they're going to have to mail me that Fellini film 90% of the time, so we're Not There Yet.
Now, if the marketing says or even implies it's a prime-time show on a major network - you might remember the time-slot and go surfing for it if it's around that time. Otherwise, it's pretty hit-and-miss.
Clearly, though, ultimately, scheduled programming (other than live events and breaking news) are inevitably going to go away. I think I think that's necessary to prepare the public is to change terminology. No more show times. They're release times.
Every show should be available on-demand in some form. Some people will still eagerly anticipate "release times", and gather in front of the set to be the first to watch a show, just as some go out to a theater to see a movie when it's first released.
Speed:
Channel switching speed: It keeps getting worse. Analog TV's were instant channel switchers. Even analog TV's with digital readouts were instant switchers. "Digital" TV can't do that. Cable boxes and their insane 'menuing' system. It's supposed to help you see what's on, but it makes 'flipping through the channels' more like 'trudging' through the channels. Even with OTA HDTV, there's a pause while it gets enough signal to show you a picture. They need to be working on eliminating that pause.
BOOT up speed: I'm lucky. I have an HD CRT. There aren't many of those. You push power, the screen makes a funny noise. The CRT warms up in a second or two. You're in business. The experiences I've had with LCD screens aren't good. When you turn it on, you get a POST screen, a manufacturer logo, some other 'boot-up' processes. It takes a LONG TIME. If I had one of those I'd be tempted to never turn it off because I wouldn't want to wait through the boot-up. That definitely needs to be fixed. If there was ever a place for 'instant on' technology, it's in the TV.
Cost:
It's hard for me to complain here because I don't pay for it, but I think the fact that I refuse to pay for it should say something. I've never caved to the 'Pay TV' bandwagon. No cable, no satellite. Over the Air all the way. I actually do pay for TV now. It's called Netflix. It's $8 instead of $50, and I get to pick what's on. (And no commercials.) Pay TV is way too expensive and doesn't make any sense. That needs to be fixed.
Now to be hypocritical. My wife won't watch commercials. She rather skip the program than watch a commercial. Not only is she always annoyed by them, she's often offended by them. I'm pretty sure commercials are the most heavily studied aspect of Television, so I don't really have any suggestions that the 'experts' haven't already beaten to death.
As for Content. I don't think that's part of the discussion. (We'll at least the FA. which I didn't read.) The shows are not the technology. I don't think you can 'fix' the shows. That's like dictating what music will be popular with teenagers. Good luck with that.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
"how can you know the shows aren't worth watching?"
Because TV has always been designed for the lowest common denominator. IMO it should stay that way as a walled garden of shit.
I've had it on because the wife uses it for background noise due to severe tinnitus.
TV was shit and is shit with only a microscopic percentage of worthwhile content easily surpassed by the Internet.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
1. Dump all "reality" shows.
2. Get rid of the incredibly annoying pop-ups during programs. Seriously, I stopped watching "Rubicon", which had at least some promise, because these are horribly disruptive and offensive.
3. Convince the History Channel, the Learning Channel, the Discovery Channel, to focus on actual history and actual science...and not myth, superstition, and nonsense.
4. Please note that #3 does not cover Mythbusters, which, while occasionally a bit self-indulgent, at least features actual experiments.
5. Try showing movies without censoring, interrupting or editing them.
6. Stop remaking things. Hawaii 5-0 (among many, MANY others) did not need to be remade, and you're embarrassing yourselves, as well as putting crap on the air.
7. Lose the talking heads on news. Lose the theme music, lose the captions, lose the scroll, lose the catchy titles for every major news event. Try something different: sober, reasoned, analysis. Don't tell me that "you only 20 seconds left to discuss this"; you're a fricking network, all you HAVE is time. And stop pretending that there are two sides to every story: when one side is obviously insane, lying, or stupid, there aren't. Instead: call them on it.
8. There are occasional treasures in the archives. Not only should you air them, you should back them up to the world by posting them for free, unlimited download.
9. Run all commercials by a panel of 15-year-olds. If even they mock it, then what reaction do you think intelligent adults will have?
10. Teach everyone on your staff that "/" is a slash, not a backslash. Make it a policy that you will instantly fire anyone who calls it a backslash. If they do so on-air, then armed security should tackle them, handcuff them, and drag them off the set while the cameras are running. (Okay, so this one is selfish. But I would it find it immensely satisfying to watch.)
Maybe you don't remember the programming in the old days. It was horrible. It seemed like there was one or two shows a decade that were worth watching. The movies were bad too. We see old movies and old tv shows now that are chosen because they were the watchable ones.
Today we are spoiled for choice. There are lots of shows worth watching. Sometimes two a day on the same channel. And there are more than 3 channels now. There used to be very few channels.
THAT's what's broken about TV - and I don't see Apple TV or any of these other gizmos fixing that, unless they accept CableCard.
I think you're so close on this one, but what's broken about TVs will not be fixed when the AppleTV supports CableCard, but when the AppleTV has no reason to support CableCard. In my view, the problem is the cable companies themselves, or rather the whole setup of having a "cable company".
With digital video and the Internet working the way it does, why on earth should I be locked into a specific provider by my geographic location? Why should I need to buy/rent specific hardware for that provider? Why should that provider be broadcasting video on channels, where I'm locked into watching shows on specific channels in a specific order at a specific time of day?
Now I won't be shocked if some people disagree with me here, but in my view, this is one of those things where things were developed at some point based on the restrictions at the time, but if you were building things today, you wouldn't design it this way. Like someone comes in and says:
I have a great idea for a Netflix competitor. It's just like Netflix, but without a good recommendation engine, you have to watch things on our schedule, we force you to watch ads, and we force you into renting hardware instead of watching it on your regular set-top box. Oh, and the set-top boxes we provide are absolute crap, which makes browsing frustrating. And it's great that browsing is terrible, because you have to browse through a million terrible 'channels' of time-locked content looking for something to watch. And best of all, we'll charge 10 times as much as Netflix!
Now image that. Who listens to that and says, "Oh, that's a great idea!"
How about name something that was so profound and moving that it was absolutely critical that you see it. Ever.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.