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TV is annoying


Alpo

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I have not watched television for close to 20 years. I do watch occasional TV shows. Have them on DVD.

 

But I just bought an antenna and hooked it up to the tube so that I could actually watch television again.

 

Damn.

 

There are many things wrong with this.

 

First, I'm old and my hearing is not the greatest. Most DVDs come with closed captioning. That can spoil you quickly.

 

Second is the commercials. Good Lord above I had forgot about the commercials. I mean, I knew they were there but - 10 minutes of show and then 10 minutes of commercial?

 

But the third annoying thing, and this is probably the most annoying. When I watch a show on DVD, and I have to go to the toilet, or I want to go get something from the refrigerator, or they say something that I didn't understand so I want to look it up - I push the pause button. After 20 years of pushing the pause button when I want to walk away from the set, and when I come back it's exactly where I left it - you can't do that on television. It doesn't pause.

 

To quote that round-headed kid - ARRRRGGGH.

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Actually if you have a DVR, (digital video recorder), you can pause live T.V. and record multiple programs at the same time. They also have closed captioning, and if you record them, you can fast forward through the commercials. 

The bad news is that I don't know if you can get a stand alone DVR or if you have to have cable or a satellite provider. 

I'll be the first to say that I probably watch too much T.V., but I'll also be the first to say that the DVR is my all time favorite piece of modern technology. And don't forget, I'm still using a flip phone. 

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My relatively inexpensive ROKU TV has a socket for a flash drive.  It'll give me up to two hours of "rewind" ability.  I'll often start a program, pause it for a while (make a sandwich?), then fast-forward through the commercials.

 

It connects wireless to my router, so internet viewing is simple.  Oh ~ and I do not have cable nor any other subscription service.  I watch YouTube, Prime, or other "free" internet stuff... but I get a ridiculous number of stations or channels with a simple antenna.  Free TV~!!  :lol:

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29 minutes ago, Ozark Huckleberry said:

 

 

Maybe you were thinking of something else . . .

 

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day! – Smarty Pants Kids

 

And there's no "g" at the end of a pirate's "Arrrr...."  :rolleyes:

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7 hours ago, Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 said:

And there's no "g" at the end of a pirate's "Arrrr...."  :rolleyes:

 

ETA: I didn’t make the GIF, just pirated it. 
 

Dictionary.com: Talk Like a Pirate Daya
 

In certain regions of England, an interjection resembling arrr was historically used to indicate things like excitement or agreement. Similar terms and spellings include argh(pronounced arr or arg) and yar. The number of r’s at the end of the word can vary widely depending on how salty of a seadog ye be.

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I’ve been watching tv all my life. Are the commercials annoying? Yep they always have been. I usually mute them. I do have Starz/Encore which has the westerns channel and  6 other channels. It’s all movies, no commercials and it’s $8.00 a month extra. 

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Actors now mumble instead of speaking their lines and many times drowned out by background music. Most series run 10 to 13 episodes, then have to wait a year and remember a series. 

We dropped Satellite, bought an antennae saved close to 200.00a month and watch less, read and listen to music more. 

I was watching the local news when they broke and told their listeners if they were watching this on so and so satellite carrier, that the carrier would be dropping the channel and to call the provider up to keep the channel. What they don't tell the audience is that if the carrier keeps the channel, their rate would increase because the channel, ad provided wants a bigger hunk of money also. One other reason we gave up satellite was it was happening constantly and rates going up. Started at 79.50 same channels, then to almost 200.00.

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The thing that’s different today about broadcast TV is the volume of commercials. Programs used to run about 21 minutes (without commercials) with 3 commercial interruptions. Now the programs are about 15 minutes in length with interruptions every 6 minutes. 
 

If you’re watching old episodes of MASH or whatever, those shows have been edited to accommodate all the commercials. GRIT TV is probably the worst in doing this. 
 

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I think the erosion of culture can be connected in part to recorded and edited TV, and the canned laugh track.

 

Shows that were in front of a live audience were pretty much restrained by cultural norms.  A joke that was revolting, a story arc that was disgusting -- put it in front of a live audience, it falls flat. So writers and producers had to give at least some consideration to public sentiment.

 

But record the show, edit it, dub in some laughs, and it conveys the message on what's acceptable, what can be laughed at, what is worthy of ridicule.

 

Storylines where the dad was a bumbling oaf, the mom was a conniver who had to manipulate dad to get him to act right, and the wise-acre kid was the smartest one in the house? Not something that would have flown in front of live audiences of a just few decades ago. But put it in a can with carefully inserted fake audience laughter and the public is informed that it's okay to mock traditional family structure.

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We have had only antenna broadcast tv for quite a while now. Recently it automatically rescanned and we get more channels. I also turn on the captions. There are a few channels I'd watch but they don't have the closed captioning. When my wife is gone I can crank it up. Sometimes it works sometimes not. 

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Haven't watched broadcast TV in years.  Went the ROKU route for a while.  Youtube was a good choice back then. Got Netflix until it had nothing I wanted to watch and a lot of crap. Got smart TV and high speed internet.  Now watch very little on YouTube.  Too many commercials and 10x louder than program sound. Now watching a lot of stuff on Tubi. And recently the public library has a movie streaming service that is free.  Occasionally find a good one. 

 

We found ourselves in a situation that had network TV. I couldn't stand watching it. 

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We have a very good pair of OTA antennas for commercial tripe TV.
My bride is a huge fan of the Murder and Autopsy channels, which she plays while house cleaning.

I have to laugh at the ambulance chaser and other scam commercials that play on these channels constantly.

Rarely will I tune in the local news, which like everything else in CA, leans very far to the Left.
Also in CA, many of the OTA channels are in Spanish.
Yawn.


They do run some old horse operas and other old TV shows from the last century.
We have a Netflix account, and also a DVD account until they did away with that.
I think we have "come to the end of the internet" with the streaming channels... seen most of it.
The rest is Work or Homosexual crap, that we have no interest in viewing.

I do have a wonderful collection of Blu-Ray and 4k UHD movies that we rotate and see on a regular basis.

 

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