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I grew up with analog OTA TV. When you changed channels, the change was instant. We got a handful of local channels. Then, we got analog cable. When you change

I grew up with analog OTA TV. When you changed channels, the change was instant. We got a handful of local channels. Then, we got analog cable. When you changed channels, the change was still instant, and you used the same remote as for OTA TV (if you were rich enough for a remote) because the cable just plugged straight into the back of the TV. We got a bunch of channels, including the local ones from before, a handful of new channels worth watching, and a ton of others that were absolutely worthless. This was expensive, but at least cable channels were ad-free... until they were not. Next we got digital cable. This marked a real downturn in user experience. The signal had to be processed by a box that we had to rent instead of just plugging the cable into the TV. We needed a new box and new remote for every TV. Theoretically the new remotes could replace the old ones, but that never worked out in practice. You always needed the old remote for some function not available or not programmed properly on the new one. The boxes also took forever to switch between channels. Channels now were no longer straightforward one-channel-to-one-station mappings, but you had subchannels and HD/SD versions of the same channel. My parents never understood that while they were alive and usually ended up watching the SD channel instead of the HD because it was all they could find. In fact, for them, there was usually no increase in picture quality, just in price and inconvenience. Finally I inherited the TVs, but I never watch them, and I cancelled the cable subscription. I got a digital TV antenna, and it sometimes picks up most of the local stations, which were all that my parents ever watched, but usually it glitches or fails. Changing channels still takes forever, but at least the antenna just plugs into the back of the TV without a rented box. Of what is available on OTA television, as with what was available on cable, there isn't enough to keep my attention. Most of it is vulgar trash riddled with advertisements. I've gone back to reading books for entertainment. They don't require any cable or antenna, no rented box, no remote control. I can get whatever I want from the library (for free!) or Amazon, and I can change books without lag. The signal never drops or glitches. I can take my books with me anywhere, including outside. I'm happier now.

bitwize 5y ago
Well, ackshually... Cable systems in the USA took advantage of more frequencies than were available over terrestrial television to get more channels. This is because the cable signal was still RF, but not subject to radio interference in any significant way because it came through a cable. The upshot of this was that unless your TV was "cable-ready", i.e., capable of tuning the additional frequencies, in order to use even analog cable you needed a set-top box. It took a few years for cable-ready TVs to hit the US market -- but by the 90s they were ubiquitous.
VLM 5y ago
Latency always goes up with technology. Think of streaming or video on demand services where its now up to five seconds to change.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  It does happen on computing too. Even on very recent machines, very recent OS kernels you can notice the layers. Very odd to see.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Because the developers are lazy. Why do we need 20 layers of libraries to draw a rectangle ? Give a developer a library and he will use it.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Give the developer no library and they will find a way to slam the bits into VRAM. That said, the friction among modern devs to go from zero to cross-platform app is much lower with Electron than it is any other framework. So learn to love Electron because it is here to stay.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  > Latency always goes up with technology. It's certainly possible to build non-causal signal processors for broadcast TV by using multiple tuners that buffer channel N+1 while you're watching channel N. You could do it for streaming services too by using statistics (or--dare I say it--AI) to predict what movie the user is most likely to sample next. It might make the decoder cost an extra $2, and that's probably why nobody does it.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Seems like you'd also need a second tuner which would increase the cost a bit more. Ultimately the problem is that with old analog signals you just needed to wait for the next V-Blank (4 hundreds of a second at the most) and you were good to go. With digital signals you need to wait for the I frame which can take dozens or hundreds of frames. And this assumes you have a good solid signal and can decode everything perfectly, if the set is trying to piece together a fragmentary signal it's even harder.
dsign 5y ago
Ah yes, I've been without watching TV for a good 25 years now. I got Netflix on and off a few times, but most of the shows are such a brainwash that it's not worth it. Books and people, that's it for me now.
soylentcola 5y ago
There was a little while where we still had unencrypted digital cable (in the US at least). I'm sure it's still around in some places, but we lost the option years ago where I live. Digital cable (QAM or ClearQAM) came across the same wire as the rest of the stuff...cable internet, encrypted digital cable, etc. and you could tune it with any compatible ATSC tuner like the one built into most TVs and loads of cheap capture cards. I always hated the "digital cable boxes" required for encrypted content, but for a while, an old PC with a capture card and Windows Media Center let me have a much nicer interface and DVR without the extra rental costs. In fact, I once lived in a building that was split into three apartments and we found that as long as one of us had cable internet, we also had ClearQAM cable TV... ...which I imagine is why they got rid of it. Cable modems need to be provisioned. Cable boxes need to be rented if you want to decrypt the channels you'd paid to authorize decryption of. But QAM was just on the wire. So easy to use and so easy to mooch, so the cable company used the confusion around the switch from OTA analog/digital switch to also remove QAM and switch everyone over to those rented decoder boxes. Incidentally, it's also when I stopped watching cable TV. The boxes were an additional cost for a worse experience than I had with the built-in tuner or my HTPC. I thought about getting a new capture card with CableCard support, but that standard was a huge pain in the ass and never really took off outside of Tivo and similar turnkey devices. Thankfully, it's also when streaming and other OTT services started to take off.
- majormajor 5y ago
  Digital cable boxes with Firewire were a fun-but-super-tedious way for a brief few years to be able to record even digital cable content to a PC. Now I just stream it. At least I don't have to think about it, but I don't "have" copies of it in the same way - but... the more decades go by, the less of that old stuff I recorded in 2010 that I'd ever watch again from those old hard drives anyway.

bitwize 5y ago

Well, ackshually... Cable systems in the USA took advantage of more frequencies than were available over terrestrial television to get more channels. This is because the cable signal was still RF, but not subject to radio interference in any significant way because it came through a cable. The upshot of this was that unless your TV was "cable-ready", i.e., capable of tuning the additional frequencies, in order to use even analog cable you needed a set-top box. It took a few years for cable-ready TVs to hit the US market -- but by the 90s they were ubiquitous.

VLM 5y ago

Latency always goes up with technology. Think of streaming or video on demand services where its now up to five seconds to change.

agumonkey 5y ago
It does happen on computing too. Even on very recent machines, very recent OS kernels you can notice the layers. Very odd to see.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Because the developers are lazy. Why do we need 20 layers of libraries to draw a rectangle ? Give a developer a library and he will use it.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Give the developer no library and they will find a way to slam the bits into VRAM. That said, the friction among modern devs to go from zero to cross-platform app is much lower with Electron than it is any other framework. So learn to love Electron because it is here to stay.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
> Latency always goes up with technology. It's certainly possible to build non-causal signal processors for broadcast TV by using multiple tuners that buffer channel N+1 while you're watching channel N. You could do it for streaming services too by using statistics (or--dare I say it--AI) to predict what movie the user is most likely to sample next. It might make the decoder cost an extra $2, and that's probably why nobody does it.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Seems like you'd also need a second tuner which would increase the cost a bit more. Ultimately the problem is that with old analog signals you just needed to wait for the next V-Blank (4 hundreds of a second at the most) and you were good to go. With digital signals you need to wait for the I frame which can take dozens or hundreds of frames. And this assumes you have a good solid signal and can decode everything perfectly, if the set is trying to piece together a fragmentary signal it's even harder.

dsign 5y ago

Ah yes, I've been without watching TV for a good 25 years now. I got Netflix on and off a few times, but most of the shows are such a brainwash that it's not worth it. Books and people, that's it for me now.

soylentcola 5y ago

There was a little while where we still had unencrypted digital cable (in the US at least). I'm sure it's still around in some places, but we lost the option years ago where I live. Digital cable (QAM or ClearQAM) came across the same wire as the rest of the stuff...cable internet, encrypted digital cable, etc. and you could tune it with any compatible ATSC tuner like the one built into most TVs and loads of cheap capture cards. I always hated the "digital cable boxes" required for encrypted content, but for a while, an old PC with a capture card and Windows Media Center let me have a much nicer interface and DVR without the extra rental costs. In fact, I once lived in a building that was split into three apartments and we found that as long as one of us had cable internet, we also had ClearQAM cable TV... ...which I imagine is why they got rid of it. Cable modems need to be provisioned. Cable boxes need to be rented if you want to decrypt the channels you'd paid to authorize decryption of. But QAM was just on the wire. So easy to use and so easy to mooch, so the cable company used the confusion around the switch from OTA analog/digital switch to also remove QAM and switch everyone over to those rented decoder boxes. Incidentally, it's also when I stopped watching cable TV. The boxes were an additional cost for a worse experience than I had with the built-in tuner or my HTPC. I thought about getting a new capture card with CableCard support, but that standard was a huge pain in the ass and never really took off outside of Tivo and similar turnkey devices. Thankfully, it's also when streaming and other OTT services started to take off.

majormajor 5y ago
Digital cable boxes with Firewire were a fun-but-super-tedious way for a brief few years to be able to record even digital cable content to a PC. Now I just stream it. At least I don't have to think about it, but I don't "have" copies of it in the same way - but... the more decades go by, the less of that old stuff I recorded in 2010 that I'd ever watch again from those old hard drives anyway.