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How common is it to not own a TV? I had a contractor over the other day for an estimate and in our living room he said, "wow, no TV" I hadn't really considere

How common is it to not own a TV? I had a contractor over the other day for an estimate and in our living room he said, "wow, no TV" I hadn't really considered it would be a surprise. We consume lots of media, just on laptops and tablets instead.

yardstick 4y ago
Have you used a TV in the last? Don’t you miss the larger screen and not having to squint when there’s some tiny text within the show that’s hard to read on small screens etc?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  I’m more curious the last time you saw a show with significant text on screen. It seems far more common to have essentially no text or “complicated-science gibberish-for-the-geek”. Everything else is read by a character.
  - yardstick 4y ago
    Text messages on phones in The Night Agent. Watched a week ago.
sho_hn 4y ago
It's partially cultural. At some point I realized that when American friends say "I've watched that", they more often than not mean it was running off to the side or in the background while they were doing other tasks. Previously I was mystified why anyone would watch certain type of content that wouldn't be able to hold anyone's attention span. It seems quite common in the US to have TVs in several rooms and have them run in the background for long stretches of day. This is far less common in the cultures I've lived in where sitting down to watch TV alone or together is more of an occasion and modal, and TVs have no place outside the living room. This is to say the use case different folks have for TVs also varies widely. Now, when I do sit down at the TV, I generally appreciate the nice big screen.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- shagie 4y ago
  > It seems common in the US to have TVs in several rooms and have them run in the background for long stretched of day. This is far less common in the cultures I've lived in where sitting down to watch TV alone or together is more of an occasion and modal. From yesterday on Marketplace: Why streaming networks love a good background show https://www.marketplace.org/2023/04/11/why-streaming-networks-love-a-good-background-show/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/04/11/why-streaming-network... > Tomorrow Warner Bros. Discovery is supposed to reveal it’s new but not really new streaming service. What once was called HBO Max will now just be called Max, according to The New York Times. > Beyond the name change, it could include more light reality TV shows like “Dr. Pimple Popper” and “House Hunters International” —you know, the shows you might put on in the background while you’re doing chores, paying bills or working. > There’s a term for shows like that: ambient streaming. And from a few years ago: “Emily in Paris” and the Rise of Ambient TV- https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/emily-in-paris-and-the-rise-of-ambient-tv https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/emily-in-... > In this and other recent programming, Netflix is pioneering a genre that I’ve come to think of as ambient television. It’s “as ignorable as it is interesting,” as the musician Brian Eno wrote, when he coined the term “ambient music” in the liner notes to his 1978 album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports,” a wash of slow melodic synth compositions. Ambient denotes something that you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily. Like gentle New Age soundscapes, “Emily in Paris” is soothing, slow, and relatively monotonous, the dramatic moments too predetermined to really be dramatic.
- wvenable 4y ago
  For me, the culture has shifted. With regular cable TV, we definitely had the TV on more often and just in the background with maybe nobody paying particular attention to it. I actually found it quite helpful when working from home to have that sort of background noise. However, in the time of streaming this has gone completely away in our household. The TV is only on for the time it takes to to watch a show and then is immediately turned off.
incone123 4y ago
Not that common. Most people watch shows and films on a screen bigger than a tablet if they are at home.
ravenstine 4y ago
I don't think it's very common, although having a TV is increasingly meaning something different than it used to. A TV now is just another glorified tablet that a family might share some time in front of, but isn't necessarily the entertainment center of the home like it once was given the amount of personal screens and choices available to everyone. There's a TV in my home, but if it died I probably wouldn't replace it, at least for a while. I barely need it. Only if I have someone over to entertain might I want to use it. For most people, TVs will still be around because watching a movie together with friends is simply a better experience in front of a TV than someone's 13" laptop.
- jrockway 4y ago
  I have a TV, but only because the previous owner left it attached to the wall. It's easier to not take down than it is to take down and donate. I've never turned it on.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
~5% See https://senalnews.com/en/research/how-many-us-households-choose-not-to-own-a-tv-set https://senalnews.com/en/research/how-many-us-households-cho...
majormajor 4y ago
I think watching on laptops is increasingly rare as streaming services have moved to TV-app-first product development
willcipriano 4y ago
> We consume lots of media, just on laptops and tablets instead. Everytime I meet a no TV guy they have a laptop or a 37 inch monitor in the corner of a room somewhere with a comfy chair. It wasn't they had no TV, they just had a crappy TV.
- Retric 4y ago
  Assuming you’re excluding laptops, tables, and phones I know quite a few people without any TV’s hooked up. Watching YouTube on a tablet you can drag it around the house as you do stuff and easily use the interface or do web searchers etc. With a larger screen you’re just stuck in that room and remotes suck for navigation. There’s been several attempts to be able to seamlessly swap content from one screen to another, but their clunky.
  - weberer 4y ago
    The Wii U perfected this, but it only worked on its own tablet.
  - Jolter 4y ago
    Maybe for YouTube, but for consuming long-form content like movies, there’s something to be said for sitting down and watching purposefully with a more immersive experience.
    - Retric 4y ago
      I personally don’t find larger screens noticeably more immersive vs a small one up close. For me personally it’s like reading a book, you just ignore outside stimulus.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  I have no such chair or large screen. I hate the whole TV experience.
tomatotomato37 4y ago
Less common than not paying for a cable subscription service I would imagine. There's still a lot of advantage to possessing a really big screen even if the traditional way of consuming media on it has gone out of fashion
fckgw 4y ago
Something like 97% of all households have a TV, down from 99% around 2000. So yes, not owning a TV is still very rare.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
agilob 4y ago
I don't think it common, but I feel you. I have a TV, but it's a 3rd computer screen just for playing movies. Every now and then someone from my family calls me asking for help with her TV, something broke, video is breaking, there's white noise on, or audio interrupts, etc. Gradma calls me because I work with computers. I don't have an antenna or decoder or something else I don't even know what these things are called. For music I play from phone connected to bluetooth speakers. >I’m happy to announce the release of a new tvOS app called Blank This got me so confused, I didn't even know TVs have apps, I mean I knew there is AndroidTV and nvidia shield, but somehow concept of 3rd party apps on a TV didn't get to me.

yardstick 4y ago

Have you used a TV in the last? Don’t you miss the larger screen and not having to squint when there’s some tiny text within the show that’s hard to read on small screens etc?

0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
I’m more curious the last time you saw a show with significant text on screen. It seems far more common to have essentially no text or “complicated-science gibberish-for-the-geek”. Everything else is read by a character.
- yardstick 4y ago
  Text messages on phones in The Night Agent. Watched a week ago.

sho_hn 4y ago

It's partially cultural. At some point I realized that when American friends say "I've watched that", they more often than not mean it was running off to the side or in the background while they were doing other tasks. Previously I was mystified why anyone would watch certain type of content that wouldn't be able to hold anyone's attention span. It seems quite common in the US to have TVs in several rooms and have them run in the background for long stretches of day. This is far less common in the cultures I've lived in where sitting down to watch TV alone or together is more of an occasion and modal, and TVs have no place outside the living room. This is to say the use case different folks have for TVs also varies widely. Now, when I do sit down at the TV, I generally appreciate the nice big screen.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shagie 4y ago
> It seems common in the US to have TVs in several rooms and have them run in the background for long stretched of day. This is far less common in the cultures I've lived in where sitting down to watch TV alone or together is more of an occasion and modal. From yesterday on Marketplace: Why streaming networks love a good background show https://www.marketplace.org/2023/04/11/why-streaming-networks-love-a-good-background-show/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/04/11/why-streaming-network... > Tomorrow Warner Bros. Discovery is supposed to reveal it’s new but not really new streaming service. What once was called HBO Max will now just be called Max, according to The New York Times. > Beyond the name change, it could include more light reality TV shows like “Dr. Pimple Popper” and “House Hunters International” —you know, the shows you might put on in the background while you’re doing chores, paying bills or working. > There’s a term for shows like that: ambient streaming. And from a few years ago: “Emily in Paris” and the Rise of Ambient TV- https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/emily-in-paris-and-the-rise-of-ambient-tv https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/emily-in-... > In this and other recent programming, Netflix is pioneering a genre that I’ve come to think of as ambient television. It’s “as ignorable as it is interesting,” as the musician Brian Eno wrote, when he coined the term “ambient music” in the liner notes to his 1978 album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports,” a wash of slow melodic synth compositions. Ambient denotes something that you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily. Like gentle New Age soundscapes, “Emily in Paris” is soothing, slow, and relatively monotonous, the dramatic moments too predetermined to really be dramatic.
wvenable 4y ago
For me, the culture has shifted. With regular cable TV, we definitely had the TV on more often and just in the background with maybe nobody paying particular attention to it. I actually found it quite helpful when working from home to have that sort of background noise. However, in the time of streaming this has gone completely away in our household. The TV is only on for the time it takes to to watch a show and then is immediately turned off.

incone123 4y ago

Not that common. Most people watch shows and films on a screen bigger than a tablet if they are at home.

ravenstine 4y ago

I don't think it's very common, although having a TV is increasingly meaning something different than it used to. A TV now is just another glorified tablet that a family might share some time in front of, but isn't necessarily the entertainment center of the home like it once was given the amount of personal screens and choices available to everyone. There's a TV in my home, but if it died I probably wouldn't replace it, at least for a while. I barely need it. Only if I have someone over to entertain might I want to use it. For most people, TVs will still be around because watching a movie together with friends is simply a better experience in front of a TV than someone's 13" laptop.

jrockway 4y ago
I have a TV, but only because the previous owner left it attached to the wall. It's easier to not take down than it is to take down and donate. I've never turned it on.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

~5% See https://senalnews.com/en/research/how-many-us-households-choose-not-to-own-a-tv-set https://senalnews.com/en/research/how-many-us-households-cho...

majormajor 4y ago

I think watching on laptops is increasingly rare as streaming services have moved to TV-app-first product development

willcipriano 4y ago

> We consume lots of media, just on laptops and tablets instead. Everytime I meet a no TV guy they have a laptop or a 37 inch monitor in the corner of a room somewhere with a comfy chair. It wasn't they had no TV, they just had a crappy TV.

Retric 4y ago
Assuming you’re excluding laptops, tables, and phones I know quite a few people without any TV’s hooked up. Watching YouTube on a tablet you can drag it around the house as you do stuff and easily use the interface or do web searchers etc. With a larger screen you’re just stuck in that room and remotes suck for navigation. There’s been several attempts to be able to seamlessly swap content from one screen to another, but their clunky.
- weberer 4y ago
  The Wii U perfected this, but it only worked on its own tablet.
- Jolter 4y ago
  Maybe for YouTube, but for consuming long-form content like movies, there’s something to be said for sitting down and watching purposefully with a more immersive experience.
  - Retric 4y ago
    I personally don’t find larger screens noticeably more immersive vs a small one up close. For me personally it’s like reading a book, you just ignore outside stimulus.
triyambakam 4y ago
I have no such chair or large screen. I hate the whole TV experience.

tomatotomato37 4y ago

Less common than not paying for a cable subscription service I would imagine. There's still a lot of advantage to possessing a really big screen even if the traditional way of consuming media on it has gone out of fashion

fckgw 4y ago

Something like 97% of all households have a TV, down from 99% around 2000. So yes, not owning a TV is still very rare.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

agilob 4y ago

I don't think it common, but I feel you. I have a TV, but it's a 3rd computer screen just for playing movies. Every now and then someone from my family calls me asking for help with her TV, something broke, video is breaking, there's white noise on, or audio interrupts, etc. Gradma calls me because I work with computers. I don't have an antenna or decoder or something else I don't even know what these things are called. For music I play from phone connected to bluetooth speakers. >I’m happy to announce the release of a new tvOS app called Blank This got me so confused, I didn't even know TVs have apps, I mean I knew there is AndroidTV and nvidia shield, but somehow concept of 3rd party apps on a TV didn't get to me.