3 ms·

> 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 somethi

by mbreese 15y ago

> 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 we ever watch are sports. The problem isn't that TV is broken. There are still good shows being made that audiences want to see. The problem is that some people still think of TV as something that has to be watched in the moment. With DVRs the subscription is less about delivering live TV and more like a fire-hose of media. The DVR captures what you want, and you can ignore the rest. Hell, I have satellite service, and because I can get east-coast feeds, I often am able to record and watch shows much earlier than people with cable.

VikingCoder 15y ago
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.
- mbreese 15y ago
  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.
  - VikingCoder 15y ago
    ...the fact that you can't watch it on Hulu until the next day is NOT a technology problem.
- rkudeshi 15y ago
  The upcoming "Hopper" DVR from Dish Network solves this problem in an ingenious way. They have a feature called "Primetime Anytime" that records the entirety of primetime (8-11pm) programming on the 4 major broadcast networks (NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS) for the last 8 days. That means you can turn on your DVR and watch anything that aired in primetime in the last week. The way they achieve this is by silently recording the networks in the background. The DVR has a 2TB hard drive, of which about 500GB is allocated to this feature, I believe. (Note that doing it this way also absolves Dish of having to negotiate with the networks a la Hulu.)

by mbreese 15y ago

VikingCoder 15y ago

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.

mbreese 15y ago
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.
- VikingCoder 15y ago
  ...the fact that you can't watch it on Hulu until the next day is NOT a technology problem.
rkudeshi 15y ago
The upcoming "Hopper" DVR from Dish Network solves this problem in an ingenious way. They have a feature called "Primetime Anytime" that records the entirety of primetime (8-11pm) programming on the 4 major broadcast networks (NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS) for the last 8 days. That means you can turn on your DVR and watch anything that aired in primetime in the last week. The way they achieve this is by silently recording the networks in the background. The DVR has a 2TB hard drive, of which about 500GB is allocated to this feature, I believe. (Note that doing it this way also absolves Dish of having to negotiate with the networks a la Hulu.)