We made a choice a while back. We would stop watching TV. Actually, it was not so much of a choice but just something we realized we did. We just stopped, since we had no need for it anymore.
For a long while we watched whenever friends came over. There seemed to always be something they wanted to see on the thing. We didn’t put the TV away, because we use it for videogames and for watching films on DVD.
The result wasn’t even noticeable back then. We still knew what was going on on the different channels and you only need to watch TV for about half an hour to know what the commersials are that month.
Then they shut down the analog part of the network. Now you need some kind of box to watch TV. I know nothing about this technology, because I am more interested in my car, and that says a lot! (I don’t care about car technology, unless there is a nifty computer involved)
Now the difference between us and the people watching TV are noticeable. We have no idea, most of the time, what commersials are shown. And we don’t really know what series are being shown on TV and wich episode people around us has seen or not. Yes, we watch the series too. When we have time for such activities (one or two episodes a day, typically), and only the good ones.
But most noticeable is that in a conversation, I have to ask about what commersials are shown on TV. I don’t get jokes based upon them.
But I am happy. I still use about the same amount of time to sit at my computer reading unnessecery stuff or playing videogames or computergames or watching something on the computer or listening to last.fm or reading dn.se or blogs about current events… But I am spared from watching commersial after commersial that I don’t even want to be seeing.
Sure there are banners, but they are so much easier ignored (or blocked).
My confusion is about this; why do people continue to let their TV control their lifes? I can’t understand how you could arrange your life so you have time to watch right at the moment your favourite show starts, and then all the way to the end of it. I used to but oh, how quickly one forgets!
So come on! Demand your house to be free of the TV. Public service is still a good thing, when it works, but you can watch it on their web page when it suits YOU instead of having them control you (if you can read this, you must have a computer, hehe). Control of your life is not public service, is it?
The diffrence between you and around 80% (just a number from my ass, but I dont think its that far off) of the people watching TV is that they dont want to be bothered with computers while watching Lost or the latest show. sure is nice for YOU but they dont want to watch it on youtube (sucky quality) or hassle with 2 days worth of Bittorrent. And most people gather around the TV watching a show. wich is difficult with computers, sure you can jack it to the TV (or use a 28-32 inch monitor for reading aftonbladet) but that’s far from easy.
TV stayingpower is based on SIMPLICITY where as the computer is FAR from practical.
and i will never throw out my TV tbh. I feel it’s alot more confortable sitting in my sofa watching BSG then doing that infront of the computer screen. Sure i DL the ep’s I want but thats because i want the latest and not wait a year or two.
People like sofie is finding SVT’s online contents more usefull but still can’t watch TV4’s online stuff for free, they requre a subscription (comercials are making it “free” on TV and if you remove it, who pays for the contents?). And to be hones i cant be bothered to teach everyone i know how to download stuff from limewire/bittorrent and at the same time, teach them to find out what’s bad stuff and good stuff. I rather give them a newspaper with the TV scheduel (SP?) and a clock and hope they have time watch the show.
And to see TV today you need a box that is around 500 sek or even less and you can watch the channels you had before, and they even added a couple. But i find it quite irrelevant anyway, most tv’s today comes with a built in digial box. And most people will uppgrade sooner or later.
So, to sum up this i would say, the problem with online contents is:
1. audio/video resoultion.
2. Translations (undertexter.se is no solution, half of it just make the movie/episode more confusing with bad subtitles)
3. Format. How do i get the downloaded file from my application to my new uber 42″ tv? a cable? What cable! Omg! I dont want to watch the movie/ep on a 15 inch laptopscreen.
4. Accessability. sure i love that latest episode of BSG from piratebay but what about Lets dance (swedish one), how many months do i need to wait before i can se it on piratebay.. if ever. I dont want the leet haxors deciding what i want to see. In many ways thats even worse then tv3/5/4/1/2 et all.
5. Cost. sure sound “free” in many ways, but comericals pay for alot of stuff. If i want TV4 i need to pay a fee to se it online, 30 sek a month i think. I dont want to be illegal, in any form.
6. Media companies. they dont want it to be simple.. they want you to watch TV + comercials from your sofa.
7. and this is a sore one. the OS community will not make it easy. They hate standards, they rather make their own. Take .mkv for a instance. why not use a standard mp4 container so i can watch my stuff on a PS3 DVd player? No i need to spend 20 years to convert to whatever format my player supports. sure blame the hardware producers but they are following standards set by both (content) producers and hardware wendors. If the OS community cant follow that, why bother at all?
I wish there was a simple hardware appliance i could connect to my TV and internet, select a show to watch and press PLAY. But there aren’t and will probably never will be, people just want “their own way” of doing things. Sweden need TIVO!!
bah.. should have written this in swedish. hope it makes sence.
*looking at that comment, judging from the size of it that Henka is somewhat upset* Hehe eller nåt…
Anyways, calm down. This was not directed at you. In fact, the whole post wasn’t even supposed to be directed at anyone or urging anyone to do something. I was just going to report something about my life to the oh, so interested online society! =)
But then I suddenly wrote those last lines. I don’t even know why I did that. Perhaps I felt happy and wanted everyone else to be happy too.
I will now proceed to actually READ what you have written and see if I have anything to say to it. =D Happy thoughts!
Ok, I’ve read it now.
Getting something to show on your TV from your computer is pretty simple. You just need the right settings, the right TV-out-thingy and a cable. Your TV is pretty close to your computer, so you would not need a very long one (So I guess it would be pretty cheap).
But if you don’t want to (and I’m sencing that you don’t), then it is too much fuss over nothing. A simple statement of “I don’t want to” is sufficient.
The reason I don’t miss shows like let’s dance and such is that I don’t get as much out of them as it would cost me to pay to get them. 500 for that box (is there no fee involved, like an annual fee?), but then you get to pay that license crap too.
I used to think I did not want to be illegal, but nowadays I just say to hell with it all. They want more money than skattemyndigheterna or CSN, and they don’t give me anything in return.
DN and blogs are free, and the series I download illegally is not from our public service (that is what the license are for).
Maybe I grew out of that kind of programming, I don’t know.
I realize that I steal from all the channels that could bring me interrupted versions with text all over them (I want them without text) in return if I just watched their commersials and/or payed some money to them. But it is hard to care. Especially when I think it’s luxury (lyx ska det vara) to buy Kungsörnen-pasta. If I had to (if there was no illegal alternatives), I would probably have to stop playing my videogames and stop watching shows on my computer (wich we untill recently did in the sofa, btw). Noone would get any money anyways.
At least stealing this way doesn’t make anyone loose anything…
There. Now I’ve written a bunch of stuff (potentially making non-sence) too! =)
(föresten, jag är inte arg eller så jag försöker bara göra mig själv förstådd. Kommer inte på rätt ord så ja får gå runt dom ibland, blä. engelska och nyvakenhet är inte bra kombination.)
Don’t tell me about connecting the computer to the TV, i have 3 computers hooked up to mine. But the real problem is, the quality from composite (it’s called that) that you find on 95% of all videocards (including dell and HP computers) just plain SUX. And alot of the tv’s people have today still dont have component (if your videocard support that) or dsub/dvi/hdmi input!
People don’t want that kind of video especially not on a 32 inch television set.
Getting video out is more complicated then you think, atleast if you want to have any sort of quality. And once you get it “hooked up” you got the problem with audio. Unless you purchase a cable for 500 sek (if you even know what one to buy) you will get REALY bad sound, stereo at best (compared to 5.1 or DTS from DVD or Satelite top-boxes). the signal to noise ratio is to low to be a usefull solution for most people. They will complain (if they even CAN do that, who do they call? Piratebay?) when it’s all hiss and popping and bad mojo all around.
“you need the right settings”.. there is your biggest problem. I dont want to go around fixing everyones setup just to have a call two days later asking me to fix it again because a pc game broke the settings (most games dont play nice with two screens, doubt you have experimented alot with that).
And people want the latest news live. They want sporting events live, they want other things live (eurovision etc). Live as you know, dont work that well with internet. unless you want to change the entire infra structure for billions of kr.
television will remain for a long time. It’s one of the most practical ways of distributing media. you only need to send a omni directional signal from a antenna(or cover an area of the size of sweden with a singel satelite). digial television has the added benefitt of better video and sound, something i appreciate alot. Im fed up with static and pre-vhs image quality. Call me a “prylnörd” if you like but why would i settle for something worse?
Making people opt out on TV today is not a alternative unless you want them to be even MORE oblivious to economics and politics. Radio is god sent for people at work or traveling.
torrent just works because such a small percentage do it, if everyone did that SVT would close down, TV4 (or whatever channel are producing your favorite show) aswell and bang, you dont have any shows to DL any more. Pirating (if you let me call it that) is to mainstream today and i feel that this is a luxury that will need to go away before all companies decide to change medium to something more restraining, like decoding boxes and stuff with HDCP.
And who would pay for the bandwidth if everyone where to use online distribution? you would end up with subscription fees for online content anyway (like WoW etc)and you are back to square one, but with a media format even LESS practical then todays.
If we dont watch it we will end up with itunes and DRM. Everyone cries wolf at MS (points at micke) but forgetts that the alternatives like OSX/Apple/mac is 100 times worse. Itunes with DRM is a billion times more restricting, useless and expensive. I will never own a mac. Never. Vista atleast give me a option to turn stuff of.. mac don’t.
There is no fee on the box, one time purchase. You can get additional channels if you subscribe to boxer for instance but the basic SVT/TV4 channels are free.
anyway.. that it about that.
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Get a jobb and buy good pasta. Why live like that if you dont need to? what will you do when both you and mickes parents go away? Who will help you if you get in trouble with money? Cars break down, ovens break. Fridges break. Everything breaks down sooner or later and for that you need money.
Im sorry if i upset you now, but you two need to do something. you will never be able to get a child unless you get a steady income and i dont think that the income from your firm will be enough. Get your act together and GET A JOBB! I know you can do it, try it out. Making money is no shame. Dont wait for someone to drop a bag of cash in your lap.
You will be mad at me now for telling you what to, I gave you a heads up on a jobb and you didnt even BOTHER checking that out, why is that? you cant sit around the rest of your life playing computer games and knitting. But belive me, you have plenty of time for that even if you have a jobb.
Im not telling you to go and work yourself to death, all im asking that you try it out. would’t it be nice if you could go on a vacation, buy some new clothes, eat dinner out or just save the money for the future (you never know when you need it).
im gonna stop ranting now, sorry. dont hate me.
Hanka, why do you assume you have to install everyone elses TV? Just say no for crying out loud. Tell them you don’t have the time.
“Don’t tell me about connecting the computer to the TV”
Well I know you are very capable, and that was why I only wrote “the right settings” because I knew you would know what they where, and I didn’t… The reason I wrote that about the cable was because you seemed to think it was impossible, wich I’m sure it’s not.
I actually had such a thing going on in Västerås for a while, and probably would have set it up here too if I had gotten custody of the cord I was using back then. But Jerry took it, and I don’t really care…
Oh my gods you write long comments when you are not upset… *phew*
Anyways, you only do see problems, don’t you?
If SVT had to shut down, then perhaps we could get some peace! Perhaps Radiotjänst could stop bothering us with fees we don’t want to pay and SVT would stop producing stuff I don’t like to watch. News I allready get more then enough of by reading dn.se and some other newspapers as well… but mostly dn, I’ll admit. And that really is all I want from public service. Sure, it’s nice to see a good debate, but does it have to be public service to give us that?
I don’t care about sports live. In fact, I don’t care about getting anything live except the swedish election. But I’ll just have to live without it. I can’t pay that sum they want just to watch something every fourth year, you know! =)
Discussing OS with anyone that allready has made up their mind is futile, so I won’t do that, and neither should you. 😉
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I’ve tried to explain. Obvously I failed. Again. I’m not sure doing a third attempt will do any good, so I won’t. I don’t hate you, but I don’t exactly love you for expressing that you don’t believe in us. Talk to me again when someone asks you to take a job you know you will not do very good and will not be comfortable with to support your future family. And then tell me you would not rather wait to start that family.
Henka: Its easy to have an opinion about whats best for other people when you are not totally informed about the situation.
Har levt tre år utan burken nu. Några återfall (ca tre) har det blivit när jag blivit tipsad om nån dokumentär men annars intet. Det känns fint, ungefär som att sluta röka. Jag gjorde det pga mediernas propagandisering och att jag kände mig ljugen rakt i ansiktet varenda dag, det var en gapande klyfta mellan Svenska mediers fantasivärld och nyheterna jag fann på nätet.
Medierna utgör vårt kulturella kitt och det svåra med att sluta med TV och tidningar är att det leder till en viss isolering IRL. Men den TV tittande Svensken i gemen är nog totalt uträknad som politisk kraft, ganska läskigt.
Det känns ändå som att det är ganska lätt att ersätta tv:n med internet, och då får man välja själv vilken information som ska komma till en… och framförallt NÄR!
Jag brukade seriöst gå hem från folk för att det var arkiv-x på tv.