what happened to TV ?

[Mr Pig]

I've not had TV (where I've been living) for the best part of 10 months, and don't miss at all.

When I first moved out and lived on my own I was without a TV for about six years, only bought one after I got married. I didn't miss it either, well maybe at first for a few months but after that I didn't want it back.

What I found was that whatever you found to do instead of watching TV was better than watching TV would've been. As family we still don't watch much, it's not on now. Music is playing in the kitchen as we all have lunch. What I do find though is that when I decide to watch TV, usually late at night, I'll flick through the channels and watch any old rubbish rather than just put it off.

There are good programs on but let's be honest, if you condensed them they'd fill maybe two channels? The rest is just mindless crap and cable/sky just gives you more channels of crap to choose from!

When I was a kid the TV got switched on by the first person up/home and it stayed on until the last person went to bed. Always, every day. How sad is that? My mother still does that. I've never been in her house and the TV has been off.

 

[goo_mason]

I bought a Humax PVR two Christmases ago when the video packed in, so now I just record the decent stuff (I can record two channels at once and either watch a third or watch a recording at the same time).

That way I can avoid normal TV and I have a schedule of programs I've chosen to watch, ready and waiting at any time.

 

[Night Train]

I record the 3-4 hours of tv I might be interested in each week and watch it condensed without the credits or the adverts. Saves so much time. The rest is just noise.

 

[Mr Pig]

Hard drive recorders are great. You can record loads of TV that's not quite good enough to watch at the time then never ever watch it so reducing your TV watching time even further! ;0)

 

[marinyork]

I'm the same as goo. I've had various PVRs since Tivo came along. Watch much of it very late at night after I've done other things. Prime time tv interferes with evening cycles.

 

[goo_mason]

Hard drive recorders are great. You can record loads of TV that's not quite good enough to watch at the time then never ever watch it so reducing your TV watching time even further! ;0)

There's an element of that with films - I record a few thinking, "Oooo - I really want to see that", and then they sit for months before I have a declutter and delete them. Or a 'highly rated drama series' which I'll record entirely, then sit down to watch it at a later date. The first episode is usually so awful that I end up instantly deleting the rest.

Still, with a 160Gb HD I can get away with keeping some trash for a while before I decide it's not worth watching ! And I can keep an entire series of Dr Who plus the Confidentials so that a certain young child can watch them for months until the box set comes out

 

[domtyler]

There's an element of that with films - I record a few thinking, "Oooo - I really want to see that", and then they sit for months before I have a declutter and delete them. Or a 'highly rated drama series' which I'll record entirely, then sit down to watch it at a later date. The first episode is usually so awful that I end up instantly deleting the rest.

Still, with a 160Gb HD I can get away with keeping some trash for a while before I decide it's not worth watching ! And I can keep an entire series of Dr Who plus the Confidentials so that a certain young child can watch them for months until the box set comes out

Not with HD, the Sky HD box comes with a 320GB drive, half of which is reserved for SkyAnytime, leaving just 160GB. However, HD broadcasts take enormous amounts of space on the disk. Fortunately it is quite straight forward to swap the provided disk out for a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint.

 

[marinyork]

Not with HD, the Sky HD box comes with a 320GB drive, half of which is reserved for SkyAnytime, leaving just 160GB. However, HD broadcasts take enormous amounts of space on the disk. Fortunately it is quite straight forward to swap the provided disk out for a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint.

Certainly was true. Sky is using new codecs for the new HD channels. It's moving everything over eventually supposedly. Progs that were taking about 6 or 7% for an hour on some are now 4% which goes some way to clawing back the lost space.