Don't Knock TV: It's Going To Get Better
- Thread starter Elizabeth Grunewald
- Start date
A GAME OF THRONES!! SPRING 2011 ON HBO!
That´s how TV´s going to get better! Oh, and Walking Dead season 2 with 13 episodes. Hooray!
That´s how TV´s going to get better! Oh, and Walking Dead season 2 with 13 episodes. Hooray!
I see too problems with streaming TV:
1)Available Bandwidth: One tv streaming video would already eat up a big chunk, let alone 2 or more as with most houses that have multiple people watching tv at the same time. Add this to playing multiplayer games or MMOs and you've got a big strain on your connection.
2)Download Caps: Since those asshole ISPs have begun puting caps back on how much data you can download, a step back to 90's dialup days, streaming TV and movies eats up a lot of that limit, leaving people to pay per megabyte once they go over. ISPs can barely keep up with existing traffic because they aren't upgrading their lines.
Until these problems are addressed, I don't see it really catching on.
1)Available Bandwidth: One tv streaming video would already eat up a big chunk, let alone 2 or more as with most houses that have multiple people watching tv at the same time. Add this to playing multiplayer games or MMOs and you've got a big strain on your connection.
2)Download Caps: Since those asshole ISPs have begun puting caps back on how much data you can download, a step back to 90's dialup days, streaming TV and movies eats up a lot of that limit, leaving people to pay per megabyte once they go over. ISPs can barely keep up with existing traffic because they aren't upgrading their lines.
Until these problems are addressed, I don't see it really catching on.
Its the same for any business switching their entire model around, considering the services iPlayer and 4OD offer were only recently made viable through high speed internet connectivity.luas_dublin said:
Be patient and within the next 5 to 10 years broadcast television will be a thing of the past, until then you will have to use streaming websites which may not be sponsored by the networks ; )
Do yourself a favor and bump The Wire up to the top of the queue 
It's a slow burn, and you definitely need to watch it from the beginning, but it pays off with interest come the last 2-3 episodes of any season. Bar none, it is the deepest, richest fiction you've ever seen on TV. Anybody who doesn't understand the unique position TV is in to deliver long-form episodic drama is missing out by not catching The Wire.
It's a slow burn, and you definitely need to watch it from the beginning, but it pays off with interest come the last 2-3 episodes of any season. Bar none, it is the deepest, richest fiction you've ever seen on TV. Anybody who doesn't understand the unique position TV is in to deliver long-form episodic drama is missing out by not catching The Wire.I disagree with the original article - not that TV isn't getting better but the use of Lost as a flagship example. Sure, it's deep and multilayered - to the point of needless complexity and a myriad of features which simply make no sense at all even in the eyes of even my most addicted friends.
But it has all the classic hallmarks of quite a few American TV shows of the moment : 1) take a simple basic principle; 2) add a twist, perhaps more in the nature of the story telling than the story itself; 3) realise mid-way through the season that you want to spin out another season; 4) repeat (3) until no longer profitable, at which point 5) tie up some of the loose ends as fast as possible - if you have the money.
It's 4 and 5 which ruin TV. It's the inability to know when to quit, when to draw a line under a story and walk away. Lost didn't get it right. Neither did Heroes, Scrubs or How I Met Your Mother - and don't belittle the latter two for being sitcoms, nothing stops comedy being poignant (see also : the end of Blackadder, arguably the single best five minutes of television ever made).
But it has all the classic hallmarks of quite a few American TV shows of the moment : 1) take a simple basic principle; 2) add a twist, perhaps more in the nature of the story telling than the story itself; 3) realise mid-way through the season that you want to spin out another season; 4) repeat (3) until no longer profitable, at which point 5) tie up some of the loose ends as fast as possible - if you have the money.
It's 4 and 5 which ruin TV. It's the inability to know when to quit, when to draw a line under a story and walk away. Lost didn't get it right. Neither did Heroes, Scrubs or How I Met Your Mother - and don't belittle the latter two for being sitcoms, nothing stops comedy being poignant (see also : the end of Blackadder, arguably the single best five minutes of television ever made).
