(no subject)

[gothwalk]

The new house is coming along nicely. There's still a pile of stuff to move in, but it's non-essential stuff - the rest of the books and CDs, some more shelving, kitchen stuff and the rest of the clothes. I'm getting the hang of lighting fires again. The wireless network is starting to work (that's down to olethros, though). The kitchen floor is cold in the morning, particularly on bare feet, but I'm learning to deal with that. And then there's this television thing.

As many of ye know, I was brought up without a television, for the most part, and inannajones and I have spent the last four years or more without one. So it's this exotic thing for me, and I sometimes get hypnotised by the moving images.

I sat down on Sunday evening, I think, to watch an episode of Enterprise on Sky One. It was the one where T'Pol is recounting the real first contact thing, and while it was quite dreadful (there's a reason the fifties are in the past - leave them there!), it was dealable with. But just as I'd settled down to watch it, there's this break for ads. And it went on, and on, and on, and all the ads were inane, and evidently aimed at people with not much more than animal consciousness and a credit card. Eventually, the program came back on, and just as I was picking up the thread of the story again, boom, more ads.

I'm told Sky is really bad for ads. But if I want to watch something, I want to watch that and not ads. We're paying a subscription to the cable company for this; I can only assume that some of that money goes to Sky, so presumably they don't need the ad time to be heading for equal to the program time.

I've since seen two more episodes of Enterprise (still not impressed) and a few news broadcasts. But so far I'm not enamoured. I don't see why people like this medium; the signal to noise ratio is much worse than many mailing lists.

Comments

[natural20.livejournal.com]

Yup, Sky One will, on average, have 3 add breaks of roughly 5 minutes each during a 1 hour slot. The actual programme will run for about 40 - 42 minutes, depending on the episode. In the states they'll generally have 5 ad breaks, they're just a bit shorter.

This is, quite frankly, evil. It's also why these days I tend to only watch series' on BBC (ah, sweet lack of ads, Red Cap is one hour long and it's all good) or things where I'm in the company of others so we can mute during the ads and chat about stuff.

There is a hell of a lot of "noise" on TV, but there is some quite terribly good "signal" in there as well. The trick is to buy the Irish Times on a Saturday and use the helpful TV Guide to avoid all the noise. VCRs are also useful for obvious reasons.

Television is a wonderful medium, but in moderation, and you have to pick your spots, like any other medium really. Funny that. :)

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

I think I'll have to get a VCR and make friends with it. They can't be told to skip ads, can they? I know you can fast-forward, but it'd be nicer not to have them at all. Or is that Tivo I'm thinking of?

[natural20.livejournal.com]

I think there are VCRs that can avoid ads, but not in general circulation, you're probably thinking of TIVO, but I wouldn't guarantee it, none involved in Television is in a hurry to piss off those who pay the bills. At least with Tivo (and Sky+, but you can't get that here yet) the fast forward speeds are much, much better than VCRs.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Actually, the VCR I bought two years ago does automatically mark ads and skip them during playback. It's a bit startling at first when you're used to fast-forwarding through the ads. It's a Magnavox, I think, whether that helps or not, I dunno.