Watch TV much?
By Karl Susman | December 12, 2011
How do you watch TV? Growing up, watching TV meant literally just that; sitting down, flipping the dial to a channel at a specific time for a specific program and gazing on in wonderment at the physical box in front of me. Today I find myself watching TV in any way but that way. TV channels are so plentiful that even as I write this, it's impossible for me to tell you exactly how many hundreds of channels are available for me to view. Shows are now also recorded on one's choice of electronic digital video recording devices (DVR's), to be watched on a whim. Actual show times are irrelevant and a thing of the past. I don't even watch all of my TV shows on a TV. And commercials, how 1970 is that? Commercials are now there only to be skipped.
After a quick online check, I can tell you that DirecTV currently offers over 300 channels, Dish Network claims over 200 and Time Warner Cable shows over 900 if you include the music channels. Hey man, that's a lot of choices and a lot of channels to work your way through. Forget it, don't even try or bother. The days of mindlessly switching channels trying to find what you want to watch are over. You could literally spend your entire day just changing channels. I haven't even included online TV services such as Hulu, NBC and the like. You need to know exactly what you want to watch ahead of time or risk falling victim to channel-option overload.
I don't believe there truly is a prime time TV slot these days. When I want to watch the latest episode of Fringe, I don't care if it is on at 7am, 8pm or anything in between. I'll set my DVR to record the show and I'll watch it whenever I fancy. Sure, there used to be VCR's (video cassette recorders for those of you born post-1990) back in the day, however you still had to remember to turn the darn thing on, properly set the current time, start time and end time of your desired episode of Murder She Wrote or Knight Rider. More often than not I would come home in anticipation of watching what I wanted only to find this device sneerily blinking "12:00 . . . 12:00." This was not a system one could count on.
Watching TV on a TV was the only way to do it, right? My Zenith TV was the bomb, I'm telling you. A huge honkin' screen, probably 18" and a tube large enough to hold our pet dog. Now when I want to watch a TV show, sure I can watch it on my massive 50" Plasma TV, but I can also lay down in bed and comfortably watch it on my 960x640 display iPhone. It's amazing how when I recall shows I've watched, it really doesn't matter what screen size I watched it on. The enjoyment and memory is the same.
Commercials used to signify a time for a bathroom break or a quick run to the kitchen for a snack. Commercials are as simple to get by as pushing a button on the DVR control, or even easier, spend $0.99 to buy a show on iTunes and it's devoid of any commercials from the get-go. The way we watch TV has certainly changed to meet the demand for it, and I'm happy to see that there is more content (and more quality content) to choose from and enjoy in more ways than ever. Let's face it, you can only watch Happy Days re-runs so many times. Or can you?
Karl Susman, Tech Boss
www.mytechboss.com
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