Not owning a television: c or d?

This is true, but I think the way TV functions makes it more fitting for passive consumption. Most people don't have a steady, endless stream of comic or movies or magazines or books available for them. I agree that the Internet can be just as bad though.

― Tuomas, Tuesday, July 7, 2009 6:59 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

That said I'm pretty sure 'the television' as we currently know and understand it will be obsolete within 20 years. It'll all be about yer multimedia internet-connected streaming entertainment centres that just happen to work as TVs as well.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, July 7, 2009 7:00 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

with on demand and dvr (plus a gazillion channels), we're already at the halfway point, and watching tv has become significantly less of passive "you have to watch what THE MAN wants you to watch!! WAKE UP FROM YOUR MENTAL SLUMBER" type activity.

with on demand and dvr (plus a gazillion channels)

This doesnt exist where I live and may never.

well, not exactly anyway.

Another version of 'I don't OWN a tv' you can play in places like Australia or the UK is 'oh, I don't watch COMMERCIAL tv!', which I've been occasionally guilty of.

Does anyone else associate the 'Price is Right' theme song with 'sweet I convinced my parents I was sick enough to stay home all day'?

For me when I was a kid it was 'Days of Our Lives'

me too! but it was at our elderlyish next door neighbors place passing out after icecream w/ bananas and drugs for lunch. i still see that hourglass all in a fuzzy haze in my minds eye.

Haha I got to watch DOTL every day in high school cause my school was right behind my house so I'd come home for lunch every day and watch it =)

For people who don't want to own a tv, not owning a tv is classic. For others, who would like to watch tv from time to time, it is more of a dud. amirite?

I actually cant watch TV right now, not don't. We can only get signal (what you say) via our digital receptor PVR thingy and thats currently unable to be connected up due to 83745673485 consoles being connected instead. So the maybe 2 shows a week I mightve watched, I dont.

However, all the free to air channels here have "catch-up" stuff on line so you can watch it there anyway so its no big deal.

i just got a digital box. poker on ten's sports channel is sweeeeet.

yeah that sports channel is surprisingly ok!

h-man getting poker tips for next drunken match

i own two tv sets. they are both broken so i put them face out on the windowsill.

I think I have met each of these types.

It was quite funny when I told my upstairs neighbours that I was getting the TV aerial fixed (one of my first acts as a home owner) - they were so "oh we don't watch television", okay, well I can't help it if your lives are so rich and varied that you don't need the lovely passive TV drug.

Does it count if you have a TV but no tuner, so you watch tons of Netflix and downloaded stuff? On one hand it's the best of both worlds as you can watch pretty much anything you choose, but don't get stuck just watching whatever property programme's on because you're too tired to move off the sofa, and no ads! On the other hand, I kind of can't wait to have proper TV again once I move back to the UK.

Since I last posted on this thread my ex moved back in with me and purchased a giganto-ass 50 inch plasma TV with a built in digital tuner. He now comes home and has to deal with me watching re-runs of Friends and Thet 70s Show on the new digital channels every night. So much for my "i hate tv" run of 5 years or so, haw.

He also shouts at me "I DIDN'T BY THIS TELEVISION FOR WATCHING TV ON DAMMIT"

i currently own a tv that is sitting on the floor with neither power nor cable

will probably take it out to the curb before too long

No one'll even take it. No one wants CRTs anymore. See em all over the kerbs here with "WORKING PLS TAKE" signs and they never disappear.

i own a p sweet tv that i never use to watch television, which i do on my computer

The point of our big plasma is of course for gamin'. PS3 shit looks sweet on 50in plasma.

i bought a crt for $10 less than a year ago and it's already graduated to being our *good* tv.

but i hella watch tv

Oh yeah cheap LCD tellys are rubbish. I'd rather a decent CRT any day myself. much better blacks.

me im just cheap lol. i actually 'ordered' a lcd on 'black friday' only to find it 'backordered', took it as a sign. instant relief for buyer's remorse. im a much better black for it :)

I got a Samsung 32" LCD for about £300 a few weeks ago. I've got to say the blacks are pretty good actually, I've certainly had some CRTs in the past which glowed more. It's quite funny the most common comment about modern TVs is the quality of the black, rather than about the colour.

Plasma's weirdness is this odd motion blur. I'm not sure if it's only noticable on older imagery - I watch a lot of 90s NTSC DVDs on it and we're PAL here - but you get this strange blurring effect on rapid motion if its a low light scene. Distracting, but not horrible.

About that article, I guess I'm mostly in the "Shrugger" category, with a bit of "Professor". I do like to watch some shows (mostly sitcoms and sci-fi/fantasy series) when I'm visiting friends (at the moment, whenever I'm staying at my gf's, we end up watching "Frasier" because we both love it), but a most of the stuff on the telly I'm either indifferent to (sports, game shows, talks shows with celebrities, police and crime series, soap opera) or find it intolerable (reality tv, talks shows where people's social prolems are made into a spectacle). However, I do understand why others might like those kind of programs, they're just not my thing.

Not owning a TV set doesn't really feel like such a "thing" as it did 10 years ago, though. With the Internet I don't feel like I'm missing out on stuff anymore; I can get the news anytime I want, if I really want to watch some show I can probably find it online, and if I'm curious about some weird catchphrase I hear people repeating, I can just search it on Youtube and most likely find a clip that explains it.

I am turned off by most programming nowadays, especially fictional television....however, I can't live without it.

i managed to survive the last six months with no tv. i didnt miss it. internet on the other hand....

People who have a thing about why other people don't own a television are always talking about this, really not sure why they are so sensitive about it

WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF WEIRD HIPPIE

PLUG INTO CULTURE OR BE SHUNNED, YOU BURLAP-WEARING HERMIT

Trayce, I could be wrong but that sounds like it could be some kind of motion-interpolation processing going on, does it make films look like a 'soap opera', or sped-up?. There's a wikipedia entry which lists the different names manufacturers give it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation.

Whenever I see a television with this on it, I find it so distracting.

I find the attitudes expressed in that article really quite mystifying.

I often find that the attitudes projected onto people who "don't own a television" are exactly that - complete projection, the negativity speaking more about the insecurities of the television owner rather than the "refusnik". (Quite similar to the projections attributed to those who choose not to partake in meat or alcohol or whatever else.)

Dude is right, no one ever asks "do you have a television?" but it's so present, the cultural assumption (at least in the west) that you must automatically have one. People *dont* ask "do you have a television" but they're perfectly happy to babble on at you, at great length, in an office or a social occasion, about whatever it was on television last night. I find this automatic assumption that you either have one, or you're some strange Othered weird type just... I dunno. *That* assumption seems way more arrogant and smug and loaded-with-assumptions-about-superiority to me than just saying "actually, I don't have a telly..." to cut off someone before they launch into a two hour monologue of their "mind-blowing" theories about The Wire or The Office or whatever.

At what point did television become such the dominant medium that it become odd *not* to have one? Has "the internet" reached that point of ubiquity, whereby there will be an assumption of deliberate and obstinate weirdness, rather than mere backwardness to refuse to have a Facebook page or whatever?

I mean, when I moved into my current flat, there was nothing - no phone, no television, no internet. I lasted about two years without internet access because I had an office job, but I haven't actually missed television enough to get one (not having the internet was a much more noticable lack, in terms of missing cultural awareness.)

But seriously. I almost always think that when people are "OMG, people who don't X are so snobby and arrogant and smug and think they're better than me!" it's mostly just subconscious self expression.

Has "the internet" reached that point of ubiquity, whereby there will be an assumption of deliberate and obstinate weirdness, rather than mere backwardness to refuse to have a Facebook page or whatever?

totally. it has different implications, though. when i quit facebook some of my friends reacted sort of angrily, like "that's where i put my vacation photos, and talk about my life, so you must not be interested in me" sort of thing. but the funny thing is, most of those people didn't even realize i'd quit until i told them. sometimes months later. confirming my belief that facebook "communication" is usually pretty one-way and there is far less actual engagement there than it seems.

Actually, I thought the article was a lot less about 'people who don't have TVs are arrogant and smug' than such things usually are. I mean, at least two, maybe three of those categories were not particularly condemning. I don't think I've ever really met an 'I don't have a TV' evangelist, either.

they're perfectly happy to babble on at you, at great length, in an office or a social occasion, about whatever it was on television last night

Thing is, this says more about the sort of people you get in office environments than it does about the ubiquity of television. There are way too many channels available now for anyone who isn't a self-obsessed twat to be able to just launch into a monologue about a programme and assume that you know what they're talking about.

At what point did television become such the dominant medium that it become odd *not* to have one?

At least 20 years ago.

Has "the internet" reached that point of ubiquity, whereby there will be an assumption of deliberate and obstinate weirdness, rather than mere backwardness to refuse to have a Facebook page or whatever?

Pretty much, yep.

people think you are mental if you dont have sky let alone a tv

i've had people explain facebook to me as if the reason i'm not on there is that i don't understand how to get on the internet.

Everyone I know that doesnt have a tv (probably around 10% of my friends but I think this might gradually be rising because of internet) have rooms that are way nicer due to not being dominated by a tv in the corner

A projector is a nice way of seeing stuff, and is unobtrusive when not in use

You know, I signed up for Facebook just to see the fate of my high school classmates. I loled and then deleted the account, Facebook is boring.

I've never met an 'I don't have a TV' evangelist, either, but there's this kind of persistent thread that they *exist* and we should condemn them, or maybe feel guilty if they're around? I dunno.

It's just this idea that people without televisions are odd and weird enough to be categorisable. I quite resent that. (Maybe that's because I don't fall neatly into any of his "categories" - I'm not entirely a "shrugger" or an "effeciency expert" - I mean, effeciency? Me? Ha! However I was initially really impressed by how much more *stuff* I got done when I moved to a house without one. Because when I have a television, I'm really compulsive about it, and find it difficult to stop watching, so it's just an easier choice not to have one around, the way I don't keep chocolate biscuits in my cupboards for exactly the same reason.)

I get that offices are a weird, forced environment, and people are often kind of grasping at straws for human conversation. It's viewed as a de facto conversation starter, kinda like "OMG did you see this o_0 Guardian article" is on the bits of twitter I hang out on.

I think that maybe internet refusnik positions might be slightly different as there has been a tribal tendency to move from one network to the next. That you can counter "OMG you don't have Facebook" with "OMG, you're *still* using Facebook? Get google+, loser")

Everyone I know that doesnt have a tv (probably around 10% of my friends but I think this might gradually be rising because of internet) have rooms that are way nicer due to not being dominated by a tv in the corner

this CAN be true but i find that living rooms can lack focus and feel weird without a TV in them. the focus of the room once was the fireplace, then the radio, then TV - take ALL those away and yes it can be nice but you have to put some thought into it or it's sorta awkward.

This is the answer: http://www.rhythmism.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43694

We don't have a TV* but we do have a desktop computer in the living room - we both work in IT and the desk doesn't fit anywhere else in our small flat - and I do feel a bit ashamed of that being the focal point of the living room

(also I hate actually using the computer in that position because the monitor's set up so we can put DVDs etc on* and watch them from the sofa, and if I'm programming or making music I hate feeling that I could be watched, because for me both are a process of repeating stupid mistakes and assembling clichés in the hope that the final product will somehow be greater than whatever tiny idea is in my head at the start of the process)

* yes, we don't have a TV but we watch stuff on the computer. one of the things I find, ahem, lovably asshattish about the other half is that sometimes he announces "we don't have a TV" but in fact spends approx 80% of his evenings watching TV shows on the computer. whereas I read ILX for most of my waking time, which is, uh

At what point did television become such the dominant medium that it become odd *not* to have one?

At least 20 40 years ago.

http://www.tvhistory.tv/Annual_TV_Households_50-78.JPG

Hi Phil D, you may not be aware of this, but many of the people in the discussion on this thread do not live in America, and the cultural penetration of television may have occured at a different rate in other countries.

I can certainly remember that when I left the UK for the first time, in 1979, it was not *that* odd for kids not to have a television in the house. There were several in my year at school. In the States, it was unheardof.

I'm trying to find the figures for the UK but the TV Licensing website is surprisingly unhelpful.