Not owning a television: c or d?

Like right now I'm half-watching Canada v. El Salvador on Galavison. What a country!

xxpost yep. that's prolly why i also associate the price is right with guilt-laced boredom.

dan I hope they were called the Sad Channel and the Lonely Channel.

I grew up with 2 channels in my childhood - the ABC (like our BBC) and one mixed rural/regional channel that got bits and pieces of the big city's channels. So I missed out on lots. Like Prisoner and number 96.

Sad: PBS
Lonely: CBS

But I didnt watch lots of TV as a kid. We played Monkey out in the yard and went swimming and like DID STUFF. Do kids DO STUFF anymore?

/srs case of old

Occasionally we could pick up CBC out of Thunder Bay since we lived on a hill, but only if the weather was right.

I hope yr randomized channel was CIVIC-TV.

Today's generation will be FORCED to do activities by the Pokewalker.

Kids do do stuff, it's all of us who stay inside all day! Neighborhood is fucking cluttered with kids holding bike races.

As you walk around with the PokeWalker in hand, the internal Pokemon will gain experience. Its affection for you will also grow. The device converts your foot steps into "watts," which can be used to catch wild Pokemon and search for tools for sending back to the main Heart Gold/Soul Silver software.

But I didnt watch lots of TV as a kid. We played Monkey out in the yard and went swimming and like DID STUFF. Do kids DO STUFF anymore?

/srs case of old

― lolsbury hill (Trayce), Tuesday, July 7, 2009 8:58 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

i did all this stuff and watched a shit load of tv every day. time management.

it's harder to watch mindless TV than ever.

I used to LOVE LOVE LOVE spending hours just clicking through channels when I was a teenager.

Now with digital/HD cable
a) Every channel takes two seconds to "load," so becomes frustrating after clicking through like 10 channels
b)There's an extra 4 minutes of commercials every half hour on every channel so I barely get any shows.

Basically, I'm reduced to just DVRing the 7 shows that I like because channel surfing is such a chore. I'm gonna bail on cable because cable has made itself no fun.

Also, Tuomas, shut the fuck up now and forever.

boy you like to make sure you don't forget about your stfus

it was on my "to do" list

[√] do laundry
[√] mail out electric bill
[√] tell Tuomas to shut the fuck up now and forever

a) Every channel takes two seconds to "load," so becomes frustrating after clicking through like 10 channels

this is a great point and has totally killed channel surfing for me.

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', which mum used my being home as an excuse to watch. What was also great was its famous glacial pace meant that your fake colds could be 3 months apart, and you'd still pick up what was happening.

My Chilean co-worker, who hasn't been in Australia that long, only just realised that Neighbours is not like the telenovelas she's familiar with, and that it will never come to any conclusion, and this has mad her roaringly angry.

Oh great now I'm a "hilarious" screen name.

Wait I've been one before wtf am i bitching about.

wait what?

Trayce Lorenz (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, July 7, 2009 10:29 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh I thought you were sad I lolled @ lolsbury hill

I remember the tender days of Trayce Hand

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.