Is it just me or is Sky + bloody pointless. Don't get me wrong I enjoy the range of channels made available by satellite television but I am yet to see the real advantage of adding a hard disk to the box that allows you to record/rewind the channel you are watching plus record a programme on one other channel.
Lets go with pausing/rewinding live TV first. The way this is done is that Sky + has a buffer function that holds a maximum of 30 minutes of the selected channel. This allows you to rewind and replay an event just watched or pause an programme while real life intrudes. This is seen to be great for Sports fans and probably watchers of the pornographic channels too as they can watch that climactic moment time and time again or pause while they nip off for beer and snack* . The thing is, while doing this the actual programme continues and one is left with two options; hit the square button and jump to real timing, missing what happened while your created your personal replay, or carry on watching in delay mode which has a tendency to screw up the viewing of later programmes .....
..... let me explain. If I am watching a football match, which is highly unlikely, and decide to rewind to watch a goal or go and answer the phone I have caused the programme to over run. This may be a few moments but could be several minutes. This can mean that I that I miss the start of the next programme because I am watching the end of this one.
Even more frustrating is pausing a programme while someone else in the household takes a phone call. You then end up sat in front of a frozen screen while a family member or friend rattles on in an inane fashion. They don't have to worry about missing Eastenders because it is paused and are oblivious to the irritation that rapidly manifests when you are listening to half a conversation whilst watching what has become a poor quality urban still life. In the good old days they would have a hurried conversation and then get back to the telly. Now the gits know they have half an hour to talk bollocks without missing a moment of the "drama". The net result of this increasingly frequent scenario is that the pain that is life in Walford is drawn out to even greater lengths and I get to miss the start of the documentary I had been looking forward to.
Let us now move on to the second "advantage" of Sky +. You can record up to two channels of TV simultaneously. To be fair here I can accept the use of begin able to record TV but a Sky + box can hold about 180 hours of the stuff.
What does anybody want with 180 hours of recorded TV? The standard Sky package has an enormous range of channels and I like to browse the programme guide and select a programme to watch. I am not interested in creating my own personalised TV channel. I like to select from what is offered. If one goes down the road of using the hard disk to just store and watch personal selections little or no time may be left for the gems that worm our way in to our viewing consciousness because there is "bugger all on".
Creating your own TV channel is like going in to a restaurant and just always asking them to cook your favourite dish. I like a good pate' as much as the next man but the smoked duck I selected at a restaurant a few weeks back was fantastic and I would never have thought to ask for it if it wasn't on the menu. Do you see what I am saying here? Sky + has a tendency to limits your choices and can inhibit opportunities to find new televisual delights.
Moving on, I appreciate that there are certain benefits to watching pre-recorded TV, It gives you the ability to fast forward through, rather than endure, the ever increasing quantity of commercials that punctuate the media. This allows you to avoid the opera singing prat and the irritating meerkat vermin that invade every programme**.
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| I can't believe I snapped one of the little sods. San Diego 2006 |
Mind you, there is a down side to this. You then reduce an hour of TV to about 45 minutes and have to watch the last 15 minutes of something else which is basically a preview of what Alzheimers is going to be like......
...... what has happened? Who is that man? Why are they trying to stick a tag on that shark?
To cut to the chase, TV is a great form of entertainment but it is just that, a form of entertainment. Enjoy it but don't get so wrapped up in it that you need to see every damned minute of the stuff. You don't need to watch every episode of Eastenders to keep up with the plot. To be honest it, and other soaps, are pretty predicable and it doesn't take a lot of effort to work out what you have missed and what is likely to happen next.
If you haven't got the time to watch a programme just let it go. Realistically there are so many channels and so little new material that it will be repeated within a couple of weeks and on Dave every other day within a month or so.
I like TV but I don't like the way the supporting technology is trying to make it something that it is not. It doesn't matter if you miss it. There are far better things you could be doing than watching a lot of the dumbed down nonsense that is broadcast.
I have to admit that I go with Lord Reith's approach of television to inform, educate and entertain. I have yet to see quite how cash in the attic or hole in the wall fit in to those categories.
Do yourself a favour and be selective but open to new opportunities. if it is crap tun it off or turn it over. Don't endure it.
Rant over
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* or tissues and lube.** I do have a plan for these two. It involves plunging the rodent in to liquid nitrogen and then bending the singer over - need I say more...... ?
I know it is not really done to disagree with a blogger, but...
ReplyDeleteWe don't have Sky+, that is just something for those city types ;-), rather we have a Humax Freeview box which does record 2 channels at once, and stores probably around 100 shows or so. This tends to run at 50-90% full, and in fact we regularly have to have a clear down. I think that we could be accused of watching too much telly, but really it is just a tool to ensure that our key shows (any of the porn on BBC4 and the nine-to-ten dramas) are available to us.