
TV is broken - rkudeshi
http://minimalmac.com/post/18189678921/tv-is-broken
======
kgo
I made nachos for my niece once. Put Doritos on a cookie sheet, smothered them
in cheese, and put them in the broiler. She thought they were weird and broken
because I didn't use the normal plain-style tortilla chips. Her mom made her a
new batch the right way.

Young children have a tenancy to think that the rest of the world is exactly
like their home, because that home is their world. Then when they experience
the outside world things seem strange.

Like the above anecdote, I remember thinking it was weird when a neighbor made
Taco Salad with Frito's instead of Doritos.

I remember how weird my grandmaa's house seemed all around when visiting. The
food was different, the board games were different, it was all strange.

I think this anecdote is the same. Its not so much a case of the wisdom of the
children, but just another example of a child not understanding that the
entire world isn't like their sheltered existence. [I don't intend sheltered
as a pejorative here.]

I'm sure there were plenty of other things on the trip that seemed broken, but
none happened to be as evil as commercial TV.

~~~
tsotha
Wait, you use _Doritos_ to make nachos?

Weirdo.

~~~
sutterbomb
And fritos for taco salad? I'm so very confused.

------
droithomme
There are many other things that are broken too.

My fancy expensive name-brand digital TV takes a full minute to boot up from a
cold start, longer than it took my tube based TV from the 1950s to warm up.

Once on, it takes almost a full second to change channels while it rebuffers
the stream of the channel being changed to. This prevents quickly flipping
through channels to see what is on.

As a result I just don't bother most of the time. Which is fine, I watch much
less TV.

We won't even get into how 720 screens don't really have 720 display pixels so
even perfect size matches are resampled and interpolated, or how often I find
I have to manually change the aspect ratio because it wasn't able to figure it
out on its own.

~~~
SiVal
Here's a question for my fellow amateur economists: What happens to the
quality of broadcast television when you increase the supply of broadcast
channel-hours by a factor of 50 and you don't increase the supply of viewers
at all?

I used to watch TV, like most people. Then, in the 1990's, the number of
channels started increasing. More options, great. Twice as many channels did
allow for more specialization, so maybe there were twice as many things I
wanted to watch. When it reached four times as many channels, though, there
were still only twice as many things I wanted to watch. Ten times as many
channels, and now I wasn't sure if there were even twice as many as in the old
days, because the budgets for the good shows were being spread among more
shows to provide vehicles for more ads in all those new broadcast channel-
hours.

Then, along came TiVo. Ah, TV was fun again. I could skim the cream. Couldn't
imagine life without it. But as the years passed, the things I grabbed with
TiVo were losing quality, too, seemingly bleeding budget to the shows "out
there" that my TiVo and I ignored.

Then, my TV set broke. I assumed I'd have to get a new one quickly because, of
course, everyone had to have a TV, right? I was sure I'd go crazy without it.

But I didn't. As time passed, I found I grew less motivated to get a new one,
not more.

Well, after years of no TV, we finally got one a few weeks ago, so we wouldn't
have to gather 'round the laptop for Netflix and slide shows of family
vacations. The image is spectacular. But I can't believe what I'm so clearly
seeing. They may call themselves The Travel Channel, Discovery Channel,
History Channel, Food Network, Science Channel, or whatever, but they're all
"Paid Programming", reality for rednecks, and pseudoscience for suckers,
punctuated by screaming ads.

Even the islands of quality have clearly suffered extreme beach erosion.

But at least DVR technology has improved. Sorry, JUST KIDDING. You'd think
that after years of Moore's Law, Comcast could make a cable box that didn't
act as though I was waking it from a nap with each key press. You'd think that
a product called an "HD DVR" would have an HD interface (wouldn't you?),
instead of one with the display resolution of the lower half of a Nintendo DS.
You'd think with so few needles hidden in the haystack of broadcasting, their
interface would help you navigate the guide and find shows to watch, but
apparently nobody at Comcast HQ has ever used Amazon to find a book.

Either that or they never watch TV.

~~~
DanI-S
Some validation: In the UK, the BBC has a pretty fixed budget, a pretty fixed
(low) number of channels and a pretty fixed audience. They have continued to
produce a high quality output of world-class educational and entertainment TV
for a good chunk of the last century.

They also managed to build a free streaming service superior to Hulu, and a
bunch of great websites.

It costs $230 per year ($19 per month). And there will never be any ads.

~~~
iuguy
Actually the BBC had it's remit massively widened by the last government so
that it had to fill sections of DAB, a large amount of Radio channels,
Freeview, set up iPlayer and run a whole load of channels that aren't even
targeted at the UK (such as BBC Persian), largely to meet the FCO's propaganda
needs. Additionally, the dodgy dossier episode has emasculated and distorted
large chunks of the BBC's programming leading to some completely bizarre side
effects[1].

The BBC still does produce a large amount of quality progamming, but budgets
and purposes have been affected. Top Gear for example used to be about cars
but is now an entertainment show - a wildly successful entertainment show, but
no longer something you'd seriously watch to get an idea of what cars to buy
and what to avoid. The BBC is also responsible for the One Show, which one day
will be recognised by the UN as a crime against humanity. There's also been
considerable dumbing down of shows like the Apprentice and Dragon's Den over
time, eschewing quality in favour of personalities and entertainment. The
natural history unit still put out good documentaries, but even they're not
entirely untarnished[2].

The quality of news has also suffered, particularly thanks to spin doctors in
previous administrations, the simon gilligan dodgy dossier affair and other
stresses on the BBC. When was the last time you saw a proper debate? The other
week I saw Alastair Campbell jogging around forests, talking up the end of
civilisation through alcoholic poisoning brought on by drinking at home,
demanding minimum pricing as the only way out but completely ignoring the
impact of the smoking ban as a factor in home drinking increases. It was a
terrible attempt at a documentary and a case study in what's wrong with the
BBC at the moment.

I do apologise for getting on my soap box about this, you didn't deserve it
for pointing out the good stuff. Still, the BBC is not a perfect organisation
and the amount of media it has to produce combined with political interference
has meant that quality has dropped, perhaps not as much considering the volume
of material it puts out, but it isn't immune.

[1] - [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/08/today-
pr...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/08/today-programme-
the-ladykillers-graham-linehan)

[2] -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8950070/Fr...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8950070/Frozen-
Planet-BBC-faked-polar-bear-birth.html)

~~~
someone_welsh
Good points. I generally agree.

But I don't think your second reference is really a fair criticism, and I
think this was blown completely out of proportion in the UK. I certainly
didn't feel that the series was "tarnished". After all, getting a camera
inside an actual polar bear den in the arctic? I think that'd be somewhat
invasive. Still a beautifully shot, enjoyable and educational series.

The BBC has also been responsible for all of Adam Curtis's documentaries,
which are often excellent, and still get made (although the most recent one
was perhaps not so good, but I digress).

Proper debate occasionally happens on Newsnight, although I think Jeremy
Paxman's role has developed into some sort of entertainer of late.

They did spend a lot of time paying vast amounts to... Jonathan Ross.

~~~
eru
About Adam Curtis: Watching, say, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving
Grace" was fun. But I don't see any reason to believe that his other
documentaries about subjects I know less about are any more trustworthy than
that piece on computers.

------
jerf
I would observe that in some sense this isn't just a "kid growing up with
different tech gets it better than the adults" story. My wife and I both feel
the _exact same way_ about TV, in our mid-30s. We just have the historical
perspective such that we don't have to ask "why". Also it's less cute when we
ask why. But otherwise the same.

~~~
rickmb
There's no age limit her. We're in our 40's, we watch a lot of series and
movies, but we've rarely seen commercials in the past 10 or so years.
Sometimes we start watching a show or movie more or less by accident, but that
usually ends at the first commercial break.

Both of us find it hard to imagine people can actually tolerate watching TV
that way, even though we've done the same for a long time.

But imho it's not so much TV that is broken. It's advertising. In today's
world of on-demand personalized information, advertising has zero value. It's
just noise. In SF movies we often see a world full of advertising everywhere,
with lots of sound and motion. I like to believe the (near) future will be
exactly the opposite: the advertising industry, no longer adding any value or
generating any ROI, will collapse. Taking old school "broken" TV with it.

~~~
cafard
"But imho it's not so much TV that is broken. It's advertising. In today's
world of on-demand personalized information, advertising has zero value."

What happens to Google & Facebook without advertising?

~~~
ricardobeat
Their advertising is less broken.

I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads.

~~~
icebraining
_I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads._

You can; it costs $50/year, though:
<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/features.html>

~~~
mdda
The (paid for) Google Apps for Business still has a line of Ads at the top of
the email listing. No ads down the RHS, though.

~~~
dfabulich
You mean the bar that says "Web Clip?" You can turn that off. Mail Settings ->
Web Clip tab.

------
PaulHoule
The real issue with TV is that the audience is aging and eventually dying off.

TV viewership in hours per week is pretty stable because as boomers retire and
become disabled and unable to do anything else, they watch more TV. Young
people, like under 50, are turning away from TV.

Generation X and younger people have been falling out of love with TV for a
long time. In my case I remember sharply losing interest in TV around the
1990s. Even around 2000 I felt insulted by advertising that is aimed at people
who don't have money -- only medicare benefits they can spend and the hope
that they can hire a ambulance chasing lawyer to make a big killing.

TV for kids just sucks these days. The audience isn't kids, it's grandparents
who imagine that their grandkids will be entertained by it.

Some day the last television viewer will die and the cable companies and
networks will turn off the lights. Much like the music industry, the TV
industry has been losing it's audience for a long time, and one day they will
wake up and realize that their frog has been boiled -- and find somebody else
to blame.

~~~
noblethrasher
>TV for kids just sucks these days. The audience isn't kids, it's grandparents
who imagine that their grandkids will be entertained by it.

I am curious about what you mean by 'TV for kids'.

It seems to me that 'kid shows' have been pretty good since the early nineties
(Ducktales, Animaniacs, Gargoyles, the DC Animated universe cartoons). More
recently: Kim Possible, Spectacular Spider-Man, Samurai Jack, Sym-Bionic
Titan, Transformers Animated, the Avengers and Young Justice have been
_phenomenal_ with respect to writing, voice acting and animation. This is one
area where I'm a little envious of kids these days.

I grew up with cartoons made to sell toys. They get shows made to tell (good)
stories.

EDIT:Spelling

~~~
PaulHoule
Where do you see these?

I certainly never see them on cable when I visit friends and family. I saw Kim
Possible once a long time ago, and I also was really impressed with Teen
Titans, enough to get the box set.

Are these on a channel they don't get? On AMZN or Netflix? Or do you just have
to get them through BitTorrent?

There might be some good stuff, but it's never on. Spongebob Squarepants is
always on... I wonder if there's a connection.

~~~
sukuriant
Kim Possible: Disney Channel Sponguebob Square Pants: I think Nickelodeon Teen
Titans: I forget, probably Cartoon Network.

Honestly, the only way I'd ever go back to cable is if I had an a la carte
system; and then I'd take Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, G4, Discovery
Channel and their affiliates. I don't want/need the rest...

(also, haven't paid for cable in > 2 years. Netflix, Redbox, Vudu are my
friends)

------
geophile
It's not really TV, it's TV networks that are broken. Hulu (and other online
archives) may be even more irritating than broadcast TV. It's difficult to
find what you want; you are hit by download limits in the middle of a program;
there are still commercials, and it's the same ones over and over and over,
and the repetition can drive you nuts; browser crash means starting over
sometimes, or if you can go to where you left off, you have to endure skipped
commercials.

I have an expensive cable package. But I am also a frequent Bittorrent user
because the process of finding and watching is far preferable to the online
services, and sometimes the cable on-demand service. As a result, I often
"steal" via Bittorrent, content I've already paid for. Not sure whether I'll
keep that expensive cable package much longer.

My kids are older and know what commercials are, but they are growing up
knowing that TV networks (via cable or online) are just not usable. They have
now, and will expect in the future, a large selection of content, and instant
delivery with no interruptions.

~~~
calloc
Hold on ... Hulu has download limits in the middle of watching a program? I've
watched Hulu from 5 AM till 5 PM almost uninterrupted, the only interruption
is between shows they will say "You've been watching for 3 hours, are you sure
you don't want to take a break?". That repeats every two hours or so.

Yes, the commercials can be grating, and are still annoying but I think that
is a small price to pay for streaming my content when I want. Also they are
not NEARLY as long as the commercials on TV and if a TV commercial is really
loud (I'm looking at you eHarmony commercial) and you complain they will
actually do something about it.

Hulu may have its limitations because of stupid studio rules, but overall the
experience of watching content online with Hulu is pretty straightforward and
easy.

~~~
dpark
I really wanted to like Hulu. I even paid for Hulu Plus so I could watch it on
my PS3 and get access to the larger library. But on my PS3, Hulu streaming was
flakey. And then the commercials. The commercials ended it. After watching on
Netflix, I just couldn't deal with Hulu's commercials. They're nearly as
grating as cable TV, and for some strange reason they always seemed to be
inserted 5 seconds away from where the content was written for them to be
inserted: music, COMMERCIAL, finish music, fade through black.

I would happily pay for Hulu Plus Plus, where the extra plus means I pay more
and they turn off the commercials. But I'm unwilling to pay for Hulu Plus at
all.

~~~
srdev
I was looking at using Hulu Plus to augment my Netflix subscription, but when
I found out that even the paid version had commercials I changed my mind.

At one point they were experimenting with a "Watch one long commercial at the
beginning then no interruptions" thing, which was fantastic, but I guess they
nixed that, because I haven't seen it the last few times I've been on Hulu.

------
dwc
I've had almost identical conversations with my child in the past, which is
not surprising since we do not have cable or an antenna. Who would easily
accept the broadcast model who was not brought up with it?

Perhaps more interesting is my older brother (approaching retirement age), who
doesn't stream content but consumes through cable. Even when watching
currently playing shows he records to DVR and delays watching long enough that
he can skip commercials.

It seems to me that the old broadcast model was always awful, but it used to
be the only thing going. The first hints of its eventual demise really first
appeared with easy access to movie rentals and home video recorders.

~~~
waterside81
The behaviour of your brother is one I see amongst my friends & I. We
routinely watch sports on tape-delay (particularly NFL which has an amazing
ability to take commercials right when things are getting exciting) just so we
can skip through commercials.

~~~
mbreese
My wife and I try to do the same. We like to try to time things just right so
that we could still watch the ending in real-time. Starting a football game at
halftime usually works pretty well.

This year, I watched all NFL through the RedZone channel. It increased the
amount of games that I could follow, but eliminated all the commercials. It
does take some of the suspense out of it though, since you don't really get a
good flow for a single game. It also helped that I recently moved to CA from
Indy and got DirecTV Sunday Ticket to watch Colts games. That was before we
knew how bad their season was going to be, so I wasn't too invested in
following particular games.

------
yabai
I have given up on most TV - especially cable TV. Almost 3 years ago my wife
and I moved and decided to not startup cable TV. I setup an antenna and run
MythTV, Boxee and anything else that will run on a browser + flash. I run a
virtual machine for Netflix. When we started this experiment, I thought we
might go running back to cable. What we discovered is that there is a ton of
content available. The Mythbox nicely removes commercials.

When people hear that I don't have cable, many are confused that I can receive
HD programming over the air. The cable companies have done a brilliant job
confusing the public into believing that you must have cable to watch TV
and/or access HD content.

We couldn't be happier. I challenge anyone to give up paying for cable tv.
Good luck!

~~~
revelation
This isn't about cable. It's about the whole model of unidirectional media.
Dieing out, if you have not noticed.

~~~
yabai
I complain about cable television in any conversation about TV!

------
TheFuture
Almost all my big screen watching is through Roku of mainly Netflix streaming.
I cut cable over a year ago and very rarely watch network TV (NFL football
games are main thing I watch over the air).

I feel like the young girl every time I'm at a friends house and trying to
navigate whatever cable/sat guide they have. Seriously, it's 2012 and I'm
paging through this endless list of "channels" labeled by NUMBER and a
CALLSIGN? 1006 WKOW-HD. 12.1 ABC. Try to watch Jeopardy and get assaulted with
denture paste, hearing aides, and adult diaper commercials! What the heck is
going on? It is truly astonishing how bad the UI for these set-top boxes is,
combined with the process of finding out what and where the correct ESPNx
channel (HD or not HD) is to watch the game.

Huge potential for serious changes in this industry. I don't like to throw
such a vague word like "app" around, but that is the future. ESPN will have an
app that will deliver their content in the best way. The closest thing I've
seen to this is the work Major League Baseball is doing on mobile and TV.
They're able to provide the video/audio, but augment it with other datastream.
For sports this makes so much sense.

~~~
mbreese
The best app I've seen for this is HBO Go. It has a huge back catalog of HBO
content and a revolving set of movies. It pairs great with an iPad. But, in
order to get it, you still need a cable or satellite subscription (and HBO).

~~~
tissarah
Absolutely agreed - phenomenal. I also have enjoyed the additional content
they sometimes add for HBO Go users.

Showtime has started doing this thing where you logon to their website _while_
the show is premiering to do/see something but I've never done it because I
DVR Showtime shows. Showtime had a press release that they were going to
launch their own version of HBO Go but I've not see anything.

I'm excited. I think premium channels like this are going to be the change.

------
noahlt
I could imagine a similar and opposite article, "Netflix is broken", written
from the perpective from an older person instead of a younger one: Why do I
need to sign in? Why do I have to choose something to watch – why doesn't it
just let me start watching immediately? Why is it so hard to change channels?
Why do I have to watch things on my small computer screen instead of my large
television screen?

~~~
moheeb
If Netflix had a 'random' button it would be their greatest innovation ever.

~~~
philwelch
Sometimes I end up picking or asking my girlfriend for random numbers just to
shuffle TNG episodes, since that's how I'm used to seeing it.

------
wpietri
Broken for whom?

Beatrix isn't the customer. She's the product being sold. TV is only broken if
the customers (advertisers) start to lose their ability to manipulate a lot of
people into buying things.

Hopefully young Beatrix is an outlier like her parents and she'll never get
hooked. But it could be that, like most adults, she'll get used to sitting
there through the commercials, wasting 8 minutes of her life to get 22 minutes
of entertainment. Plus, of course, whatever she wastes on buying things that
she doesn't need.

~~~
tsotha
>TV is only broken if the customers (advertisers) start to lose their ability
to manipulate a lot of people into buying things.

That's exactly what's happening, though. Most adults _don't_ sit through
commercials any more. The percentage of people who don't get their shows
through the internet and don't skip over commercials with a DVR is something
like 33%. I'd bet my last dollar that demographic skews elderly in a major
way, too.

~~~
wpietri
Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

When visiting DVR-using friends, I see them watching some commercials
(especially, if it's interesting, the first one of a group). And I know that
some people who get their TV over the Internet end up seeing ads (e.g., Hulu,
YouTube, network sites).

So I suspect that a fair number of ads still get watched, but I can't quickly
find any data on how many versus past years.

~~~
tsotha
I can't find the source, but I think it was on HN within the last year or so.

------
_feda_
The problem with tv for the past 50 years or so is that it has encouraged a
passive relationship between culture and its consumers. It kills conversation,
discourages activity, its one-sidedness is bad for people. The internet has
come to the rescue, allowing people young and old to be more active
participants in their own culture. Hopefully this unidirectional mode of
content delivery will die off completely within in the next 50 years.

------
zwieback
I think everyone agrees that commercials are annoying but I don't think TV is
broken at all. After all, most of the content we stream with other means
originated as TV shows or Hollywood movies.

So the real question is, once the current younger generation gets older and
everyone switched off their cable, how will the production of quality content
be financed, other than per-view fees?

When I was a kid in Germany there were three channels, all publicly financed,
to a large extent via a per-household radio/TV fee. TV was only broadcasting
for a few hours a day. The overall quality was very high and commercials were
in a block between shows. I'd love to go back to that model but I doubt the
general public would agree.

~~~
stinkytaco
>So the real question is, once the current younger generation gets older and
everyone switched off their cable, how will the production of quality content
be financed, other than per-view fees?

This is it. The same as music has been doing for years. It's not like there's
not an existing model for this, direct to video movies have existed for a long
time (though they were generally considered "low quality" and thus didn't get
theater time). Netflix is already in the original content business and I think
we'll see more of that. The problem then becomes the translation of content
silos to the Internet. I have a Netflix subscription because it has the most
stuff. I have no intention of getting a subscription to Hulu Plus or the
myriad of content producers individual plans (the future HBO.com, AMC.com,
etc.) Hopefully they can find a way to aggregate pay-per-view into a
consistent online platform.

------
PaulHoule
My nine year old has never been entertained by cable or broadcast TV.

On broadcast TV there is nothing but the e|i junk that is so unwatchable that
the category must have been invented by the author of "four arguments for the
elimination of television".

On cable there's an amazing number of channels, but the only sure things are
Spongebob Squarepants (yuck!) and those live action dramas by Disney about
impossibly rich teenagers who have no discernable problems.

At least kids in Japan get to watch animated shows about cute girls who beat
up the bad guys that are formulaic but have a level of art, writing, and voice
acting that make American TV programming look like the stuff I make with a
cheap camcorder.

------
killnine
It would make me a proud parent to know that my kid doesn't know what a cable
commercial is.

Slightly off topic, but the messages, subliminal messages, and methods of
targeting these commercials do are sickening. I think some of them and their
authors should be tried for criminals.

How is it okay that, for example, jewellery commercials basically attempt to
trick female minds into defining love and levels of love by the metals and
rocks their loved one purchases for them? How is a 5 year old supposed to know
better?

------
evo_9
Advertising needs to be turned upside in the DVR/Digital streaming era.
Imagine if the show you watched ran ad-free, and instead simply had a
'Sponsored By' section on the shows start page (basically a newly designed
'landing page' for each tv show). Then we viewers would simply choose to watch
the ad's when we/if we wanted. And even if we didn't watch an ad, just seeing
a Tide logo on that page would cause some to buy their product ('cool they
sponsor Family Guy...' for example).

The thing that advertisers don't seem to understand is that we consumers are
actually interested in the right ad's. I would choose to watch the new trailer
for Game of Thrones - Season Two for example. Or an add for the new Honda
Element, if I were shopping or just curious what the new model looked like.

All the sponsored by ads could be google-style customized to the viewer, and
the view-rate would likely be higher than it is now where I DVR skip pretty
much all ad's since there is no easy way for me to know what is being shown.

On top of all that, advertisers would be able to know exactly how many people
were actually watching their ads. They could even add in interactive
'like/dislike' voting to further determine the effectiveness of the ad.

I thought of all this 5-6 years ago when DVR's really got popular. It seemed
to me an obvious way to 'evolve' TV, and I'm pretty surprised something like
this hasn't already happend. I guess it's expecting too much from an industry
that is used to just shoveling ads at us from all angles, the idea of 'choice'
is probably pretty scary/imposible for them.

Maybe this is the way Apple intends to crack TV?

------
mikebracco
I'm baffled every time I'm watching broadcast TV and see an ad for something I
would never in a million years purchase...and if the advertiser just had a
couple pieces of info about me would never bother showing me that ad. I guess
this will eventually come with IPTV and ad platforms for broadcast that more
closely resemble targeted advertising online. The sheer inefficiency of
shotgun approach broadcast advertising is crazy to me.

------
rahim
For all the folks that still watch broadcast television (I do): starting in
December 2012, the "CALM Act" takes effect, restricting the use of louder than
normal commercials.

[http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-restricting-
lou...](http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-restricting-loud-
commercials)

------
charlieok
I act just like that four year old now when I'm around a "normal" tv. It had
been long enough that I decided to simply go in assuming that tv must be fixed
by now, and I can pick a show from a menu, netflix/hulu style, and get what I
want immediately.

I went through the motions, and had an entertaining exchange with my sister.
Something like:

Me: "I just selected 'Modern Family'. Why is 'Modern Family' not playing now?
I just see a short description and no 'play' button."

Her: "Don't you remember how tv works? It's not on right now, this is just a
tv guide"

Me: "I guess tv is worthless. I hope nobody paid any money for this"

I wasn't being deliberately obtuse. I was genuinely surprised at how much it
sucked, and I really do not understand why so many people pay so much money
for it.

------
finnw
I'm in the UK.

Until a few years ago I didn't really mind ads - I would happily sit through
them until my show came back.

Then in mid-2009 gocompare.com launched their ad campaign (with Wynne Evans
singing.) They pushed it really hard - it was on nearly every show on every
channel. The song was so irritating that I got into the habit of muting the TV
during the commercial breaks.

If I had been a TV network executive, I would have refused to run those ads.
They are so awful that they encourage viewers to avoid ads, and I'll bet it
has decreased revenue from other advertisers.

Example:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-9QFvhQWo&noredirect=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-9QFvhQWo&noredirect=1)

------
zerostar07
Broken as if the internet has no commercials? TV exists cause it's simple:
streams of stories at the press of a button. No hours of effort to find good
content among the trash. I don't think the commercials are the issue.

~~~
tomjen3
It doesn't take hours to find stuff on line that is worth watching.

Just use Google:
[http://www.google.dk/search?aq=f&ix=hca&sourceid=chr...](http://www.google.dk/search?aq=f&ix=hca&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=hurt+locker+torrent)

Or some similar search engine.

~~~
randomdata
It really does take hours to find something worth watching if you don't
already know what you want to watch.

I do not watch much TV to begin with, but when I do, I will load up Netflix
and see if anything catches my eye. Most times I'll spend 30 minutes looking
for something and then simply give up and move on to something more
interesting. Having access to even more content just makes the problem worse,
not better.

Sometimes I'll catch wind of good programming recommendations from others, but
those sources are easily exhausted. The internet does a much better job. I can
just turn up here and I'll probably find at least 50% of the links interesting
at any given time. TV needs something like that.

~~~
cwe
> TV needs something like that.

Seriously. Someone make a hacknews/reddit-style discovery system for TV.
Channels become subreddits. If you finish item one, item two starts
automatically.

------
colonel_panic
Nobody's mentioned tiling? And then also tiling. And then tiling and more
tiling, and then the good part is coming up and--tiling. And here's the big
play and it looks like they might just make a touchdow--tiling.

I miss analog.

------
bicknergseng
TV might be broken, but the inability of a child to focus on something for
more than a few minutes at a time isn't the best evidence. It definitely
brings up some interesting things to think about, though.

First, while the attention span of adults is normally quite a bit better than
that of kids, the digital age is eroding our ability to focus on one thing
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312119/Faceb...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312119/Facebook-
internet-wire-brain-shorten-attention-span.html). While this may be a
temporary trend as we adapt to the information overload the internet can
provide, I think it's fairly safe to say that people 10 years from now will be
far less likely to sit patiently watching TV than people 20 years ago.

The most obvious implication from this may be that commercial advertising,
rather than TV in general, is going to need to adapt. I imagine part of the
reason why people under 30 are cutting the cable in increasing numbers is
because they aren't willing to sit through loud, irrelevant commercials in
order to watch something they don't _actually_ want to watch. The tolerance of
the consumer for TV style advertising is shrinking proportionally to the
consumer's attention span. This should be good for subscription services like
Netflix, and would be good for HBO/Showtime if they didn't for customers to
pay for cable/sat in addition to their services.

~~~
justincormack
Do not cite the Daily Mail. It is not a news source or source of information
about science.

------
somedayme
I paid for Directivo for 10+ years, long before HDTV. $100+/month.

Now, I have a Samsung 55" LED with a beautiful picture that I bought online
for cheap. I plugged an older Macbook Pro into it via hdmi. Couch Potato, Sick
Beard, $7/month lifetime unlimited usenet account from a thanksgiving special,
mplayer extended to play it all. I haven't seen a commercial in years. As the
author says, if it isn't online, I don't watch it.

TV isn't broken, cable companies are.

------
mscrivo
It's unfortunate that windows media center hasn't caught on in a bigger way. I
use it on my casual home theater and my larger more serious home theater. I
have a channel master 4221 antenna that feeds into 2 HD Homerun tuners and
clearQAM feeding into a couple more. This gives me the ability to record/watch
4 channels at once from any networked media center in the house. Media center
has a fantastic interface that aggregates all the channels available across
all tuners and hides the complexity. It allows you to easily record series and
find shows across any of the tuners, all while looking beautiful. In addition
to the great tv viewing experience, there is the wonderful media browser addon
that beautifully indexes your digital movie collection and plugins like
showanalyzer to automatically skip commercials in recordings. With TMT 5, I
get a blu-ray player built right into media center too.

I honestly could not imagine a better setup. The only issue is that the
initial setup is way too hard and time consuming. But the result can't be beat
right now.

~~~
verisimilitude
That channel master 4221 is an AWESOME antenna. I didn't have a car when I
bought mine, so I had to walk with it for 2 miles to my apartment. I set it up
in the closet (which is completely not recommended... multipath, etc., etc.)
and still got unreal picture quality on my computer.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
And this is why this form of media is losing. Because it's worse, and any
4-year old will notice. Especially a 4-year –old. More and louder commercial
won't fix the problem, it will just keep the next generation even further
away. Like black-and-white silent films, it lacks basic features that the new
generation is taking for granted, around user control, choice and
interactivity.

------
ssharp
Very interesting anecdotes, but I don't see how it shows that TV is "broken",
other than OP's daughter thinking it was broken when first exposed to
commercials. Additionally, Hulu / Hulu+ and streaming shows directly from a
network's exposes you to as many commercial breaks (albeit shorter) as
watching a show on cable.

~~~
VikingCoder
Tomorrow, Hacker News will be discussing a story about a 14 year old boy who
discovered that some rats prefer raspberries.

If you'd like to discuss something else, try using a different web site, that
will also be discussing one and only one story.

TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want
to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch
something you missed.

People buy devices to mask these problems, but they really don't solve them.

Hulu is slightly less broken. Netflix Instant Watch is even LESS broken.

~~~
mikeryan
_TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want
to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch
something you missed._

Not sure your market or cable company. But in Berkeley (and SF) with Comcast
under on-demand I have a section called "TV Shows", the "All Shows" section
lists about 300 TV shows.Each with about 8-20 episodes. All On-Demand all with
rewind, pause etc. The exception is it won't let me FF through the limited ads
embedded in the streams.

Assume this was all current content. How much would you pay for this service?
With Ads? Without? Because its not anywhere near the $10 price you're paying
now for Netflix or Hulu.

~~~
VikingCoder
I have money, and I want to watch Season 2, Episode 2 of the West Wing, which
my friend just told me is worth watching.

I cannot give them my money, to watch it. I could wait a couple days for
Netflix to mail me the DVD, but by then the impulse might pass.

TV is broken.

~~~
ChrisLTD
It's not ideal that you have to use a mishmash of services to get what you
want when you want it. But there are multiple delivery mechanisms for a lot of
popular content.

For instance, you could watch the West Wing Season 2 on iTunes:
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-west-wing-
season-2/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-west-wing-
season-2/id203756198) Or Amazon Instant Video:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0047N63NE/ref=tmm_aiv_titl...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0047N63NE/ref=tmm_aiv_title_1)

~~~
VikingCoder
...neat. Substitute another movie or show that you'd like to watch but can't.

------
jrockway
Yes it is. The problem with TV is that advertisers have a lot more money than
you do, so advertisers get to dictate how TV works.

I'm looking forward to a world where people produce content and I give them
money to watch it. It works for the porn industry, so why not everything else?
(Probably the same reason why our cell phones don't treat voice and data as
the bits they are. There is more money to be made for the middlemen by
offering "value add" instead of a "dumb pipe". And there's one thing middlemen
do well: keeping themselves alive at the expense of everyone else.)

In the mean time, I'll just pirate everything. That cuts out the middleman!

------
FredFredrickson
So what happens when a kid who is used to TV goes to watch Netflix and the
stream gets interrupted (like we all know it would on a typical hotel wi-fi
network). If you've watched videos online before, you know it's just
buffering, but the tv-oriented kid would do the same thing as this guy's kid
did: ask if it's broken, or why we stopped it.

I'm not saying that there are no problems with the way TV is presented, but to
raise a child in a relatively TV-less environment, marvel at their confusion
over how it works, and then come to the conclusion that TV is broken... that
doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me.

~~~
faboo
My 5 year old had a much easier time understanding that Netflix needs to
buffer or downgrade sometimes than why there are advertisements on television.

I think that's because Netflix buffering has an explanation that directly
relates to the activity itself, whereas the explanation for advertisements is
a lot more abstract.

------
pash
In the last week or so, it's become clear that Google is planning to offer
some sort of IPTV service over its fiber network in Kansas City when it comes
online later this year. [0] It will be interesting to see how disruptive their
offering will be. Even just selling programming a la carte would be a huge
improvement over what the cable companies offer, but I have a feeling Google
will (eventually) do more than just that.

0\. [http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/22/3444862/google-
giving-s...](http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/22/3444862/google-giving-
stronger-signal.html)

------
yason
This sounds stupid but I always thought there weren't commercials for channels
that you actually pay for? That the advertisements were to compensate for
channels that didn't cost anything?

I haven't really watched tv since the mid 90's and never in the USA so I might
miss something obvious here. But where I lived, regular channels were
broadcast nationally over the air and they had commercials. I always thought
the popularity of cable/satellite subscription was based on you getting rid of
the commercials, not _paying for_ seeing more commercials on more channels?

~~~
sedev
Unfortunately, that's incorrect. The cable channels, as mentioned upthread,
early on promised "since we can restrict access, unlike broadcast, we can just
charge people and we won't show ads." That's not true in 2012. It is
extremely, extremely rare to find television without frequent and intrusive
advertising. HBO has less toxic advertising practices and better content,
which is why you see them mentioned so often in this context.

Basically, the main television networks are all double-dipping (cf Marco
Arment: [http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/double-dipping-ads-in-
ipad-m...](http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/double-dipping-ads-in-ipad-
magazines) ).

------
jconley
My 3 yr old kids had exactly the same reaction to a nearly identical scenario.
Though, we subscribed to cable TV after my father in law threatened to not
come visit any more if he couldn't watch his live sports with the clicker...

Publishers/networks are broken. The industry needs something to happen to it
like Steam, then Facebook, and finally Apple did to video game publishers.
Take the (old) middle men out of the loop. Let content producers "sell"
directly to consumers.

------
petermcd
Here is how we are trying to fix TV with HTML5 video support, so any video web
site can get on TVs: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpBZ1xdcC1Q>

The folks at PandoDaily ran a nice article about us, too:

[http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/23/nthcode-wants-to-bring-
the-...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/23/nthcode-wants-to-bring-the-internet-
to-everything-plugged-into-your-tv/)

------
ericng
Some people have mentioned the cable boxes are the issues but no one has
mentioned Scientific Atlanta by name. If I'm not mistaken they have been
producing horrible boxes for multiple carriers for years!

As a Cablevision/Optonline subscriber, I find that using their iOS app is way
ahead of using the actual cable box interface.

Is it IR that just makes the interface slow or is there some other hardware
constraint that?

~~~
jsz0
Most cable set tops have dedicated decryption, video/audio decoding chips so
the main CPU available for running the UI is very weak by design. Cisco &
Motorola make these set tops pretty much by spec of what the big cable
providers want. They don't want a general purpose platform and truly just
don't understand why they might want a better user interface. Only in the last
year or so have these set tops started to get faster but they are still gimped
by the guide software the cable providers use. They usually opt for
consistency over quality. The same guide that runs on a 2012 set top needs to
work on a 1997 set top.

------
jwr
I had exactly the same problem with my daughter (now 3 years old). She grew up
playing with an iPhone and an iPad. The TV was broken in two ways:

1\. Touching the screen (and swiping) didn't do anything.

2\. The concept of having to _wait_ until a specific time to see a show was
completely alien.

Thank heavens we at least don't have commercial breaks in kids programs
(Poland).

------
chemist
Older people might think Netflix is broken, but the fact is they'll be dead
soon and with them goes their opinion that the old way of television was
better. That being said, most of us probably know both sides of the argument
pretty well, and I've got to say that I like the newer, streaming versions of
television better.

------
doki_pen
Thanks for posting this, and thanks everyone for upvoting it. It's even better
the 4th time it's made it to #1 on hacker news. I gained some new insight into
how TV sucks and the Internet is awesome.

------
sfseth
i can completely relate. it is a legit challenge to describe advertising-
funded media. there was once a concept of an editorial firewall, which seems
cute in an antique sense of the word, possibly believable circa 1971.
advertising, for one reason or another, seems to have the effect of shaping
whatever it funds towards a decreased intellectual stimulus, ie lower
curiosity. there's something to think about with respect to Super Bowl ads
being the most valuable on TV.

------
ilaksh
TV is outdated, but so are a lot of more important things:
cars/transportation, government, "economics", agriculture, manufacturing,
infrastructure, humans, natural language.

~~~
evincarofautumn
You’re a human, typing in a natural language, on a computer powered by the
electrical infrastructure provided by his government. That computer only
exists because of the manufacturing capabilities we gained during the
industrial revolution 200 years ago, which, in addition to being the source of
the modern economy, could not have happened if it weren’t for the rise of
totalitarian agriculturalism 10,000 years ago. That 10,000 years is a pittance
compared to the millions of years of human history spent focused more on
hunting, gathering, and herding than on cultivating crops. The origin of
language in humans is hazy, but we’ve only been around in our various forms
for a few million out of the billions of years of Earth’s history.

How could all of these _brand new_ things possibly be outdated? ;)

~~~
ilaksh
When is the last time you upgraded your operating system, bought a new
computer, or bought a new car?

The pace of technological evolution is exponential, not linear.
<http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns>

We have to operate on a day-to-day basis, not a cosmological one. We should
apply current scientific knowledge on a large scale immediately.

* Cars/transportation -- Where Robot Cars (Robocars) Can Really Take Us <http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/>

* natural language -- Problems with natural language for requirements specification [http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ifs/Books/SE9/Web/Requiremen...](http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ifs/Books/SE9/Web/Requirements/NL-problems.html)

* government -- Politicians Are Not Trained To Solve Problems <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFvoh2vsQSI> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_I9-MJKQ4c&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_I9-MJKQ4c&feature=related)

* economics -- ARE ECONOMICS A SCIENCE OF TRUTH OR AN IDEOLOGY OF POWER? <http://www.futuremagazine.net/economicsiencie.html>

* agriculture -- Urban Farming: Hydroponics in the City <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqcBCcSLDlo>

* manufacturing -- Hod Lipson on Programmable Matter: Shape of Things to Come <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmPLeQLdfPA>

* humans -- not really quite outdated yet, but soon. Jeopardy! IBM Watson Day 2 (Feb 15, 2011) Part 2/2 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QYchgv5dMM&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QYchgv5dMM&feature=related)

* infrastructure -- Evacuated Tube Transport <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dK_yxaKvk>

~~~
evincarofautumn
Well, thanks for this. But you do realise I was just playing.

------
nessus42
I have a TiVo and TV works just fine for me.

(It's hard to fathom now, however, how I ever coped with TV before getting a
TiVo, which I've had for more than a decade now.)

------
franze
once upon a time i visited my father's house. when he started watching TV my 3
year old ran to the televisionscreen, tried to swipe it, pushed on some things
on the screen, even did a two arm multi arm gesture to minimize the current
screen - nothing happened - he turned away quite bored, i was very proud.

------
niels_olson
My favorite experience is when the iPad runs out of batteries (blessedly more
frequently now) and the kids realize they have nothing to do but read.

Throw away your TV? So 2006. You want to take care of your kids? Cancel your
streaming video accounts.

I like Shiela Ash's question about cigarettes: "Why would you pay for
something that goes up in smoke?!"

Modified for streaming: "Why would you pay to rot your kids' brains?!"

------
vacri
_I then do what I should have simply done in the first place. I hook up the
iPad to the free hotel wifi and hand it to her. She fires up the Netflix app,
chooses a show, and she is happy._

No. You shouldn't have. Thanks for making the free hotel wifi choked for
everyone by pulling down a long-term video. What you should have done was
bring along some videos of your own.

------
joejohnson
I'm sure most of that didn't happen but it's a cute story to drive a tired
point.

------
jpdoctor
Folks do not want to pay the amount commercial free TV would cost. Full stop.

If the "investment money" ever stops supporting youtube/hulu/(insert
profitless service here), then goodbye web substitute.

Even The Daily Show has gone into full annoyance mode lately.

~~~
rhizome
Folks are already paying the amount that commercial-free TV would cost, but
the money is eaten up by ESPN's multi-channel presence in basic-cable
packages. Yes, your cable dollars subsidize ESPN.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _Folks are already paying the amount that commercial-free TV would cost_

Not even close. Take the entire amount of advertising $$ spent on TV ($100B+)
and divide by the folks watching. That is the money that people would have to
shell out one way or another.

~~~
hythloday
Eh, do you have a citation for it being $100B or more a year? I can only find
figures for about $60B:

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-07/tech/30048336...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-07/tech/30048336_1_ad-
spending-online-advertising-ad-business)

(The UK's is about $2.5B, despite it having around 20% of the US's population.
Quite a stark difference.)

~~~
brigade
Another question is what percentage of that $60B actually funds TV content and
how much is spent on producing ads and other advertising-specific overhead
that would presumably vanish if we payed for completely ad-free TV.

~~~
rhizome
Here's an article that describes a $77.5B TV advertising market in 2008:

[http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/can-
google-c...](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/can-google-crack-
tv-ad-market-96740)

Here we see a 750MM subscriber base in the US:

[http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/19/internet-and-telco-tv-eat-
away...](http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/19/internet-and-telco-tv-eat-away-at-
cable-tv-market-share/)

So, that's what, ~$100 per subscriber...PER YEAR, to compensate for zero
commercials? I hope my math is wrong!

~~~
hythloday
I have a feeling I'm being terrifically dim, but how can there be a 750
million subscriber base in the US?

~~~
rhizome
That is a good point!

Old numbers of ~160MM households as below, with 58% subscribing to basic
cable[1], gives us ~93MM

77.5B / 93MM = $833/yr, or $70/mo.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States)

------
TechNewb
Bloomberg offers a great iPad app, where you can live stream, or watch
episodes on demand. The future of channels are apps.

I've never personally ordered cable, and grew up with out it as well.

------
rogerclark
this story seems a bit manufactured. i get that the kid makes the whole thing
more endearing and maybe more poignant, but the writing seems inauthentic and
intentionally crafted to drive home the obvious point (a point that every
tech-savvy person in our modern world already agrees with)

------
caycep
they're only just now realizing this?

------
silentific
Such a good post. Tv is broken.

------
huggyface
This is akin to saying that the internet is broken because some videos are
prefaced by a commercial. Or HN is broken because some of the front-page are
hiring ads for YC companies.

I use a PVR for all of my "TV" needs (I have two large wall-mounted screens.
They are great entertainment devices. I only mention that for consistency with
those proudly informing that they only old some small CRT in the corner
somewhere). When I get around to watching it has all of the episodes of the
shows I care about. Many of them come from ShowTime, HBO, PBS or the Movie
Network, having no commercials. Of course I explicitly pay for those channels
individually, well outside of PBS.

Other channels have a different business model, but strangely neither my
children, my wife or I have any mental issue with it -- it's just the way it
is. Nor do I have an issue when a play has an intermission, even though really
I'd just like them to keep playing through.

In some ways this reminds me a bit of this submission from the other day -
[http://ihnatko.com/2012/02/20/heavy-hangs-the-bandwidth-
that...](http://ihnatko.com/2012/02/20/heavy-hangs-the-bandwidth-that-
torrents-the-crown/)

~~~
rcthompson
The article is saying that for a child raised (mostly) on commercial-free
media (Netflix), advertisements are so intrusive and annoying that the child
rejects watching TV outright because of the commercials.

I wonder if this is the kind of stuff that keeps advertising executives up at
night. What would happen if everyone under the age of 20 thought like this
(assuming that ad-free media sources still exist)?

~~~
huggyface
The title "TV" refers to a physical medium. If it meant "the commercial-
supported major networks", then perhaps it should have said that.

Nonetheless, it is understood that children notice change. If you give your
child maple syrup when they're accustomed to Aunt Jemima, they will ask you
what it is. They will probably ask for their Aunt Jemima back. Children are
not savants supplying higher information (and I say that as a very proud
parent of four of them): They are creatures of routine and habit. A day later
they would happily enjoy maple syrup, rejecting their old standby.

There just isn't anything profound or particularly insightful about that
observation. It doesn't merit the "TV is broken" bit.

~~~
roc
> _"Nonetheless, it is understood that children notice change."_

My own niece certainly notices that records are different than music from my
Boxee. But records don't really bother her. She thinks they're weird because
they're so big, and you have to find them and put them on the player and be
careful with the needle.

But she happily drags out the player, shuffles through the handful of records
I have and listens to them from time to time.

Yet she had a very similar reaction to what's described in the article, when
she (briefly) saw Shrek on Cable. Her grandmother (the only one in her family
who watches broadcast anymore) flipped through the channels and passed Shrek,
whereupon my niece convinced her that they should watch it. After the first
commercial break she asked if we could just watch it on the Boxee.

So it's not "child notices change". Not entirely. It's mostly "child dismisses
interstitial advertising entirely".

------
recoiledsnake
Cable TV started out with the premise that it won't have ads and slowly it
started adding them. Hulu already has ads.

I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix started ads soon, since they seem to
getting slowly crushed with the high cost of licensing content.

~~~
seanp2k2
...and as ads increase, so does piracy.

People will pay for no ads, but they won't pay for ads for very long,
especially my generation.

------
cenuij
Commercial television is a horrible user experience. Public service
broadcasting in the UK is slightly less horrible. It's quality is declining as
the BBC has tried to spread itself across a multitude of markets at the same
time as trying to keep the license fee under control.

The bias of the BBC has always been in dispute. The right wing think the BBC
is left leaning (because by their simple ratonale anything state funded is).
The left wing want to keep the BBC out of the hands of the Scots, Welsh and
Irish. The Scots, Welsh and Irish see the BBC as a propaganda machine for
Westminster.

However, regardless of it's flaws, the BBC is probably the premier broadcaster
of quality television on the planet; though I fear too many changes from
idealogical government intervention will change this for the worse.

------
Craiggybear
Perhaps a better title would be "advertising on TV is broken".

No one pays any attention to it anymore. And most people I know, like me,
don't even have broadcast TV. Or cable.

I watch shows, yes, on DVD -- and largely on my own terms. No adverts.

~~~
tomjen3
No it is tv that is broken. I have some channels that don't have ads at all
(not even between shows) but I don't watch them, because you have to watch at
a particular time, can't really pause them and the movies are years old.

~~~
Craiggybear
"and the movies are years old."

... and, that's bad? Personally, most of the movies I might want to watch are
certainly in black-and-white anyhow.

~~~
tomjen3
Not everybody is a hipster :)

I actually like the action movies where you know that the guy gets the pretty
girl once he is done blowing things up. And recently the explosions have
become more awesome, so I prefer the never movies.

You keep Casablanca, if you want.

~~~
awj
> I actually like the action movies where you know that the guy gets the
> pretty girl once he is done blowing things up.

Die Hard is "years old" (24 of them, actually) and is an awesome movie in this
genre. In fact I am going to preemptively declare you to be an action movie
hipster if you like them but not Die Hard.

Being old doesn't make a movie bad. Being bad makes a movie bad. Sometimes
that's because the times have changed and the plots are hard to relate to, but
usually it's got nothing to do with the age.

~~~
tomjen3
It is okay, but the CGI explosions aren't as good as in the new movies (they
properly wasn't even CGI then).

~~~
billforsternz
Absolutely true. For example Ronin (1998) has much more awesome special
effects than the average 201x CGI infested equivalent. I was surprised by the
perceptiveness of a youngster who pointed this syndrome out to me, he
recognises the superiority of movies half a generation older than the movies
made for his generation.

