Buzz Out Loud Lounge forum: Cutting the cord: a view from outside the bubble

I've never seriously considered cutting that 'cable-cord', perhaps because I am in that older age band. But I have seen these apparent market trends, visions, and analysis' for some years now where the "Family TV" is dead or dying in favor of laptop or PC usage for every family members' independent needs, and I have never been wholly convinced it would happen.

I've seen the trend amongst younger people who live away from the family home to forgo land-line telephones, preferring mobile/cellnet access, and may be that will continue. Us older folks who have both, land-line and cell phone, will become the minority as time goes on. But telephone and TV are different things.

As you say, as younger people settle down and have children, the "family room" becomes more important, if not essential, and I can see that the TV as the focal point will continue.

What may change is the TV itself. It is already becoming more advanced in what it does whilst at the same time, becoming slimmer and less of a physical presence in the corner of the room. It is now a wall-hanging in many homes, like an animated painting. But it will still be the one-stop place for our news and entertainment.

Mark

In Australia to get around a few companies dominating the market and its direction we have a Government that is putting in Fibre to the home. This means that the pipes for content will be there for every home.
All Internet Service Providers pay a fee to access those pipes to pay the taxpayers back.
This means that all service providers have equal access to the same market. This gives a level playing field for competition. This also means that News Limited Foxtel does not dominate this area or the provision of television to the home.

is what should be happening in the States. This would solve the net neutrality issue. It also gives the same access provisions in the country as phone gets.

I think the ease of use argument actually favours a laptop and Internet. Isn't it easier to just open a web page, than to mess around setting up a DVR box? Additionally if you're on the laptop much of the day anyway.. you're an alt-tab away from Facebook and email.
I think the only reason to get a DVR and TV is to provide for ones family. So maybe it will go down that way as people grow up. But then what if one instead decided to buy laptops for everyone in their family? Maybe that'll make more sense this decade.

I've found that the whole "watching together" scenario can be a bit overrated in terms of being a shared social experience. Unless you're having tons of conversation while watching --which is pretty annoying for those who want to actually follow dialogue-- it's still a solitary experience in that sure, you're actually in close proximity, but you're not really interacting much.

Yes, I know that I'm totally ignoring "cuddling" for lovers, but if I want to watch a movie at home, I don't want to invite friends over to watch it with me. It's a socializing killer. Darkening the room while everyone pipes down to watch a movie? That's hardly a house party. Now, a football game? That's another story, as there's no need for quiet during those telecasts.

Plus, there's the matter of personal tastes in what people want to watch. I'll watch a couple of shows with my wife because I know she likes them, but there's only so much "Project Runway" I can handle. She records every Ellen show, too, and while I do find Ellen funny, I just don't like the daytime talk show genre. And let's face it, she doesn't want to sit through every Star Trek Next Gen rerun I want to watch, or Mets baseball (admittedly not much of that going on anymore since they stink). And if I let my wife rule the Netflix queue for awhile, I'm in for a ton of chick flicks that I fall asleep watching.

So, in my view the emphasis on entertainment viewing as a cohesive factor in families is getting more overrated by the day. We should strive to have more interpersonal relationship time OUTSIDE of entertainment options, like, say the dinner table, or family outings.

I refrain from going to movies now because by and large people are increasingly rude and think nothing of chatting all the way through the flicks, or texting --or even taking calls on the phone, not to mention young moms who bring babies to the theater and idiots who like to kick seats from behind. It's a shame, too, because there's something to be said for the "big screen" experience vs. someone's flat panel TV, but that's just the way it is now. So, if that's a communal experience, I'll pass it to the communists.

And again, I'm not really getting the "invite people over for a movie" thing unless everyone's on an outing together somewhere or something or someone just happens to have a pre-release copy of a movie (not that that ever happens). When I'm with friends, I want to have conversation and laughs, not the quietude that politeness requires of a movie viewing. But, to each his own.

But bad behavior --in my area theaters-- is becoming more the norm than the exception. And when I see groups of people at theaters together, it's almost universally teens and slightly older than teen aged people. I never see groups of 30ish, 40ish and older people going to movies in groups. That's my experience.

And of course couples are going to go to movies together. I'm not characterizing couples in the communal sense, though. I'm talking about a group as in four or more people.

At the risk of sounding contradictory, I do have to say that while some movies benefit from the large screen experience, I am generally NOT impressed with the picture quality at theaters. And, I've also noticed that on occasion the surround mix has far too much surround vs. center dialog, which is annoying. I do agree with you that a finely tuned audio and video system brings out the best in movies, particularly with Blu-Ray. I had my plasma panel calibrated by an ISFTV dude a few years ago and it's still a phenomenal picture. And while I'm an audio engineer by trade, I live in an environment not conducive to listening at any volume I want, so cranking up the surround sound has to be tempered most of the time.

I'm in no way saying there's anything wrong or weird about people getting together to watch movies. I personally just don't think it's a very "social" thing to do, given that the movie requires one to pay complete attention to both audio and video. So, that puts the big clampdown on what I consider to be socializing, like talking and interacting with friends. Again, that's just me. I'll cop to being a loner in that regard.

I won't subscribe to cable. The compression artifacts, the sub par sound quality, the constant stretching and cropping of aspect ratios make watching movies on cable a less than stellar experience (and an expensive one at that).

But again, to regular people the picture looks just fine I guess. And everything they want is there in one place. The mainstream audience will choose the path of least resistance for entertainment and, for better or worse, that still happens to be cable TV.