My new rule for modern TVs is don't have a TV at all. The social role of having a TV is rapidly dwindling. First off, the number of movies and TV shows that merit even being watched is dwindling. Secondly, even if you find something worth watching, the odds that anybody else will want to watch it is small; everybody has been atomized by recommendation algorithms, everybody gets shown a different set of ads and media, there's no longer and shared culture when it comes to media. It used to be that everybody went home and watched NBC or one of the two other channels, all saw the same ads for the same movies and shows, so if you mentioned one the next day everybody knew what you were talking about. This is no longer true, if you try to bring up some Netflix show you heard of last night, probaby nobody else has heard of it. Now let's say you actually talk somebody into watching something with you despite that... What are the odds that both they and you get through the show or movie without reaching for their phone? Almost zero, in my experience.
It's done. The cultural significance of TV is toast. Our culture is too atomized, too personalized for shared experiences. Large TVs, centerpiece of the living room, are becoming an anachronism that date people as being from a previous era when television was still a shared cultural experience.
I like rewatching old TV shows and films, streamed from my Jellyfin server.
For me, my rule is to get a Google TV, because I can change out the launcher to Flauncher. At least that way I don't see any ads. Google may well still be tracking me, but they do all over the web and I have an Android phone so they've already got plenty of data on me. I just avoid their ads so that it minimises the profitability of that data.
I use Flauncher too. I also use Netguard from F-Droid and block everything except streaming apps and their dependencies. I only unblock Google when a steaming app requires an update. I'm slowly dropping subscriptions and moving to Jellyfin though too.
I agree. My Google TV with Projectivity Launcher shows zero launcher ads unlike my Apple TV. As a bonus, it lets me install SmartTube and use DeArrow and Sponsor Block.
I just wish I could get something similar as a native iOS app. Although I can use Safari extensions, the Safari YouTube experience on iOS is terrible.
I love Projectivity Launcher on my Google Streamer, but I can't figure out how to really replace the built-in launcher. Sometimes the device falls back to the default launcher until I press the "home" button on my remote.
I agree that the days when “everyone” watched the same show are done. But if you can find a small group to watch a show with (better in person), then there are better shows available for that experience these last several years, even if the average quality has gone down.
What are some of your favorite shared experiences to replace tv?
That's a popular and socially safe point of view, but it's completely wrong. Artistic merit, like truth and beauty, is an objective quality completely orthogonal to cultural differences or personal opinion. To illustrate this orthogonality, I invite you to realize there exists art which has great merit and yet which you personally do not like. You should be able to do this, if you can't manage I can provide my own examples for you. The existence of such art proves that personal preferences don't weigh on the recognition of artistic merit.
Except... art and beauty (idk about truth) are subjective. You can attribute grades and points to art or TV shows, but whether any one person likes it is entirely subjective.
But of course, you mention "merit", which if my English is correct is "the amount of work / effort / skill involved". But I personally do not like the duct taped banana, and the work / effort / skill involved is minimal - and yet it's considered art, and people go out of their way to view it.
The Mona Lisa is "fine" (in my opinion), took skill to make, but it wasn't considered particularly exceptional in the works of Da Vinci - until it got stolen. It has objective "artistic merit", its beauty is subjective, but its financial and cultural value exploded through the roof due to its story.
How interesting! These great minds you speak of, are they objectively great, or only subjectively? If they are only subjectively great, then why should a lazy appeal to them sway me? And if they are objectively great minds, then how does that not acknowledge my premise?
I'm teasing you, I do acknowledged that there are great minds, past and present, who disagree with me. And I trust you can acknowledge the same, there is no shortage of great minds who believed and argued that objective truth, beauty and merit really do exist. The question I have for you or anybody who disagrees is this: can you acknowledge the existence of media you don't like one bit but nonetheless acknowledge as having merit which transcends your own personal opinions? I can easily, I can't stand Shakespeare's Othello, and I simultaneously acknowledge it as possessing a great deal of objective artistic merit. For me, there is no contradiction here because merit is not a function of personal opinion.
Using flowery language does not automatically make you correct, and even if on the hard facts you are correct, it comes across as condescending and arrogant.
What you're saying, "There are shows on TV worth watching and the art form is still evolving, and one person not liking it doesn't mean that it is bad" would have come across much more cleanly if you had stated it plainly.
> What you're saying, "There are shows on TV worth watching and the art form is still evolving, and one person not liking it doesn't mean that it is bad"
That's not even remotely what I'm saying!
I would instead say that media is only "evolving" insofar as it is being optimized by media corporations for reliable fiscal return. No risks allowed, everything needs to be cookie cutter, no risks, barely any new IPs even, the industry just wants to get committees of nepo hire "writers" to remix shit they can be reasonably confident will find reliable audiences, and that means pandering to viewers instead of challenging them. Every decision gets run through test audiences, opinion polls, and legions of executives and their consultants. Art cannot be created in such an industry environment. All they can make is base slop.
That I acknowledge there are great minds on both sides of the debate means that I wouldn't treat it as a hard fact when talking about it in an online forum, which was the explicit point of my response.
If you can recognize the greatness of somebody you disagree with, then you should also be able to recognize merit in media you don't personally like. And if merit can be thus decoupled from personal opinion, that affirms my point that objective merit really does exist.
It's done. The cultural significance of TV is toast. Our culture is too atomized, too personalized for shared experiences. Large TVs, centerpiece of the living room, are becoming an anachronism that date people as being from a previous era when television was still a shared cultural experience.