Options
Normal TV or downloads/streaming?
Danny_Girl
Posts: 2,763 Forum Member
✭✭✭
Have just realised that I now watch very little normal TV these days bar the news and the odd series such as Masterchef and Broadchurch. We watch a lot of documentaries and also have worked through series such as Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones which are available on Netflix and SkyPlus On Demand via our smart tv.
Am I alone in this and is it the beginning of the end for normal tv?
Am I alone in this and is it the beginning of the end for normal tv?
0
Comments
Today, I can say for myself, as far as I'm concerned Live TV is not an option in my house.
1) The irritating adverts. Fast forward. Bye bye.
2) Convenience.
A majority of what I watch is Netflix. A majority of television is OnDemand services. I see a model in perhaps 20 years where all television (apart from live events) are available OnDemand exclusively. And even then live streaming may be popular. Television as it is now is an antiquated and outdated system.
Luckily we can be forward thinking enough to adopt these practices as commonplace before the masses follow suit and rampant and unskippable advertising becomes part and parcel of streaming services. God I shall rue the inevitable day.
I worked in what was called an innovations centre. The role was to present what the possible future could be and look for products and solutions for our customer to reach their target customers. This is going back to the year 2000 it was common place then to see TV moving towards one in which users basically created their own channel from TV content.
With services like Youtube, netflix, sky on demand service that is basically what you are doing. I think the shocking aspect is really how long it has taken to get this far. At the time we believed it would only take 5 years maybe 10 at the most. Yet here we are 15 years on and it is still really in its early days.
When people say technology changes fast it does but for it to have any large social change to the way we operate it does take a lot longer then you think. People are quite slow to change habits I think it maybe another 15 years before we get close to breaking the hold on the model of TV watching when the majority move away form the current channel based TV programming guides.
Only the news if something is happening at that specific moment,everything else is streamed or downloaded.
Product placement?
In fact our outdoor aerial really does need replacing as the picture breaks up regularly.
But since we got a NowTV box, which works over wifi, we find we watch most stuff we want on the iplayers, so have not bothered replacing the aerial yet.
I'm all about the music.
Internet is not yet reliable enough. Also, for 1080p my internet speed is not fast enough for proper use.
But also, in recent times sites such as YouTube are putting adverts all over stuff, and on some U can't skip them.....my satellite box can skip commercials with one button on over air broadcast.
http://www.thinkbox.tv/98.5-of-tv-was-watched-on-a-tv-set-in-2013
Total average daily TV viewing in the UK during 2013 was 3 hours, 55 minutes, 30 seconds a day per person. This comprised:
3 hours, 52 minutes a day of linear TV on a TV set. Excellent weather in 2013, which always affects TV viewing, and the fact that there were no significant sporting events have contributed to this being 9 minutes a day less than 2012. However the overall trend for viewing remains strong with the average viewer watching 12 minutes more TV a day in 2013 than ten years ago and (source: Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board [BARB] and UK Broadcaster data). The World Cup in 2014 is likely to boost linear TV viewing.
3 minutes, 30 seconds a day via devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops (or just over 3 half-hour TV shows a month). This is mostly on-demand but some live streams (source: figures supplied by UK broadcasters to Thinkbox).
For any UK specific stuff I tend to watch shows I've recorded on Sky+ at a more convenient time, which is often 1-2 hours after it's shown 'live'.
Other than live sports/news and Big Brother so I can join the discussion on the forum here.
On BBC channels I will watch stuff "live" because other than their own promotions they don't show adverts.
On commercial channels I tend to record and then watch so I can FFWD through the adverts,
I do also watch bits and pieces on demand either because I'm bored and can't find anything to watch, or to catch up on stuff I could either not schedule to record, or totally forgot it was on.
When I want to watch something I just look on my PVR to see what's sat on the disk waiting for me.
its normally repeated within the week then couple of months later turns up somewhere else
I like to watch live TV at 9pm most evenings, but if there is something on the BBC and something on ITV - for instance Silent Witness and Broadchurch last night, I record Broadchurch so I can zap through the adverts.
Edited to say, I do have a Kindle Fire and apparently I can download a lot of stuff via that, but I never have as I am a bit of a technophobe.
It isn't "shocking" at all, it is simply the time it has taken for technology to become affordable to such services to be commonplace. Even 10 years ago the vast majority of people either didn't have broadband or still only had dial-up access.
The company i work for used to belong to AT&T and the R&D department, Bell Labs, were predicting FTTH, fibre to the home, over 20 years ago and that still hasn't happened on a widescale basis.
I think there will always be a requirement for linear TV services however the delivery medium will change to a fully IP-based service over copper and fibre rather than over the air via an aerial as the vast majority of TV reception is at the moment in the next 20 years or so.
watch tv
record and watch later
download
and stream if it's ***
In the past I used that internet site called Catch Up TV which streamed a lot of channels........I used it when my TV had a fault or the cable was down in the area......but last time I looked it was down to a handful of channels & hardly worth bothering with
I don't have any TV recording device nowadays since my last video recorder bit the dust......
What I mean is, we find a series that we like and then we give it a good hammering, watching 3 or 4 episodes a night, barely watching any live TV at all, but then we'll be finished with it in a month or so and we're back to watching whatever crap happens to appear on the telly while we're sat in front of it.