Do you watch TV? (Are you sure?)
May. 18th, 2014 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkA few days ago during the aimless chatter after a work meeting, my boss said primly, "I don't watch TV."
"But wait!" we all cried. "You were just talking about watching Scandal!"
"But I watch that on Netflix," came the reply.
What does it even mean to "watch TV" anymore? If you never watch broadcast TV but watch Scandal on Netflix, that still seems like "watching TV" to me. But what if if you use your TV only as a monitor to watch rented movies? What if you watch TV shows on your laptop? What if you stream YouTube videos to your TV? If your "television" is an LCD monitor with inputs for antennae, cable, DVD, thumb drives and ethernet, is it still a TV? Even if it does have an increasingly obsolete built-in TV receiver? What does anything mean any more?
I predict that within 15 years there will be a new generation that is baffled by the idea of a single-purpose device that could be only be used to watch a tragically limited number of programs broadcast at a specific time and place from a central location. Who on earth would want something like that?
"But wait!" we all cried. "You were just talking about watching Scandal!"
"But I watch that on Netflix," came the reply.
What does it even mean to "watch TV" anymore? If you never watch broadcast TV but watch Scandal on Netflix, that still seems like "watching TV" to me. But what if if you use your TV only as a monitor to watch rented movies? What if you watch TV shows on your laptop? What if you stream YouTube videos to your TV? If your "television" is an LCD monitor with inputs for antennae, cable, DVD, thumb drives and ethernet, is it still a TV? Even if it does have an increasingly obsolete built-in TV receiver? What does anything mean any more?
I predict that within 15 years there will be a new generation that is baffled by the idea of a single-purpose device that could be only be used to watch a tragically limited number of programs broadcast at a specific time and place from a central location. Who on earth would want something like that?
no subject
Date: 2014-05-19 12:20 am (UTC)I think most people these days say "TV" when they mean television shows no matter how they watch them (streaming, DVD, broadcast, on a DVR, whatever), but the lines really do continue to blur.