This is a really cool project, but also way beyond the skills of an average person.
I don’t know If I am becoming old fashioned, but I feel things were simpler when I was a kid, we had DVD player and we would come over to a friends house and watch a movie. We even found someone’s porn collection!
I feel this issue is endemic through all of society - you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic shit, and eventually it’s gets too much and you have no IQ points left to figure out big questions in life
We went back to DVDs for my kid, actually. My wife and I really like the idea of a hard start and end to a video (with no chance for algorithmic tendrils to reach you) and we like the idea of having to put in some amount of effort to start the video. It's on demand, but not as on demand as scrolling through a streaming service is.
I can't quite articulate why this feels like an improvement to me. Maybe it's because I have experienced decision paralysis on streaming services so many times.
Tons of DVD collections being given away for almost nothing on FB marketplace right now, too.
We often decide on things by process of elimination: it's easier for us to identify what we don't want than what we do.
If there are 5 choices available, the effort to decide on one is low as the contrast between choices is high … and holding all options in memory is easy.
If there are 1,000 choices, the effort is high and the contrast is low … and you can't hold them all in memory, so there's always _something_ right around the bend that _might_ be the perfect thing.
I ripped a lot of my kids' DVDs because far too many of them had unskippable ads before the title screen. They wouldn't even let you fast forward!
> I can't quite articulate why this feels like an improvement to me. Maybe it's because I have experienced decision paralysis on streaming services so many times.
Amazon recently changed their Android TV app such that it auto-plays previews if you leave a title selected for more than a few seconds. I hate this feature and it gives me both decision paralysis and anxiety over finding something interesting to watch before the preview starts. I'd sooner turn the TV off than deal with that. If the setting for this can be changed, it is not available in the app itself.
Is it not expected for people (or generations) to learn new things (and not learn obsolete things)?
My kids learned how to navigate Apple TV and the Apple TV remote at age 3 to go to Infuse or PBS kids app. And I tell them to turn off the TV after x episode of y time limit, and they know how to do that.
I think this ignores that marketing is essentially insidious. The goal is to get you to do more of x. We spend a lot of life building up the mental tools and energy and math skills to understand whether we actually want to do x or whether someone has simply suggested it very strongly.
Asking a 3 year old to develop that mental faculty just because we are a new generation learning new things feels incorrect.
I beg to differ. I prefer being able to search and select and instantly watch whatever I (or the kids) want (due to high reliability of broadband internet), over transporting physical media back and forth from a store or library and putting it into a dedicated machine for it.
I specifically recall how annoying it was to change the input on a TV because for some reason, manufacturers didn’t put that button on TVs or all remotes.
If my 3 year olds can learn to navigate tvOS to the right app or infuse library and pick the Bluey episode they want, I feel like it’s a pretty good sign of things not being shitty.
I thought about that earlier today, I'm pretty sure it does.
Worst-case DVD experience:
Step 1. Unbox TV and DVD Player
Step 2. Plug scart cable from DVD player into TV.
Step 3. Connect TV and DVD player to power, insert batteries in remotes.
Step 4. Turn on DVD Player, TV, press "Source" a few times, the DVD player shows something.
Step 5. Gander at some DVDs, decide which to watch.
Step 6. Press Eject
Step 7. Insert DVD
Step 8. Press Eject
Step 9. Press Play.
Now, assuming that electricity is provided, care to write down how to netflix? From the beginning, so we need to start by unboxing our very first computer, setting it up to the point where we can connect to the internet, also, we need an internet connection, oh, and some way to order that, so a phone..
Now, there will be a few steps before we reach to the point where we can create an email account, needed to even register for the streaming service.. Oh, something about credit cards too, and passwords for stuff?
Sure, you will think this is absurd, because all that stuff is "already in place" yeah, it is, for us, we set it up bit by bit, it's an enormous amount of infrastructure and different, disconnected concepts and services that is now REQUIRED before you can watch a movie..
I'll bet I can teach most 4 year olds to go from "empty living room with a power socket" to "watching dvd movies". You'll have a hard time convincing me you can teach them to go from empty living room with a power socket, to watching netflix before their next birthday or two :)
Hang on, but we already have a library of DVDs?! The main benefit of streaming and what makes it worth the effort is you have thousands of films available. You've just ignored that part. Yes, that is absurd.
Honestly, that time where I had HBO, Netflix and Disney+ at the same time, it still didn't feel like I had even 1000s available, getting them listed and sorted by something relevant (like year of release) was a pain, and it seemed like the same 6 orange-blue shaded poster appeared first in every category.
I don’t know If I am becoming old fashioned, but I feel things were simpler when I was a kid, we had DVD player and we would come over to a friends house and watch a movie. We even found someone’s porn collection!
I feel this issue is endemic through all of society - you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic shit, and eventually it’s gets too much and you have no IQ points left to figure out big questions in life