Return from the Bubble
Thoughts from Nick Carraway
We all know about the bubble and have heard much about the bubble, but it is quite different when you live in it even for a few days. We survived the trip to the inlaws, but I’m a whole lot wiser in the meantime.
We requested no Fox and they obliged. Still, we were inundated with Investigative Discovery, MeTV, and Turner Classic Movies. The combination of that and being trapped indoors was quite overwhelming.
You simultaneously see the world as people thought it was while seeing the current one as a kind of cross between The Walking Dead and The Purge.
The takeaway is usually the same. I’m not so much left in wonder at that world but in wondering what world we’ve created for ourselves. Those of us of a certain age recall having three main channels. We shared a common world.
So, even when we remove the news and commentary we still have separate worlds made up of our individual entertainment choices. That’s the world we’ve created. I only notice it when it’s not my own. It makes you wonder what we are doing to ourselves.”
The height of the week came following an episode of Perry Mason. MeTV promised an episode of Matlock but the local affiliate pulled a bait and switch. We got really bad local Christian “rock” instead.
Listen, I have no issue with Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, or old Hitchcock movies. I have no issue with Homicide Hunter, When Spouses Kill, or The Monster Next Door. I’m simply saying when you watch these shows on a continuous loop you are bound to be jaded.
1We will turn on Perry Mason after Colbert’s monologue just to see what fabulous clothes Della Street is wearing. That show is more than 60 years old; but, she sometimes wears stuff that would look good today.
2I actually enjoy Perry Mason and the Mm atlocks. The old westerns are a bit too much for me. My wife’s parents are in their sixties so these shows are even old for them. We stream our tv, so the commercials are even a culture shock.
3So you requested no Fox News. Does that mean your in-laws usually watch it for it’s fair and balanced reports? If so, assume politics were also out.
4Anyway, you probably could at least read all that’s been going on the last several days including today. More Trumpf bizzaro rants, and sounds like Trumpf and the proud boys are pretty hot under the collar today since AZ certified another Biden victory. They’re locked and loaded. In case you missed it.
Honestly, I prefer those old scripted shows to what passes for “reality” TV. I’d take the Rockford Files or even Have Gun will Travel over just about anything I see hawked during the nightly news.
Disclaimer: Besides sports, we watch mostly Britbox and Acorn. At least the female cops on The Bill don’t look like they just came from a make-up/blowout session at the local salon like the dames on US cop shows. (No offense MissJ)
5Back in the early 1970’s, college days, my roommates and I would gather at midnight after we finished our homework to watch reruns of The Rifleman. We were all anti-war, but the father of one roommate went to West Point with Chuck Conners, so I suppose we saw it as some kind of separated-by-3-degrees connection.
To make it interesting, we placed penny bets on how many villains our hero Lucas McCain would shoot in each episode. He almost always plugged at least one, and as many as seven outlaws, rustlers, or other miscellaneous thievin’ scoundrels. We never missed an episode, even on days after we attended Vietnam War protests, chanting 1,2,3,4 we don’t want your ——- war, we’d still return home, tired, smelling of tear gas, and with no sense of irony or hypocrisy watch the Rifleman pull his trigger finger after the midnight hour.
That may also be the flip side of only three broadcast channels.
6I only WISH I could watch TCM! It used to be included in my Comcast subscription, but recently went to an extra-subscription-required status. I love the old movies, in no small part for the fashions. Not enough to pay extra for it, though…
7It is an interesting point about our having a shared reality when there were only 3 channels. I still love Perry Mason and old Hitchcock movies.
8Jill Ann @7, There’s an OTA [over-the-air/antenna] channel called “Movies!” which runs a wide range of movies, some newer, some quite old [even ’20s-30s]; many of them ‘the great ones’ [I jes luvs reading the credits showing the ‘sound system’, since my company brought us all “sound/talkies” way back in the 1920s].
In my area Movies! is a subchannel of the ABC network main channel, along with MeTV, H&I, StarTV, and some shopping ones. In other viewing areas it’s probably associated with different networks and channels.
Your newer [digital ATSC] TV and an antenna should be able to receive it, —free— [along with dozens of other channels].
By using an older $45 “OTA converter box” [used with the older NTSC analog TVs], I can enjoy all these older programs and movies in —1080i HDTV—. Because the little box also “upconverts” the old 480p TV picture signal to HD, an HDMI cable feeds it to a newer TV input.
Voila, fantastic –HighDef– old movies/programs, in B&W, color.
The box is also a PVR, just plug in any USB thumbdrive or even a hardrive, and you have huge storage space [G/Tbytes, dozens of hours of programs, iirc, a 1 hour 480p program uses ~600M-1G of space, 1h HD/1080i about 4-5G]; which is portable, just plug the drive into the TV or PC, tablet USB port, and play/view. whatever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movies!
“Movies! is an American free-to-air television network… The network’s programming emphasizes feature films. The network’s programming and advertising operations are based in Weigel Broadcasting’s headquarters on North Halsted Street in Chicago, Illinois.
It is available in several markets through digital subchannel affiliations with free-to-air television stations, as well as through carriage on pay television providers through a local affiliate of the network.[4] Movies! provides programming 24 hours a day and broadcasts in the 16:9 widescreen picture format,[5] available in either standard definition or high definition depending on the station’s preference.
The network competes with two similarly formatted broadcast networks: This TV (originally operated by Weigel in a joint venture with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, until the former’s operational stake was taken over by Tribune Broadcasting on November 1, 2013) and GetTV (owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment); …”
9Sandridge@9, thanks for the info. Might be above my skill level, but will investigate!
10I published a more comprehensive screed on my personal blog. I won’t list it here as to not compete with Mama. I guess what I was thinking was not so much any one show but what social scientists have called the “relay effect.”
Back in the old days you might have had a western or two followed by a detective show and then a situational comedy. You might have had a game show thrown in somewhere as well. News lasted thirty minutes or an hour and then that was done.
Our entertainment choices and news choices are much more focused. You get bombarded with hour after hour of the same thing. It’s no wonder that Fox News viewers have ads asking them to convert all their savings into gold. You combine watching their crap with Investigative Discovery and Court TV and you come away convinced that some big black guy on welfare is using his Obama phone to track you and rob you blind.
So, it isn’t a complaint about any one show by a continual bombardment of the genre in combination with other specific genres that combine to warp our would view. I experienced it for less than a week and I could see the effects. Imagine spending years doing that.
11Jill Ann @10, Almost no skill required to set up and use these OTA TV boxes.
Needs only
[1] a TV,
[2] the converter box [see description and links below],
[3] an antenna [from the old ‘rabbit-ears or ‘stick’ type to modern flat ones, mounted inside, or even an outside style, most come with a cable], ignore those advertised ‘digital antennas’, little better than any other types,
[4] an HDMI cable of suitable length [3-15 feet] to connect the box and TV [a round F-style tv coax can be used but loses the HD pic, box also has ‘component/composite RCA jack outputs, see pics at link].
You ideally only need a [newer] TV with an unused HDMI input [most tvs today have several HDMI inputs].
The tv “coax/antenna” input can also be used, but you lose the HiDef up-conversion image quality.
[1] Locate the converter box near the TV. Read/skim the convertor box instructions manual.
[2] Connect the antenna to the box ‘antenna input’ jack The antenna location may need to be moved around during setup until you get the best signal and most channels [near/on a window often best].
[3] Connect the box output and TV input with the HDMI cable.
[4] Plug in the box power cord.
[5] On the TV, select the HDMI input the box is connected to [using the TV menu or a remote ‘input’ button].
[6] Turn on the convertor box and using the box’s remote, enter the menus and set it to “scan” for “air/antenna” TV signals/channels. When the scan is done you should be able to watch many local OTA TV stations.
[7] By plugging a USB stick or even a USB harddrive into the boxes’ front USB jack you can schedule and record any received channel programs at any time [the remote has a “record’ button for instant recording]. See the manual and onscreen menus.
[8] Using your TV is just a matter of selecting your “input”, either the box, your cable/fiber or other inputs, etc. When using the box, it’s own remote is used for channel selection, etc.
Of course there are many other options and details depending on your TV and other stuff. I ‘watc’ on my TV it’s own tuner [with it’s own antenna], a converter box, my PCs screens, etc.
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I use this converter box, there are others. I have several other convertor boxes but prefer this one model [some yet unopened as spares].:
“IVIEW-3500STBII, Digital Converter Box with Recording and Media Player, Analog to Digital, QAM Tuner, Channel 3/4, HDMI, USB”
Here’s a Newegg link to one vendor. Look at the pictures and description. It’s really quite simple to use.
https://www.newegg.com/p/1B9-0075-00005?Description=iview&cm_re=iview-_-9SIAKVHAJ48164-_-Product&quicklink=true
Here’s a link to Neweggs iView items, there are many different convertor boxes and vendors listed [and other stuff]. There are other makers of convertor boxes too, and Amazon has a bunch listed also. Prices range from ~$30 to $100.
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=iview&N=50029059&PageSize=96
Of course in five years or so all this ATSC v1 OTA TV is going to be “upgraded” to ATSC v3, which is a can of worms:
12https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_standards