Sal Khan gave an interesting hypothesis about why his lectures were more engaging (he uses a blackboard) than a traditional one with a person in the front. I recommend watching the video, but his point is that we tend to focus on the person, the movement of the hands. When you remove the person, you're sort of left with a voice inside your head explaining stuff.

http://vimeo.com/11731351

For you to say that, you probably didn't share the same experience I did.

Surely there's some aspect that is norm versus unique, but that's not what kept me watching it to the very end. If that's all it was, I would have stopped watching halfway through (as the uniqueness wore off).

No-- instead, the presentation style held my attention the entire time. And this is for a talk that I had already heard previously. It was stronger than one of those unfortunately placed TVs at a restaurant playing something colorful, this drew my attention and held it even though I would have typically moved on much sooner.

Perhaps no one else had the same reaction to it as I did, but I don't think I'd easily tire of lectures being presented with this kind of quality. Just my $.02.

That's ridiculous -- there are plenty of aspects of my life that are in some sense "the norm" that I still find very engaging. Novelty is a component of interestingness, sure, but it's far from the only one.

This presentation is more compelling to me than a traditional lecture in many ways; its novelty really plays a fairly minor role in the difference. (YMMV, of course, but don't put words in my [or the GP's] mouth.)