Comment by huggyface | Hacker News Reader

Comment by huggyface | Hacker News Reader

This is akin to saying that the internet is broken because some videos are prefaced by a commercial. Or HN is broken because some of the front-page are hiring ads for YC companies.

I use a PVR for all of my "TV" needs (I have two large wall-mounted screens. They are great entertainment devices. I only mention that for consistency with those proudly informing that they only old some small CRT in the corner somewhere). When I get around to watching it has all of the episodes of the shows I care about. Many of them come from ShowTime, HBO, PBS or the Movie Network, having no commercials. Of course I explicitly pay for those channels individually, well outside of PBS.

Other channels have a different business model, but strangely neither my children, my wife or I have any mental issue with it -- it's just the way it is. Nor do I have an issue when a play has an intermission, even though really I'd just like them to keep playing through.

In some ways this reminds me a bit of this submission from the other day - http://ihnatko.com/2012/02/20/heavy-hangs-the-bandwidth-that...

The article is saying that for a child raised (mostly) on commercial-free media (Netflix), advertisements are so intrusive and annoying that the child rejects watching TV outright because of the commercials.

I wonder if this is the kind of stuff that keeps advertising executives up at night. What would happen if everyone under the age of 20 thought like this (assuming that ad-free media sources still exist)?

The title "TV" refers to a physical medium. If it meant "the commercial-supported major networks", then perhaps it should have said that.

Nonetheless, it is understood that children notice change. If you give your child maple syrup when they're accustomed to Aunt Jemima, they will ask you what it is. They will probably ask for their Aunt Jemima back. Children are not savants supplying higher information (and I say that as a very proud parent of four of them): They are creatures of routine and habit. A day later they would happily enjoy maple syrup, rejecting their old standby.

There just isn't anything profound or particularly insightful about that observation. It doesn't merit the "TV is broken" bit.

> "Nonetheless, it is understood that children notice change."

My own niece certainly notices that records are different than music from my Boxee. But records don't really bother her. She thinks they're weird because they're so big, and you have to find them and put them on the player and be careful with the needle.

But she happily drags out the player, shuffles through the handful of records I have and listens to them from time to time.

Yet she had a very similar reaction to what's described in the article, when she (briefly) saw Shrek on Cable. Her grandmother (the only one in her family who watches broadcast anymore) flipped through the channels and passed Shrek, whereupon my niece convinced her that they should watch it. After the first commercial break she asked if we could just watch it on the Boxee.

So it's not "child notices change". Not entirely. It's mostly "child dismisses interstitial advertising entirely".

I don't doubt that within a couple years, all licensed streaming media will have completely unskippable commercials. It's what's happened on DVD and Blu-Ray. At least with TV I have the option to change the channel or if I use a DVR, I can just skip through.

> This is akin to saying that the internet is broken because some videos are prefaced by a commercial.

Youtube showing mandatory, non-skippable video commercials before the video you want to watch is the single most annoying thing that happened on the Internet in the last few years. I still haven't figured out how to get rid of them, but if I ever find out, I won't hesitate to do so.

Ablock Plus gets rid of them.

Thanks. I couldn't understand what people were talking about because I haven't seen any of those forced ads.

I can help with this (if you have Safari) -- (1) http://www.verticalforest.com/youtube5-extension/ (2) http://clea.nr/ First one removes the video commercials; second removes the rest of the crap. So peaceful.

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