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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

I have to wonder why consumers so desire new content. Old films and TV shows have much the same entertainment value, and are vastly cheaper to stick through some AI to turn to HD and strip out the no-longer-politically-acceptable jokes.

There is also a wealth of content from other countries and languages, which could be translated with a little AI assistance to do lip sync etc.

With far more content than anyone could reasonably watch in a lifetime, I really don't see why anyone is investing big money into making new stuff.

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I would prefer, for future generations not me, to leave the original dialogue. They could include an intro putting the show in context and explaining current value set shortcomings instead. It would seem more productive to learn from the past values and see how they evolved, not simply erase them.

I would prefer if the current zeitgeist didn’t go around stripping older content of what it deems incorrect. There’s no guarantee that twenty years from now there won’t be a totally different view of what’s correct anyway.

Why would you feel the need to have AI "cleanse" older shows? Otherwise, I agree there is a rich history of films.

It really depends what the watcher desires... A lot of audiences will say "ewwe, I couldn't possibly let my children watch that, there are homophobic slurs in it".

Or parts are simply outdated and won't be understood by viewers - like a key element of a plot being that someone erased an answerphone tape - perhaps in todays world you'd replace that with messages showing one tick only...

Luckily there’s tons of movies that don’t have those slurs for people to show their kids.

I'm not a fan of this approach or instead of somebody jumping on a horse and riding two days and two nights they should be driving a SUV to destination, in a couple of hours and with AC. After a while movies become historical movies even if they started as contemporary. The 90s stay the 90s, the Old West is the Old West, etc.

My kids kind of enjoy older films where, for example, a person is on a land-line telephone and someone in another room picks up the receiver of a phone on the same line to listen in. They had no idea.

It's educational, historic.

Sensibilities and context change. Even my FIL hates movies from his generation because he sees them as poorly acted, regardless of any other aspects. He prefers more modern work.

I want to say this as kindly as possible, but if you wonder why consumers desire new content then I'd have to wonder how varied is your film and TV taste.

Times change, genres evolve and twist and become something new. Spaghetti Westerns blew up and had a mass craze, then died off. Weird westerns gained momentum and survived to this day. Film depictions of what the future looks like will be vastly different in the 60s/70s versus how it is today. Modern shows like Andor show that aspect of retrofuturism mixed with modern designs. Animation was mostly restricted to childrens work in comparison to today where you have things like Scavanger's Reign.

This is without talking about the change in attitudes towards various minority groups.

I think the parent is wondering why consumers care about novelty ("varied taste") instead of quality. Of course, you can have both or neither. I don't know, but the epics of Homer lasted thousands of years because, presumably, people thought they were just damn good. Will Andor, a disposable Disney show, be remembered in twenty years, let alone 100? Probably not.

> and strip out the no-longer-politically-acceptable jokes

Sounds like clearplay and vidangel have a new target consumer base and media pool.

Shocks me that steaming failed to implement that feature. Years ago, broadcast TV would air edited versions and the cost of that editing must be higher than a GUI feature to play one set of scenes instead of the full movie.

> I have to wonder why consumers so desire new content.

After watching kids grow, it struck me.

That's how we learn. New stuff = different stuff = learning. My kids would look at the floor for a bit as babies, it would be interesting. After a while, watching the same "old" tiles would become boring, not much to learn from there (color, hardness, temperature, grip, etc). So they'd start looking for lint, pebbles, bits of paper or dirt on the floor, cause that was new :-)

Content creation piggy backs on this intuitive understanding and hacks it, since as you say, old content can have great educational and entertainment value.

But I think it all boils down to "new = potential for learning" being wired into our brains.

"New" to your kids was always something pre-existing, though.

"New content" is something that did not exist before.

I'm willing to bet that any given adult has a huge trove of extant material that would be interesting if they could only discover it. But the cult of the new opposes that.

People want the same content but new, shoveled out almost exactly the same but slightly different each time.

This is most obvious in certain “genres” of entertainment but it has always existed - romance novels, simplistic comics, etc.

I have to wonder why people listen to things other than 1940s big band music. 1940s big band music have much the same entertainment value as modern music, and are vastly cheaper.

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