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Comment by angryasian | Hacker News Reader

I know there are a lot of shows that don't require full attention, but I usually don't waste my time with those kinds of shows. I don't know how people can twitter, or chat on their phone and still pay attention to good shows that require a level of attention like Game of Thrones.

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I've watched terrible horror movies with live chat and it was a unique experience.

Maybe it's just a targeting problem.

Eventually it's going to be up to the users to figure out what they like to use it with. We're just restricting the number of shows during the beta to keep things manageable.

With the users we have in the beta we have noticed that it isn't for everyone and not everyone uses it the same (some are just reading, others comment a lot, and some wait for the perfect moment and then post the best joke) for every show. With the speed of Silicon Valley, for example, my wife isn't actively posting while she watches.

It works very well for light entertainment; we'll be doing it for the upcoming Eurovision song contest.

(One of the UK minor channels has just launched a programme "Goggle box", which is basically a reality show of people watching television and chatting over it. This may be taking the whole thing too far)

Agreed. It make a lot more sense for sports.

Which is one of the least time-shifted forms of content.

Well... that's what this fixes :)

I think they mean, it's one of the types of shows that people don't typically record because they want to watch it live, so this would not be useful for sports.

A major reason for wanting to watch it live is that it's so easy to have it spoiled. And for a lot of people, a game (much more than other TV) isn't worth watching if you know the outcome. So partly, people want to watch the "action" live, but also, they just don't feel like watching it later. This can address the second part.

That's interesting. I almost always time-shift sports. Stuff like American football is otherwise interminable.

Even when I want to get to the finish, live, I just start watching an hour after the recording begins. Fast forward through commercials and head-under-hood challenges, etc.

If it's a game I'm only semi-interested in, I'll wait until it's completely finished. Then just FF until I notice a score change, back up some reasonable number of minutes. Voila, personal highlight reel.

I likewise timeshift Formula 1 coverage so I can watch with my brothers, sometimes weeks later. This kind of timeshifted community to would be great to participate in.

Spoilers are generally hard to avoid. This year I've given in and accepted spoilers in exchange for following various communities. So far the participation has been worthwhile and knowing race outcomes and other highlights in some cases had made watching an even better experience.

That's interesting. Maybe we should try sports earlier than planned, then...

Whereas I can't watch recorded sports for the most part. I always feel like "why don't I just fast forward to the end?"

YMMV as they say.

We've thought about that but felt that the interest in non-live sports is probably a little less. Will experiment with it (and reality and casting shows), though.

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