I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/22/i-have-found-a-new-way-to-watch-tv-and-it-changes-everything/

by 6stringmerc • 10 years ago

14 12 10 years ago

Quite a broad, though unique approach to discussing content consumption. One of my things to think about later is how this article relates to the "MTV Style" of rapid jump cuts. That would seem to support the baseline hypothesis in some regards.

nickthegreek2• 10 years ago

I started watching most of my shows digitally so that I could fit ~3 half an hour episodes into an hour allowing me to devour more content. Watching those shows at 160% would allow me to get another episode in that hour. I only wish PLEX supported faster playback. Does anyone know if Kodi offers this option? I know VLC does.

spikej• 10 years ago

With Kodi, I use external players like VLC and PotPlayer

With Plex, I've only ever been able to use the chrome extension mentioned in the article successfully.

nickthegreek2• 10 years ago

I stream my media through the plex app on an appletv currently. Looks like I will need to wait for this feature to be implemented of change up my entire htpc situation.

ifoundthetao• 10 years ago

I do this with audiobooks and it changed everything. I listen to them on triple speed. For some things, I have to ramp up to it, and for others I can only go 2.5x.

One trend I noticed was that I kept it at 1x on content I wanted to enjoy and savor. But books on start-ups, books about the workplace and management definitely went on 3x speed.

acconrad• 10 years ago

I've been doing this for years thanks to VLC's ability to speed things up. YouTube has had this feature for a while as well, as has Coursera.

If a typical show on TV is 1 hour long, 15-20 of it is commercials. I can download that episode, watch it at 1.5x (or 2-3x if it's subtitled, for example a foreign language film), and now what would have taken an hour out of my day has only taken 30 minutes.

daledavies• 10 years ago

For me this doesnt work, I feel the comedy clip lost its humour (I guess the timing just wasn't there) and game of thrones seems to actually gain humour.

gumby• 10 years ago

This works great with close captioning switched on as well -- I can glance at the captions and the picture and enjoy the film at higher speed. If it's really good I can go back to old fashioned 1x but very little, especially TV, is worth it, any more than all books might be worth reading in their entirety.

I don't know why he claims that his habit "horrifies most people." Why should it upset anyone at all?

wingerlang• 10 years ago

Doesn't this simply ruin tense moments? It also sounds funny which seems non fitting.

I do the "skip around" at times, but mainly for stuff I've seen before.

But I guess I don't try to cram content, I simply watch stuff at the same time as I do other things so the time saving is useless for me.

breakingcups• 10 years ago

Am I the only one who feels like this ruins the content as it was composed by the creators?

Sure, for some TV shows the pace might be improved by speeding up. But are we really so concerned with "keeping up" with the most recent episodes of TV shows to the point of resorting to techniques like these to "cram more episodes in an hour"? I watch TV shows to entertain myself, not to take part in some rat race.

I'm currently about 4-5 weeks behind on the shows I like to watch and I'm fine with that. Most of them have aired their season by now and I have another 9 months before a new season airs, which ought to be more than enough time to watch them.

greydius• 10 years ago

A better option would be to not watch TV and do something productive with that time instead.

pdxgene• 10 years ago

I do this with business books -- turn on assistive screen reading on my iPhone's Kindle app, and tweak the speaking speed to as fast as I can reasonably understand.

But I'd never do it with a Mark Helprin novel, or anything with sentences so beautiful you want to slow down and read them again.

I imagine I'd feel the same way about video content -- I can't imagine slowing down anything but the most garden-variety-informational videos.

I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything

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