{"id":6,"date":"2005-12-15T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2005-12-16T01:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bitpost.com\/news\/?p=6"},"modified":"2013-02-22T11:56:51","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T16:56:51","slug":"from-the-swammi-dept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/news\/2005\/from-the-swammi-dept\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future is MythTV; The Present is NetFlix"},"content":{"rendered":"
Capitalism spawns advertising, and nothing is as saturated and pervasive an example of this as the boob tube. Ever since its cold-war era introduction, it has been been the main vehicle of advertising in America. As a result, I can’t stand to watch it much.The information age brought us some serious improvements, primarily Tivo and all its DVR clones, empowering the viewer, not the studio, to set the viewing time. Tivo made it to the edge of a revolution, but unfortunately seems to have succumbed to the capitalist zeitgeist – you cannot skip commercials, they are experimenting with “popup advertising” when you attempt to manually skip commercials, and it looks as if DRM is in Tivo’s near future. If you go with a more pure open-source DVR solution (aka MythTV), you regain full control, including the ability to flag and automatically skip commercials. But you will become a “DVR hobbyist” long before you ever have a working MythTV setup.<\/p>\n

However, there is a better way, available here and now:<\/p>\n

Step 1: subscribe to NetFlix
\nStep 2: swallow up entire seasons of the better TV shows to be consumed in one commercial-free marathon sitting<\/p>\n

We’ve enjoyed several shows this way, including some old classics like kid-friendly Bewitched! The modern day choice of the week is Arrested Development, a show that has such deadpan comedic irony it’s had me blowing my drink out of my nose every episode. Cu-CAW, cu-CAW!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Capitalism spawns advertising, and nothing is as saturated and pervasive an example of this as the boob tube. Ever since its cold-war era introduction, it has been been the main vehicle of advertising in America. As a result, I can’t stand to watch it much.The information age brought us some serious improvements, primarily Tivo and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t