According to "TiVo Goes Wandering, on the Road and at Home" article, you don't have to switch the dvds or standby in front of the TV to watch sports game at the middle night. TiVo is smart and can records shows automatically without ads by only just press the skip button and it can watch from any room in the house, or out of the house on smart phones, iPad whenever you want. But still have shortcomings that Wi-Fi isn’t reliable enough to ensure stutter-proof high-definition video and need to pay more if you want records shows to a different room, however, it is still save a lot of money and diversity of channels.
I am still a coach potato on weekends, but different way, on Internet or TiVo. I can watch my favorite TV shows and series all day long rather than hang out with friends. I think it can helps to improve my English listening skills and some common spoken language. It also can download the apps from the smart phone. I usually watch movies or series on iPhone when I out of the house. My favorite American series are "How I met your mother", "Revenges", "Game of Thrones" etc., how about you guys? I think it is so worth it , I pay less and watch more, and I can not help it and keep watching and watching.
Although I am fascinated about the American series, I still hang out with friends and had a social life, I go to work, I go study, I got life. But there are more people are so-called hikikomori-it is from Japanese, the abnormal avoidance of social contact, typically by adolescent, they use to describe people who keep themselves at home and stay away from society. It is quite "famous" in Japan and Taiwan who fancy with animation or online games, I think we should more concentrate about the changing of the society, and thinking that the tech in nowadays is really a helpful or helpless to human? Is those series really helpful in my life? Or does animation or online games really fulfillment in life?
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I've addicted to tv series too. I normally watch them when I have nothing to do or want to feel relaxed from work and study. Kind of investigation and mystery are my favorite, namely "Bones", "CSI", "Criminal Minds" and "Supernatural". I love to watch on tv more than internet. It's good to change my pose to switch dvd, otherwise I might feel senseless when sit for a long time. Sitting on a couch and watching them are a real treat for me. Because I sometimes want to stay away from computer.
ReplyDeleteI live watching those series too.
DeleteI think we need to balance social and personal life. Sometimes the person who keeps himself or herself alone might have some difficulties when he or she is exposed to the society. But for some person who is normally interacted with other people, being at home and watching TV on his or her own might be the best way to take a rest.
ReplyDeleteWhen I studied at University, I have addicted to series too, but it's a Korean series not American series. I remembered that when I watched Korean series I spent the whole day to watch it. It is too crazy that I can finished one series on one or two days. The following day my eyes always look like a Panda :(
ReplyDeleteFor American series, I like "Prison Break" because it's very fantastic series. I was crazy about Michael Scofield LoL.
I used to watch about 4-5 TV series movies such as Prison Break, Walking Dead, Sherlock Home and The Big Bang Theory. I watched these series movies because they have good plots and some interesting points in there. Sometime, people get some knowledge from their favorite Tv series, for example, I had heard that some investigators request the author of some Tv series to reduce some detail information in their scenes because some criminals in the US use the same way to clean evidences at the scene of the accident which they learn how to used some solution to clean the evidence from CSI series.
ReplyDeleteI like to relax with crappy action films that are big on entertainment. I don't think people watch TV to learn, and that's a problem because some people think watching a 32 second news skit actually provides some insight into something. The news shows are the worst thing to watch on TV.
ReplyDeleteWhat it's really good for is entertainment that doesn't need too much intelligence or heavy demands and can withstand a lot of interruptions. Some things I like are: The Simpsons, although I think that, like Homer, Shakespeare and other great art, they can work on multiple levels - mindless entertainment, and something a bit deeper, although perhaps not quite up to the same standard as Hamlet or The Iliad. Even worse are the wonderfully action film series such as Arnold's Terminator films, and the later Matrix, which started out very well before they went kooky with weird pseudo-spiritual stuff. Most recently there was Avatar, full of mushy pseudo-spiritual muck again but at least relieved by some implausible action, and cool creatures on a physics defying planet.
But like Bas, I also enjoy the Sherlock Holmes stories, most of which have been done very faithfully to Conan Doyle's originals, which I've been rereading lately. And thinking about quality art on TV and film, there is the excellent BBC production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, arguably the best novel ever written in English; I read it with a level 7 AEP reading writing class once, but I'm not sure everyone else loved it as much as I do - the language, although brilliant from the first to the last line, is challenging. What made the BBC version so truly great is that they followed Austen very closely - copying much of her dialogue word for word. I've read the book probably twenty or more times, and it gets better with every reading. I think that's a sign of great art.
I think we have many different reasons for watching TV, as we do for reading different things, and those reasons should be respected in others, even if we don't personally agree with them. One of my colleagues at AUA loves the Star Wars of films, but although I enjoyed them when they first came out an age ago, they bored me to tears with the silliness of the story and comparatively simple special effects when I tried to watch them again perhaps ten years ago. I can't feel my friend's passion for them, but I like it that he is passionate about something, however weird it seems to me. It certainly gives him a lot of pleasure. I suspect some people feel the same about my fondness for reading Homer and Plato, but there you are. It would be a very boring world if we all had the same passions and loathings.
I believe there are even some people who actually like eating McDonalds!
And my thanks to Ting for kicking off this most stimulating topic.
ReplyDeleteI also like her introduction in praise of the joys of the couch potato passing of time: if she adds in a soothing cigarette and nice glass or three of red wine (a nice Shiraz?) for the drug addicted, it will be perfect.
But I haven't gotten around to what I actually wanted to say in my response. Tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm relaxing with what I guess is now an old classic - Train Spotting, a great British black comedy (seriously black, but also seriously funny) from 1996.
DeleteI have some friends who were addicted to Korean drama series. They used to watch them almost all day long, not eat and not talk with others. They finally become short-tempered and could easily burst into tears. I think too much of watching is not acceptable. We are social beings and need to interact with people. I am not saying that Korean series are no good, I like many of them. I am just saying that we have to allocate appropriated time on them.
ReplyDeleteTing's final paragraph also seems to me to raise interesting points.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first heard of the hikikomori phenomena a few years ago, in an essay written be a Japanese student, a biologist researching the brain, I thought it was a bit strange. But these days, with the rapid rise of the smartphone machine, I often walk past an upscale and popular café in Silom Complex and see groups of three of four people who are presumably friends, sitting at a table, sometimes sharing the same dessert, and all focussed intently on the device in front of them, as though the other three did not exist. Are they SMSing each other? Or Linking each other? Or just indifferent? It does seem a bit weird to me. Much as I've come to rely on my own devices, I couldn't bring myself to ignore someone I was sharing a meal with, yet if my observations of hi-soish behaviour amongst high school students at local convent schools and other young people with money are any guide, it now seems socially acceptable to do so.
On the other hand, my own behaviour in public is also changing: I notice that I do sometimes join the BTS habit of checking email, messaging, reading the news or whatever between stations. And sometimes I check things on my walk to or from AUA.
It will be interesting to see how my own and others' behaviour changes with the imminent introduction of things like Google glasses.
I think there are both advantages and disadvantages of wacthcing TV or rely on smartphone or high technology gadget such as iPad. As Ming mentioned someone is nearly addict like watching all they long. For my habit,I like to watch news in Thai TV channel whenever I have free but rarely interested in the rest of them, Most of them are soap opera and talk show which is moderator keep talking too much so I prefer download English movies or series to store in my TV that conncect with internet. Sometimes I can open and listen during do household chores which I feel like I never bored and fun. For my smartphone, I think it is very helpful to google something very quick if I go out alone and do not know what should I do for killing my time while waiting for BTS or bus but I never addict like most teenafers nawadays like Peter mention about young people in Silom Complex did. I enjoy talking with all of my friend rather look at cellphone. Sometimes I feel that it is very inappropiate behavior to ignore your friend and always concentrate on playing a game in those gadgets.
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