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Comment by BurningFrog

3 hours ago

Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?

Streaming is infinitely better.

7 comments

BurningFrog

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dragonwriter  3 hours ago

> Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?

On-demand cable content existed and was significant at the tail end of the period when cable was still dominant, so it is probably lost of most people's baseline (at least, those that didn't either abandon it early or never had it at all) in comparing to cable.

autoexec  2 hours ago

Steaming is slowly going back to that too. Netflix got popular for letting people binge shows that released but increasingly they are putting out shows one episode a week so that they can keep the hype up over a longer period and better monitor/control social media.

Netflix also hides a ton of their content and aggressively pushes whatever is new because it makes it easier for them to get immediate metrics on how popular something is.

Right now, you're pretty much stuck watching whatever is being "streamed in that moment" as it is. For example, netflix added the austin powers movies in October, but by Dec 1 they were removed. You had a window of just 2 months to watch and if you missed them you're stuck waiting for them to "rerun" just like regular TV. I expect that trend to continue with shorter and shorter windows as Netflix pushes people to watch shows when they want you to watch them.

bakies  3 hours ago

growing up I always had on-demand and recording on the set top boxes

  • ghaff  3 hours ago

    Certainly TiVo came in--as well as boxes from cable companies (though I only had TiVo). And, if you really want to go old school, you could program VCRs to record shows if you were off on vacation.

    But there was a long period even after cable came in for more channels and potentially better reception when TV was largely on a set schedule.