Is it just me, or is anyone else
bothered by all of the extra motion on the TV screen these days?
Sometimes it's a little and sometimes it's a lot, but it all drives
me crazy. The least amount of distraction usually occurs on dramas or
comedies. On them there is the motion of the show, a logo for the
station, and pop up ads advertising another show. Some of those ads
show action, so you have a show within a show even without having a TV
with that feature. On talk shows, in addition to what you see on the
dramas, there is often a screen behind the talking heads with an abstract
pattern that moves in a repetitive motion.
However, the worst are the news shows.
First you have the anchors—sometimes two or three of them with
split screens and the annoying time delay that happens as they try to
talk to each other. Also there is a crawler along the bottom with
headlines and sometimes another one with stock prices. In addition
there is usually a logo in the corner that slowly spins around with a
date and a time under that that also spins. And to top it all
off, sometimes there are those abstract patterns behind the anchors
heads with repetitive motion.
Aggghhh! Enough already. Our brains are
not made to process that much differing information at one time. At
least mine isn't. And as hard as I try, I can't tune most of it out.
What's the solution? Well, the obvious one would be for me to stop
watching TV, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. As much as
I complain about it (don't get me started on the number of
commercials), TV is still a comfort to me. I remember a time when my
family bonded over watching a TV show together and TV can still evoke
those good feelings in me. In the meantime, I guess I can keep complaining. : )
Do any of you TV watchers, get annoyed
by all of the motion on the screen these days?
I hear you! I'm annoyed by ads everywhere - not just on the TV. I constantly change the radio station in the car to avoid hearing ads. I haven't really noticed distractions during the news - but I tend to just listen to that while I'm making dinner, so probably don't pay enough attention.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I am just listening to the TV, but more often than not, I have a cat on my lap, so I am sitting and watching.
DeleteHi live and learn,
ReplyDeleteI have found that I have to alter the screen size so that the news feed at the bottom of the screen doesn't show up. My head can't take that scrolling stuff. And actually, I've pretty much given up on TV. I watch Dowton Abbey, when it's on, and about 20 minutes of news on Saturday morning. I find I am totally clueless about the latest happenings, and have to ask my kids if there's something in the news, so I will go online and read it.
I know , there is a bit of quality TV programming, especially if you have cable or satellite. But we don't. We used to be huge TV junkies. In fact, my kids get a laugh when one of us quotes a program we used to watch. I understand what you mean about your family bonding over some shows. We had the same thing in our house.
One solution, though, is to borrow TV series that you enjoy on dvd from the library. At least no ads to distract. I do think that we aren't the only ones with visual disturbances from TV.
At this point, our TV's are too old to alter the screen size, but I'll remember that when we get a new TV.
DeleteYes! TV watching is getting very annoying and I find myself DVRing every show I want to watch. All of our favorite shows have aired their season finales, so no more watching for us. That reminds me, I really need to look into cancelling cable and my landline!
ReplyDeleteDVRing is a much smarter way to watch. Although it won't cut out all of the motion on the screen, it will cut your viewing time significantly because you can cut out the commercials.
DeleteOh... I can certainly relate to this one! I've actually put myself on a bit of a TV moratorium lately. I actually don't really watch TV except for the news & football, but lately I found myself watching EVERY newscast all day long! The Boston marathon bombings and all the craziness surrounding that got to me, and I sort of get into this "waiting for the next shoe to fall" thing. So I decided I'd allow myself to watch one local and one national newscast per day... period! It's been rather amazing actually!
ReplyDeleteOf course, I still watch Netflix, but I think that even if you watch a TV show on Netflix you don't get all of the crazy popup stuff at the bottom, plus there are NO commercials!
I'm really going to have to check into Neflix. So many people like it, and I think the prices have come down a lot from when it first started.
DeleteI totally LOVE Netflix! I got it when I decided to dump cable and have never looked back.
DeleteIt's about $8/month for the streaming only service, which is what I mostly use. If you want you can get the DVD service too for about another $8/month. I have both because there's a bigger selection of movies on DVD for movie nights with CatMan, and that's pretty much our entire entertainment budget!
$8/month--I'm definitely going to have to check into that.
DeleteThere are a bunch of devices that are already set up to interface with Netflix so you can watch on your TV instead of the computer... XBox, maybe? I don't keep up on that stuff.
DeleteSince I didn't own anything like that I got a "streaming device" called a Roku player for about $40. It basically just connects to your TV and your internet connection and has a nice interface for watching Netflix, along with a TON of other stuff, much of it free!
Don't watch a lot either, but couldn't agree more. I find my old brain finds it hard to watch the BBC 24 News Channel for the reasons you've mentioned. And you didn't mention the constantly moving, jerky, quirky angles of today's TV cameramen that can be quite hard on the brain too!
ReplyDeleteI guess it's artsy to cut peoples heads off and shoot them on an angle. I don't quite understand it. I don't know if it's my old brain or my sensible brain that is protesting that. (But then again, sensible does come with age.)
DeleteAnd that's why I don't watch much TV :) But I think what bugs me the most is how commercials are always louder the show I'm watching!
ReplyDeleteLouder commercials are very annoying. I don't know why they do that.
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