I watch very little TV. I don’t have a license, for a start [1], so I tend to use iPlayer and – heavens – torrents, which works quite well, I find. So, I’ll watch ‘Lost’ on the day that it is aired in Canada, and ‘The Mentalist’ before the new series has even been begun in the UK.
The upshot of this is that I have so much more time available to me now – I choose what I want to watch and when to watch it (I don’t get the 7.03pm “I’m going to miss The Archers” twitch if I’m nowhere near a radio any more) and this is a Good Thing (TM) – I read more, research more and generally put my newfound time to good use.
It has downsides. If someone wants to engage me in a conversation about why Susan Boyle’s choice of song is so awful, I have to endure watching it on youtube before I can offer an opinion – and let me tell you, awful doesn’t even begin to describe that – but in the main, I find that this is all a positive. TV has become like going to the cinema – the choice is now mine to make, rather than just have the entire evening’s programming thrust down my throat as I attempt to teach my liver about regeneration again.
Why then, with the possible sea change in the public’s viewing habits – iPlayer, 4OD and the like, has our venerable and lovable Mr Sugar not come up with a new TV that has no receiver in it; instead, why not kit it out with a wifi connection and a simple interface that lets you navigate iPlayer and 4OD?
No license fee needed…..
[1] After months of very threatening letters, they sent a gorilla around. I invited him in to look around, and he declined, saying “I can tell you don’t have a tv from your reaction to me….”
richardsandwell 