Tuesday, November 13, 2007, 1:34:37 PM, Rupert wrote:
> People will not watch shows on a computer.  Do you know anybody who
> watches anything on a computer?

I think it might be useful to distinguish between watching on a
computer, and watching on-line. I hardly ever watch anything on-line.
There's something about the in-web-page experience that simply does
not work for me.

On the other hand, I watch quite a lot on my computer screen. There
are a several reasons for this; here are a few I can think of right
now:

* The rest of my family would prefer to watch other stuff on the TV in
the lounge. Likewise I am not at all interested in watching kids
shows, soap operas and medical dramas. So we agree to differ, and I
get the PC.

* The stuff I want to watch is not available on regular TV. No, it's
not *that* sort of stuff. Mostly what I am interested in is either
independent internet video or old TV from the 1960s onwards - I have
been having great fun watching *all* the available episodes of "Doctor
Who" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_who ), for example. I'm
currently part way through Tom Baker ... To show that I'm not a
complete cheapskate I did buy a boxed set of "The Tomorrow People" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tomorrow_People )

* I have become mildly addicted to the extra "meta" information you
can get when watching something in a PC media player. I get twitchy if
I can't glance at a progress indicator to see how far through I am,
and love the ability to pause and look up on the web something which
occurs to me while watching.

For these sorts of reasons, I'm not especially interested in a set top
box. We don't even have cable, satellite, or digital TV, so we only
get the regular five channels.

-- 
Frank Carver   http://www.makevideo.org.uk

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