Television

An Arte Documentary Series about Cars

Last night I watched two episodes in a documentary series about a brief history of cars. In the first documentary we see a discussion about the history of cars from the 19th century to modern day with the use of archive footage. In the second we see how the car helped with consumerism. In the third I think they discuss the mental health consequences of cars. What makes this documentaries series interesting is that it goes into a lot of depth, without any sensationalism.

Leaving Netflix Soon

For the last week, or less, I have been choosing what to watch, not based on what’s new, or recommended, but on what is leaving Netflix soon. With netflix it is very easy to think “I don’t know what to watch” and “I don’t want to watch anything that is being recommended. By noticing the films that are “Leaving Soon” the challenge of choosing what to watch is simplified. If you have to choose what’s vanishing within a few weeks then the choice is smaller.

The Reason We Stopped Watching TV and Listening to Radio

There was a time decades ago, when we had a choice of five channels. TSR, TF1, Antenne 2, SRF and RSI. Over time we got more channels offered to us, and with satellite TV and cable our choice mushroomed to the point where we could watch documentary channels for a morning, and move on to something else once the programs looped. Watching More and More The result of this TV watching is that we watched hours of programs but we also wasted huge amounts of time on ads.

AI, Film, and Social Media

I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often. DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.

Netflix - Browse By Language

Recently Netflix added a Browse by Language option which means that you can browse for content by original language. Yesterday I saw that I can browse for content in French, Italian, Polish,, Korean, German and many more languages. I could list more but that’s dull. Instead I want to focus on the opportunities it opens up. With YouTube, Apple Films and other platforms you can search for films but they are either in French, German or Italian in Switzerland and it’s hard to find content that is in its original language.

Northern Exposure and Blowing Bubbles

Northern Exposure is a series about a doctor who finds himself sent to Alaska to be a doctor for a few years. He thinks that it is the middle of nowhere and he has to adapt from enjoying life as a New Yorker to life as a frontier town doctor. Early colza in the Canton of Vaud Although the series is thirty plus years old it still remains relevant today with its exploration of global warming, pollution and more.

On Film and Television

I like that I can watch days of television series and that I can’t spend 90 minutes watching films. Television series are about people, places and situations and the characters are realistic. In contrast films are superficial, shallow and too full of special effects for a story to be told. The cinema loses out because it is too superficial, too pretentious without offering something contrast at the end of the donated time.

Digital television in the UK

1.1 The three months to the end of December 2006 (Q4) saw over 1,000,000 net household conversions to digital television (DTV) in the UK, following on from 800,000 additions in the previous Q3. Growth was driven by another strong quarter for digital terrestrial television (DTT), with total sales of DTT equipment reaching 2.4 million. 1.2 The digital cable and satellite platforms also added over 300,000 households between them during the quarter.

An impressive personality

How many people have the ability to walk out in front of a crowd of hundreds and a televisual audience of several thousand? I don’t think that many, especially not with the confidence of this young girl. If I understood her correctly her name is Johanna and she is from Romania. I was watching the footage of the Youth Eurovision song contest and when she came on stage I was surprised by the strength of character she displayed at such a young age.

Television Series

I love watching television series on DVD and straight from the hard disk. You never understand the complexity of the storyline until you spend 12 hours or more watching entire seasons of series like Scrubs or House. If you look at the series scrubs you’ll get to know the characters very well and they’ll become far more interesting than if you were to watch only an episode a week. That’s probably why they have channels where you run a series every day for a number of days before going back to the beginning again.