It's obvious that TV makers have decided that seeing artifacts is not preferable. I wish that was toggleable.

Implicitly TV users are also prohibited from making their own technical decisions. I claim this is because the TV predates the era of open computing platforms like Unix.

> I claim this is because the TV predates the era of open computing platforms like Unix.

I claim it's because DRM, since if it wasn't for DRM wanting control of the whole reception to display path to be protected, you could just stick an open computing device in between the streaming signal and the display device, and make your own technical choices.

You still can, AFAIK, for content that doesn't require HDCP.

I don't think it has anything to do with Unix or DRM or any of that.

It's because we have a trendy now-decades-long wave of product managers and designers who assume their job is to know better than the user.

Open source software is not immune.

TV and broadcasting in general has always been mostly controlled in a top-down manner by companies and governments, since before computers existed.

cough Ubuntu cough

cough systemd cough

I remember having a TV tuner card back in the day on my old desktop and this is exactly what I did. I don't watch much TV or anything so.I haven't really checked, but are such cards available today with the encrypted digital cable that's ubiquitous everywhere? Even most broadcast is digital now and requires a decoder box between.

OTA: Yes.

Cable: no, you'd need a CableCard, and approved device (i.e. DVR), etc.

> the TV predates the era of open computing platforms like Unix.

Do you mean Unix-like? I'm not sure what you mean by "open" in this instance, but Unix definitely was not very open, leading to nascent platforms and movements such as GNU and Free/Libre software.

It's easy to say this but flipping through channels could be 30s straight of garbled images, followed by learned behavior to flip channels slowly.

I recall reading about TVs with multiple tuners to resolve adjacent channels when flipping, but I don't remember if they actually made it to market.

True, and the decoders in receivers already have this capability, since they keep decoding even if the forward-error-correction can't save the stream any more, resulting in similar artifacts. I'm not sure why it's not done on a channel change, perhaps it's the manufacturers not wanting their TVs to routinely show glitched footage, or perhaps advertisers don't want it because it would be against Corporate Design rules to glitch-effect the logos they use on the daily.

Our cable box has three decoders. My gf can watch one channel and record two others at the same time.

Yet does it use any of those extra decoders when not recording to proactively decode the previous and next channel, or something smart like that? No, of course not...

Recording doesn't use a full decoder.

The incoming channel data stream is saved as-is. It will need a demultiplexer to separate out one channel from the multi-channel data stream, but it won't need to decode that stream, which is the intensive bit. Decoding happens when you play it back later.

Ah, I did check out the specs again and it does indeed say it has a bunch of tuners, not decoders.

Mental slip then. Thanks for the correction, very interesting.

> proactively decode the previous and next channel

Do you find yourself actually moving up and down the channels, and not through the guide to somewhere else entirely different than where you once where? My first move if I'm switching channels is to go to the guide, not to a channel one above or below my current channel.

I suppose it could run on the previous channel, but it certainly can't guess my next channel.

The first startup I worked with was an IPTV startup that would send the I-Frames for the channels on either side of the channel you were watching at the higher bandwidth tiers so you could channel flip instantly like the old days.

Toxic culture and relationships so the startup imploded, but there was some cool tech.

There is also the matter of modern screens needing 5-30 seconds to "boot" when old TVs and monitors turned on in less than a second.

CRTs did tend to take a couple seconds to properly warm up, charge up and reach final image size (the image is directly scaled by the acceleration voltage, which is a high impedance source charging a not-so-small capacitor formed by the aquadag on the inside and outside of the picture tube).

CRTs did need a moment to stabilize the image, but they showed signs of life virtually instantly. At the least they'd make a little noise and had buttons with tactile feedback so you knew something was happening. Many screens today have capacitive touch buttons and have 5 seconds or more between a button 'press' and anything happening at all, leaving you to wonder if you even managed to successfully press the power button in the first place.

Yes! I remember movies and TV shows would have scenes where a character is called and told to turn on the TV for breaking news. They'd see it the story instantly, and that was actually realistic! (Assuming it was big enough news to be on all channels.)

Today if you had such a scene they'd be like, "okay <presses remote, waits five very immersion-breaking seconds>".

> Today if you had such a scene they'd be like, "okay <presses remote, waits five very immersion-breaking seconds>".

But they still have these scenes in movies

The way these scenes work now is "picks up phone - check the news!", they grab the remote, and turn the volume up on one of the many already running and tuned in wall-mounted 24/7 on TVs ... :)

>But they still have these scenes in movies

Yes, and if such a TV turns on instantly, that scene is not realistic.

(I think if the were going for realism today, they'd say "pull up reddit/Drudge/google news".)

Are we talking about seeking in media players, or streaming websites? If I watch a random twitch stream I just see a loading throbber, while it loads, not a artifacted version.

I won't be surprised if TV manufacturers further screw customers by forcing them to watch ads in between switching channels.