Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with television

Macbook with old tv?

the twistinside — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:26:55 -0800

I want to be able to watch Netflix from my laptop on my very old tv. Is this possible? What cables would I need? I have a MacBook from about two years ago, and a Toshiba tv from 2005. Its model number is MD20Q41 if that helps. Would this be possible?
The Bluths are back [and I want to see them on my tv]!

What was this (cable?) US/Canadian comedy sketch from the late 80s?

pammeke — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:14:43 -0800

Sometime in the late 80s I saw a comedy sketch on TV which combined all the major world religions into one quasi-rap song (or madrigal-chant). The only parts I remember are "Sister Mary Elizabeth, hit me with a stick!" "Oh by the way, have you been born again?" and "Hare Krishna Hare Rama, here's your cookbook, where's my dollar?" Anyone know what this was? I promise I didn't make it up.

Buying a TV: high quality, low cost.

dr handsome — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:16:18 -0800

I guess specifically I'm wondering what budget televisions (in the $300-400 range-- that and below) are good at the moment. Emphasis on picture quality (over, say, smart TV features and all that nonsense) and a slight, slight preference for more HDMI ports if possible. Though picture quality is key. But since I enjoy making these questions as helpful to the overall Ask MeFi community as possible I'll also ask: what's your go to site or method for researching televisions? If you weren't recommending me a specific television, that's specifically right for my needs at this specific moment in time what avenues would you recommend I find my answer because I know in the months and years to come this one recommendation won't mean much.

Let me tell you a story about a horse while I diffuse this missile...

katyggls — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:41:37 -0800

I'm trying to find TV shows (or films) that contain a particular trope that I noticed while watching some old 1980's shows lately. Namely shows where the main character provides a sort of running narration throughout. I was watching the pilot episode of Macgyver on Netflix yesterday and noticed that during the beginning of the episode, the main character (Macgyver) was narrating a story about an encounter with a Palomino horse in voiceover while on screen he was diffusing a missile in central Asia (YT link of what I'm referring to). It made me realize -or recall- that this was a pretty commonly used trope in 1970's and 1980's TV, where the main character would narrate or provide voice over commentary while we watched whatever they were doing on screen. I know Quantum Leap did this a lot and if I recall correctly, I think Magnum P.I. did it too.

What I'm looking for are other examples of TV shows that did this (or films). Are there any current or more recent TV shows that do this? I haven't noticed any recent examples of it myself so I'm curious as to why it's a trope that has been largely abandoned (if it has). Do current TV viewers see it as breaking the fourth wall?

television shows worth watching (that are ignorable, though.)

heeeraldo — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:33:58 -0800

After plowing our way through a couple seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race, the gentleman caller and I are looking for a new TV show we can enjoy without always needing to pay attention. We've spent a good number of lazy evenings and/or late mornings watching and, well, not watching RuPaul's Drag Race (and Untucked) but it's time to branch out, since there's only one season and All-Stars left.

Drag Race turned out to be pretty ideal because there are fairly obvious stretches you can ignore without missing too much, and it's not so serious that you feel weird having it on in the background while making out.

a little bit about us: we're both in our late twenties, and huge nerds: big on hard sci-fi, certainly, but also a lot of British humour, and we're not averse to campiness. We are, however, averse to laugh tracks.

You Speak Valyrian?

DirtyOldTown — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:19:53 -0800

Last week's Game of Thrones was fantastic and reminded me that one of my favorite kinds of scenes in film and television is a scene I like to call the You Have Chosen the Absolute Wrong Person to Fuck With scene. The basic setup is that a character feels entirely positive they have another character under their thumb only to have a moment of panic and terror as they realize precisely the opposite to be true. Can you name terrific examples of this? A classic example in film would be the "If he asks us to stay, we'll go," scene from Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. A tv example I greatly enjoyed was in the final season of Lost in one of the parallel universe scenes, when Keamy is trying to put the squeeze on Sayid for Sayid's brother's debt.

What are some more terrific examples of this trope in film and television?

How can I stream live television to 50-100 computers?

Bathtub Bobsled — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 20:59:30 -0800

What is an inexpensive hardware and software configuration that would allow someone to stream a handful of channels of live TV to 50-100 computers, accessing these on demand? I've been contracted by an educational institution to do an upgrade to some of their network systems. Primary project is running GigE throughout several buildings. In a conversation with the customer, he was remarking that their cable provider wants to charge them $40k/month to set up cable feeds in all of the rooms (or maybe it was $40k to install... I may have misheard). This is utterly ridiculous, since he only wants 4-5 channels available, and it will be rarely used more than 50-100 times on a given week. The only exception is presidential inaugurations, shuttle launches, or other nationally televised events they will all watch at the same time (2 times a year at the most).

As I was driving home, I thought about my home setup using TVHeadend and RasBMC/XBMC. I have a PCIE TV tuner, and it can stream my HD cable to different rooms, and we can even DVR to an external USB 3.0 SSD without issue. My wife and I can be watching multiple channels, and I can PiP on my laptop. It works very smooth and it's not a remarkably robust or expensive system. I mean, one of the clients is a Rasberry Pi.

So, I thought, how hard would it be to setup a dual-Xeon with 4 tuner cards, and use a some sort of broadcasting stream (only broadcasting those 4-5 channels, and the 1 channel during big events) that allows them to open up a client like XBMC or the already installed WMC and watch the broadcast of whatever channel they want. For the scale he's looking for, I figure VLC, MythTV, or TVHeadend, and a well configured tower should be able to do the trick for less than $4000, right? Or am I overlooking something?

Also, there is no need for the ability to pause, rewind, or record anything. Just to pull up the channel and watch, the same as you would on a regular television.

What was the name of a TV device from the 90's used for trivia/sports?

blueplasticfish — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:38:23 -0800

In the late 80's early 90's there was a device you could use while watching television. From what I remember, this device required some type of subscription and allowed you to play along while watching game shows and sporting events. It was black, had buttons on the sides, and a basic LED screen in the middle with an extendable radio antenna. Does anyone know what this device was? What the name of it was?

Free KaKu television in the sky?

shipbreaker — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:52:46 -0800

My uncle gave me a DirecTV SlimLine dish with a three-LNB head (119, 110, 103/101/99). Can I point it at the sky somewhere to get free KaKu band TV channels? What I don't have and what I don't want is a DirecTV subscription or cable box. I have tons of old VCRs, old TiVOs, and old NTSC TVs with giant cathode ray tubes and UHF/VHF channel-changing knobs.

I can buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/Satellite-Finder-Meter-For-Directv/dp/B000OGS6WO

to find strong signals in the sky, using some amateur astronomy tricks on a clear night? Protractors and sextants for measuring angles above the horizon?

Without a DirecTV box, is this dish useful for anything?

Anyone Remember Dorman's Endico Cheese? Got A/V From Their TV Ads?

ZenMasterThis — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:04:28 -0800

Hope me, hive mind; hope me find this TV ad! My buddy bet me it couldn't be done; let's prove him wrong... TV stations in the NYC metro area (and probably other metro areas, at least in the Northeast) used to run ads for " Dorman's Endico Cheese ... The Cheese with the Paper Between the Slices" back in the 70's. It featured cartoon cows dancing to a jingle.

Google & YouTube searches have turned-up Victor Dorman's obit :( but no audio or video of the ad.

Anyone know where I can find this treasured memory from our childhood? Thanks!

Looking for examples of a literary trope translated to a visual medium

Lucinda — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:53:09 -0800

Sometimes in a novel, you will have Character A and Character B. Fast forward to the big twist that Character A and Character B ARE THE SAME PERSON! Obviously this doesn't work when the novel is adapted for the screen, and I'm looking for examples of adaptations that had to deal with this, and how they dealt with it, and any sort of critique of how it was dealt with in the movie/television show. (Spoilers of all sorts inside) I'm aware of Game of Thrones, Marathon Man and A Kiss Before Dying.

How to get Comcast and Tivo to work together?

The corpse in the library — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:23:15 -0800

I have a Tivo Premiere. I have Comcast. How do I avoid throwing my TV out the window in frustration? About once a week I'll turn on HBO and see a message that that channel is not authorized. It is authorized, so I call Comcast, spend 10 minutes dealing with their customer service line, they send a signal to my Tivo's cable card, and within an hour HBO is working properly... for a while.

Last week I called Comcast and got it temporarily fixed through the phone menus. I dialed the usual Comcast number, followed the prompts, and was given an option along the lines of "If you are seeing an error message that the channel is not authorized, press 3." I pressed it, Comcast did something, and HBO clicked on immediately. I didn't have to deal with their customer service and the results were instant.

This happens with a few other channels, as well. Sometimes I sit down to watch several day's worth of shows and find that none of them have been recorded because of that issue. This is annoying.

My questions:
1. Who's fault is this? Tivo's? Comcast's? Mine?
2. How can I stop this from happening?
3. If I can't stop it, how can I get back to that phone menu? The customer service people couldn't help when I asked.

The Boy Who Read Too Much

Admiral Haddock — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:51:40 -0800

Childhood Books: When I was a kid, I had a short illustrated book about The Boy Who Read Too Much or The Boy Who Didn't Like Television or something. It was about a boy who only wanted to read, but his parents wanted him to watch TV. Tongue in cheek, obviously--I seem to remember it being illustrated in a sort of Roz Chast-y style. Does this ring a bell for anyone? I don't remember the title well enough to do a fruitful Google search.

Epguides as a todo list?

Nelson — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:47:26 -0800

Is there a website to help me keep track of which episodes of a TV series I've watched? I love the Walking Dead. It went on break last fall and I missed that it started up a month ago and now a couple of the episodes my Tivo recorded have already disappeared. More generally I watch TV out of order, or in bursts, and I can never keep track of which episodes of something I watched or when they'll rebroadcast.

I'm looking for a website where I sign up and say "I like this show" and it keeps track of which episodes I watched, which have been shown but I haven't seen yet, and notifies me when they're being broadcast, shown again on cable, or made available via iTunes/Netflix/Amazon or whatever. I wouldn't mind some social features like GoodReads where I share my opinions on shows with friends, but mostly I just want to keep track of what I'm watching. A site like EpGuides has most of the raw data (episode numbers, original air date) but it doesn't have a personal viewing tracking system. Bonus points if it works well for a prolific show like Chopped which has a zillion episodes and not much of a fanbase keeping tracking of them all.

What precludes cable providers from controlling the ads via the DVR/box?

halseyaa — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 08:31:55 -0800

What precludes cable providers from controlling the ads via the DVR/box? (just a random question I've had bouncing around in the back of my mind for a while. I am not from the industry so I very well may be operating under misconceptions)

So, today tv ads are (mostly) run by the networks and are a part of the content those networks provide to the cable provider.

What is stopping cable companies from flipping on the networks and insert their own ads via the DVR/box? If I am TimeWarner, or AT&T Uverse or whoever, why don't I simply pause the content they provide and inject my own ads into the stream?

I could see a lot of use cases for this. For example, Uverse could decided to let me choose how much I want to pay per month for cable, and they could show me an amount of advertising that corresponds to my choice (high monthly fee, no ads; low monthly fee, lots of extra ads)

Obviously the networks would probably be pretty pissed about this, but without the telecom providers they lose out on a large part of their distribution model.

I could even see this applying to High Speed Internet access, where the option of low cost monthly billing would result in interstitial ads.

I'm not saying this scenario would be good or bad, and I'm not a big fan of the telecom providers at any rate, but I'm curious why something like this hasn't happened. I am sure it is something they have thought of but I don't see the potential for upsetting each other as a high enough barrier to trying something like this. Or maybe someone is doing this and I just haven't heard of it.

I'm sure you clever MeFis have some ideas!

Please recommend interesting/funny/awesome TV series to a bored shut-in

abbagoochie — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:19:15 -0800

I've finished watching all my favourite things and am televisually lost while I wait for Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire to start again. Can you suggest English/American/Australian etc series (will also accept interesting BBC documentaries) that are actually watchable? I am kind of half heartedly watching Archer at the mo, and just winced through the pilot episode of How I Met Your Mother. I tried the pilot of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia but the intro sequence seemed too close to bad improv. Help me root out the stuff worth eyeball time! As a guide, things I like/d (apart from the aforementioned BB and BE):

- Pulling (UK)
- Catterick (UK)
- Human Remains/Nighty Night/the pilot of Lizzie and Sarah (UK)
- Twin Peaks
- Downton Abbey
- Girls
- Dexter
- Wilfred
- Eastbound and Down
- Futurama

I know there must be a ton of stuff I'm missing. Please help me to make it through this awful stomach bug that won't seem to go away!

Finished Doc Martin & Ballykissangel...what next?

iamisaid — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:56:36 -0800

I really enjoy British TV dramas, with two of my favorites being Ballykissangel and Doc Martin, the latter of which I recently finished. What other British shows would you recommend in this same vein - that is, lighthearted hour-long dramas with a dash of comedy? No detective shows, please. As in the two mentioned above, rural settings with quirky characters are a plus. I love Downton Abbey but am not really looking for period-pieces. Ideally available on Netflix (streaming or disc), Amazon Prime Video, or elsewhere online.

The supposed tech savvy daughter has failed.

youandiandaflame — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 07:04:21 -0800

My parents would like to get a Roku box so they can cancel their insanely expensive DishTV subscription. How do I do this? Can I get them these specific channels? My parents are looking to get rid of their satellite television. Currently, they're spending over $100 a month on the service and I'm under the impression that using a Roku box with their wifi would be cheaper. Is this possible?

As mentioned, my parents have wifi. They'd like access to local news and weather, ESPN, HBO, Speed channel, and the ability to purchase movies. My dad would probably also like access to those channels that show things like Ice Road Truckers and what-not.

I know that I can sign them up for Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and Netflix but is it possible to add things like ESPN? My dad will want to watch his races in real-time, not after the fact. I have perused the HBO Go and ESPN sites and can't find anything that would clarify this for me. I'm pretty tech savvy but I just can't seem to figure this out.

What are their options here? Are there better boxes than the Roku? Will I be able to somehow get them those channels they want?

That’s all, folks!

mon-ma-tron — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:41:53 -0800

Asking for a friend who needs help (FAST!) finding a home for 200 to 300 scenic backdrops from film and television. So, my friend (we’ll call him Huck) works for a theatrical scene services company in Albuquerque, and about two years ago they got a call from someone at a trucking company who had an abandoned trailer full of “we think it’s some kind of scenery and do you want all of it?” It turned out to be about 500 to 600 painted and photographic backdrops for film and TV, and yes, they did want them. The company has been storing them ever since, and even though they’ve donated/sold about half, they can’t afford to store them anymore.

Here’s the email from Huck:

So we have approximately 200-300 professionally painted backdrops, possibly more, from film and television, mostly Warner Brothers, ranging in size from around 10 feet x 12 feet to around 35 feet x 120 feet. Most are from the past 20 years or so, some go back to the ‘40s or ‘50s (the earliest dated one we’ve found is from 1952). The majority are uncatalogued and unlabeled as to the project they were attached to, but we do have photos of some of them. Most are translucencies. The painted ones are on either muslin or canvas, the photographs are on photo paper. Most are stored rolled and still attached to battens (up to approx. 40 feet long), however some are folded (mostly larger pieces, webbed and grometted), and the photographic drops are rolled in tubes (up to approx. 20’ long). We’re looking for someone who can use them.

If we don’t find someone interested in them, we’ll be auctioning off the entire lot this Saturday. I know this is really short timing. I can probably delay the auction if anyone is willing to pay something up front. If it was just me, I'd be more than happy to wait. Anyone interested can come by the shop on Friday, February 22, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm and still buy individual drops.

There are representative samples of the types of drops that are included posted here. These are not part of what we’ll be selling, but they are of the same type, quality, and size (except the Looney Tunes). They’re beautiful, but we don’t have the space or resources to catalogue and store the remainder.

Thank you so much. I wish I'd asked you a month ago. Running too much to have me a good think.

My friend’s scenic company has:

tried selling them (mostly unsuccessfully) on eBay;
directly contacted numerous theatrical companies both locally and elsewhere;
donated some to schools both locally and elsewhere;
contacted some film/tv studios (they don't have as many contacts there as in the theatrical community);
posted the backdrops on their website;
posted the backdrops on the websites of other theatrical sales and rental companies;
posted the backdrops through theatrical email lists and such;
tried a lot of word of mouth (apparently, the national theatrical community is actually small enough that that does mean something);
even painted over some of them for their own use.

These backdrops are beautiful, and represent an enormous amount of work. You’d think there would be some interest in them as historic artifacts (maybe in LA?). Or did the film/tv industry consider these sort of backdrops disposable?

Huck would love ideas about places/people he could contact to find a home for these backdrops, preferably to sell (so they can recoup some of their storage costs), but also to donate. Or maybe even other (non-theatrical) uses? Or if anyone would like to get in touch with him directly, or wants to go by the Albuquerque shop in person, please MeMail me for Huck’s contact/directions to the shop.

Andy Cramed's boots

invitapriore — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:31:57 -0800

There's a scene in Deadwood and I can't figure out entirely what it's doing there. It's spoilery, so details below the fold. At the end of William Bullock's funeral, we see Martha Bullock come up the walkway in front of the Bullock home and sort of force Andy Cramed off to the side and into the creek (video). Soon after there's a shot of just his boots as he stands in the water. My question is, what does this little sequence do? I know that David Milch's style as both writer and showrunner involved a lot of improvisation, especially towards the end of a season, but there's something about this moment that feels significant that I can't put my finger on -- I've noticed that Milch likes to imbue certain characters and situations with allegorical significance (Merrick as an embodiment of the fourth estate comes to mind) and for some reason I feel like that's going on here and I'm just missing something. I could be wrong, and it might just be there as another instance of Martha Bullock's anger and denial at her son's death, but in any case that scene has stuck with me since I saw it.

How to go from zero to TV?

barnone — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:31:11 -0800

We haven't had a proper TV in over a decade. I would like to have something other than my laptop to watch streaming media, DVDs, Netflix, etc. Can you explain how this works in 2013? I imagine we'd buy something like this Samsung LED HDTV and some kind of speakers. Then what? Do we plug it into a laptop? What exactly is Apple TV and how does it stack up against Roku? This seems like it should be a simple question, but I feel like a caveman emerging from the dark, and am fairly bewildered at all of the options and variations out there. I tried watching TV on my LED monitor and it was fairly grainy and jumpy. That could be a function of my aging laptop, or maybe it was just the video, but I'm keen on setting up a better screen situation.

- Cable TV isn't likely.
- Gaming capacity isn't required.
- Cost isn't a huge consideration, but I'd appreciate tips on where I can save money, and where to spend more for the best value.
- Interested in 'sleeker' solutions, rather than a million different boxes and cables and remotes.

Most of our media comes from:
- Amazon Instant Video
- Netflix
- iTunes store
- Hulu
- Various websites (i.e. PBS for Downton Abbey, ABC for Grey's Anatomy)
- Occasional DVDs
- Downloaded material

If you could start from scratch tomorrow, how would you set up your media system? Any big changes coming down the pipeline that will change things in a year or two? What's a good reference in terms of choosing a screen size?

Any suggestions on speakers? Bonus points if the speakers could be connected (via wifi or bluetooth) to other devices for music streaming.

Thanks for any instructions, tips or links to good explanatory articles.

Proper Mounting Techniques

backseatpilot — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:37:26 -0800

After years of renting, I can finally (finally!) mount my TV and speakers to the walls. Help me not screw this up. There is plaster and lath involved. Some time over the next couple months I would like to finally get the TV and speakers in their rightful places on the walls of our living room. I don't really know what I'm doing, and I want to make sure I don't mess this up. There's a fairly obvious place for the television (a previous owner remodeled and put about a billion outlets on one wall), but other than that I need some advice.

1) We have a 32" TV, and looking online that size seems to be right at the crossover point between "small" and "large" mount sizes. I'm assuming I should get a "large" mount so I can upgrade in the future - is there any reason I should get the smaller one?

2) I have dutifully kept all the mounting hardware for the speakers (5.1 system) since I bought them years ago. Do I need to do anything special since I'm drilling into plaster and lath instead of drywall? I believe the front speaker mounts just have standard drywall screws, but the rears require drilling a larger hole and using butterfly bolts.

3) Where do the speakers go? How do I place them if I want to provide space for a larger TV in the future?

4) What's the best way to run all the wiring through the walls? Do I want to install wall plates for the speaker cable? What about all the other stuff?

Anything else I'm not thinking of? I'd like to accomplish this without a lot of extra, unnecessary holes in the walls. Thanks!

A British A.V. Club?

kaisemic — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:15:42 -0800

I'm an American who loves British television but am tired of discovering shows only after they have finished. Is there a UK-centric equivalent of The A.V. Club—i.e., a site that covers currently airing British television series?

Which is truly better? Cable or Dish Network?

dep — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:28:01 -0800

One of the longest-running modern-day battles is that of Cable vs. Dish Network. Both seem to basically offer the same stuff. Most everything I read says Dish Network offers everything Cable does, except it's cheaper. Which is better and why? Does Dish Network really go out when it rains or is cloudy? Do you have experience with both and a compelling reason for one over the other? Thanks in advance.

Shut the French what, now?

GaelFC — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:28:25 -0800

So Sunday night at the SAG Awards, "Downton Abbey" actress Phyllis Logan hollered, "Shut the French windows!" when the show won an award. Is this a common Scottish/English saying? A pop-culture reference? Just a British version of "well, butter mah biscuits"? Any information would be appreciated.