DVD Entertainment - An Alternative to Television Programming
DVD entertainment used to be the once a week family ritual Sunday night after dinner when the kids were young.
We would clear the table, do the dishes, get everyone comfy on the sofa and watch one or two DVD movies the whole family could enjoy...
which usually were Disney movies the kids wanted to see.
Or see again.
There is an unwritten rule that, as a parent, you gotta love Walt Disney.
Now the kids are grown and (mostly) gone and I am too busy most of the time to sit in front of the television waiting for something interesting to come on.
As my time has become more precious to me, television commercials have become an unacceptable annoyance in what should be an entirely enjoyable time for me to see what I choose to watch without constant program interruptions.
What used to be an infrequent use of DVD entertainment has become just about a mainstay as far as what I watch on television.
Although there are a few programs on local network broadcasting I will watch with my husband once in awhile, it is only to spend companionable time with him.
The television is rarely turned on when he is away.
While never a fan of commercial television, living in the north woods of Wisconsin when there were only three local channels we could get with extra aluminum foil on the rabbit ears made it easy to ignore the bad in order to have some connection with the outside world.
My tolerance for all things annoying was much higher back then as well but there was no way to justify paying for cable television.
When we moved to the Milwaukee area in 1988 we suddenly had a dozen network channels at our disposal without subscribing to cable.
And we had two PBS stations to work with.
It was a change in lifestyle.
PBS offered absolutely great programming for the kids and became much more of a staple for family entertainment than the hideously commercial infested programs on network television.
The children were responding to marketing directed toward them and that was both disturbing and difficult to counteract.
Once they started school it was impossible.
Early on, purchasing recorded programs on VHS tapes became a way to give the children what we felt was good entertainment without causing too many problems most of the time.
There were a few super heroes that managed a try to live vicariously through our son once or twice but no serious harm was done.
We were all very grateful for that.
It can be hard to tell what devices or triggers are embedded in programs or movies we watch online or on television today.
Marketing used to be so much more obvious and straightforward; here is our product, this is what it does, this is how you benefit, now buy it.
Today big dollar marketing is based on brain wave patterns, and psychological triggers that are intended to give us a sense of urgency and desire; here is our product which is a very limited edition and only a tiny few are available right now, it will do whatever you want it to do but you must buy it now, you must buy it now, you must buy it now, you must buy it now.
Very gradually the children began to see marketing for what it was but they still desired the products that were marketed to them.
This was right at the same time that DVD entertainment became available and we immediately began to convert from VHS to DVD whenever we had the purchasing choice.
Local and online DVD rental became a much more frequent and encouraged thing in our house from that point forward if there was nothing interesting to watch on PBS.
When PBS was forced to plead for money on a regular basis instead of showing commercials to pay for their programming, at first I contributed.
When the pleading began to happen every few weeks and last for a couple of weeks at a time thus messing up any previous viewing schedule I had enjoyed, I stopped watching PBS on a regular basis.
I gave up on TV just about completely but I missed my shows.
I bought the television shows I wanted to see on DVD! Problem solved.
Today I prefer to watch DVD movies or television shows on DVD so that I can control the marketing instead of having it control my time.
More and more DVDs are front loaded with unavoidable interruptions mostly in the form of trailers for other DVDs.
It is easy and fun to fast forward through these to get to the main menu as quickly as possible.
It might even be fun to watch them once, but again I dislike the lack of choice in watching what I want to watch and nothing more.
So even while DVD entertainment is not perfect, it offers one choice of freedom from being forced to endure the work of marketing geniuses who target viewers in every program on television.
It is also looking more affordable with the next generation of media storage called Blu-ray entering the market as a step up.
Eventually Blu-ray will rule the world and DVD entertainment will be a blurb in the history books.
Progress is good!
We would clear the table, do the dishes, get everyone comfy on the sofa and watch one or two DVD movies the whole family could enjoy...
which usually were Disney movies the kids wanted to see.
Or see again.
There is an unwritten rule that, as a parent, you gotta love Walt Disney.
Now the kids are grown and (mostly) gone and I am too busy most of the time to sit in front of the television waiting for something interesting to come on.
As my time has become more precious to me, television commercials have become an unacceptable annoyance in what should be an entirely enjoyable time for me to see what I choose to watch without constant program interruptions.
What used to be an infrequent use of DVD entertainment has become just about a mainstay as far as what I watch on television.
Although there are a few programs on local network broadcasting I will watch with my husband once in awhile, it is only to spend companionable time with him.
The television is rarely turned on when he is away.
While never a fan of commercial television, living in the north woods of Wisconsin when there were only three local channels we could get with extra aluminum foil on the rabbit ears made it easy to ignore the bad in order to have some connection with the outside world.
My tolerance for all things annoying was much higher back then as well but there was no way to justify paying for cable television.
When we moved to the Milwaukee area in 1988 we suddenly had a dozen network channels at our disposal without subscribing to cable.
And we had two PBS stations to work with.
It was a change in lifestyle.
PBS offered absolutely great programming for the kids and became much more of a staple for family entertainment than the hideously commercial infested programs on network television.
The children were responding to marketing directed toward them and that was both disturbing and difficult to counteract.
Once they started school it was impossible.
Early on, purchasing recorded programs on VHS tapes became a way to give the children what we felt was good entertainment without causing too many problems most of the time.
There were a few super heroes that managed a try to live vicariously through our son once or twice but no serious harm was done.
We were all very grateful for that.
It can be hard to tell what devices or triggers are embedded in programs or movies we watch online or on television today.
Marketing used to be so much more obvious and straightforward; here is our product, this is what it does, this is how you benefit, now buy it.
Today big dollar marketing is based on brain wave patterns, and psychological triggers that are intended to give us a sense of urgency and desire; here is our product which is a very limited edition and only a tiny few are available right now, it will do whatever you want it to do but you must buy it now, you must buy it now, you must buy it now, you must buy it now.
Very gradually the children began to see marketing for what it was but they still desired the products that were marketed to them.
This was right at the same time that DVD entertainment became available and we immediately began to convert from VHS to DVD whenever we had the purchasing choice.
Local and online DVD rental became a much more frequent and encouraged thing in our house from that point forward if there was nothing interesting to watch on PBS.
When PBS was forced to plead for money on a regular basis instead of showing commercials to pay for their programming, at first I contributed.
When the pleading began to happen every few weeks and last for a couple of weeks at a time thus messing up any previous viewing schedule I had enjoyed, I stopped watching PBS on a regular basis.
I gave up on TV just about completely but I missed my shows.
I bought the television shows I wanted to see on DVD! Problem solved.
Today I prefer to watch DVD movies or television shows on DVD so that I can control the marketing instead of having it control my time.
More and more DVDs are front loaded with unavoidable interruptions mostly in the form of trailers for other DVDs.
It is easy and fun to fast forward through these to get to the main menu as quickly as possible.
It might even be fun to watch them once, but again I dislike the lack of choice in watching what I want to watch and nothing more.
So even while DVD entertainment is not perfect, it offers one choice of freedom from being forced to endure the work of marketing geniuses who target viewers in every program on television.
It is also looking more affordable with the next generation of media storage called Blu-ray entering the market as a step up.
Eventually Blu-ray will rule the world and DVD entertainment will be a blurb in the history books.
Progress is good!
Source...