TV Thread - beware, [expletive] can get spoilery

[Vidor]

Typically fantastic episode of "The Americans" last night. Although I don't know why they keep wasting time with Stan's wife.

[33anda3rd]

Bevers sits on a couch playing XBox and eating Abbi's food. Is he more or less real than, say, Ilana having a job at a Groupon-esque place where she does zero work and is allowed to stay on and abuse the job and poor Chris Gethard as the weak boss? Is Ilana keeping her weed in her vagina more ore less realistic than having a dude who sits on your couch all day playing video games? Is Bevers more or less ridiculous than Abbi, sprayed with mace after letting a rapist locksmith allow her into someone else's home, forced to do parkour by her boss after being caught in a lie, her backup clothes covered in lotion that Ilana stole from the gym, going into a vegan sandwich shop that she thought was a gallery and arguing with the owner about whether or not a sandwich requires meat? Those ladies are completely unafraid to look stupid and ridiculous, and are often the silliest and most far-fetched people on the show. I think in a lot of ways the show is really a modern Mary Tyler Moore. It's a couple young ladies in a big city who are learning to be adults and trying to spread their wings, but they live in a bizarro modern world that they're part of, and it's a world that's full of goofy stuff to laugh at.

[Jocephus]

random but eddie murphy *may* appear at the SNL 40th anniversary, which is apparently coming out in feb.

maybe

[ghostrunner]

Saw this mentioned the other day and now expanded upon in another article:

Shortly after the October announcement, HBO told its engineering team about the decision to cancel plans to develop its own technology platform. Instead of being developed internally, technology would be handled by MLB Advanced Media, a subsidiary of Major League Baseball best known for powering the technology that streams live baseball games. Going with this vendor would save millions, one of the sources close to Time Warner said.

A person who had worked on the earlier HBO strategy said that pulling back from building its own platform may come back to haunt the network. “HBO and Time Warner lost the appetite for the investment required to go big here,” the person said. “Old media lost its nerve.”

The people who worked on the earlier effort say there are drawbacks to having a third-party handle distribution of the product, including having less control over how subscribers experience it. They say HBO could be missing out on the long-term potential of owning all of the software behind the standalone service.

An HBO spokesman, in a statement, said “any business strategy undergoes many iterations,” and that it was confident in its decision. "We believe we landed in exactly the right place with MLB Advanced Media as our partner, and we will deliver a great product later this year that fully lives up to the reputation of the HBO brand," he said.

I've been pretty happy with MLB through the Xbox, and recorded streams might be less complicated than a live broadcast, but I wonder if this is good for HBO's service.

[go birds]

Saw this mentioned the other day and now expanded upon in another article:

Shortly after the October announcement, HBO told its engineering team about the decision to cancel plans to develop its own technology platform. Instead of being developed internally, technology would be handled by MLB Advanced Media, a subsidiary of Major League Baseball best known for powering the technology that streams live baseball games. Going with this vendor would save millions, one of the sources close to Time Warner said.

A person who had worked on the earlier HBO strategy said that pulling back from building its own platform may come back to haunt the network. “HBO and Time Warner lost the appetite for the investment required to go big here,” the person said. “Old media lost its nerve.”

The people who worked on the earlier effort say there are drawbacks to having a third-party handle distribution of the product, including having less control over how subscribers experience it. They say HBO could be missing out on the long-term potential of owning all of the software behind the standalone service.

An HBO spokesman, in a statement, said “any business strategy undergoes many iterations,” and that it was confident in its decision. "We believe we landed in exactly the right place with MLB Advanced Media as our partner, and we will deliver a great product later this year that fully lives up to the reputation of the HBO brand," he said.

I've been pretty happy with MLB through the Xbox, and recorded streams might be less complicated than a live broadcast, but I wonder if this is good for HBO's service.

Have the big boys over at Hbo ever watched MLB.tv?

Idk I guess I'm just confused about this? MLB advanced media sucks

[Famous Mortimer]

I particularly enjoyed my first season of MLB.tv where they'd put the scores for the half-innings on the little "skip to..." display, ensuring that unless you watched it from the beginning, plus all the ads, every game would be spoiled.

[Vidor]

I particularly enjoyed my first season of MLB.tv where they'd put the scores for the half-innings on the little "skip to..." display, ensuring that unless you watched it from the beginning, plus all the ads, every game would be spoiled.

Not many people are in the habit of watching time-delayed baseball games. God help us if the tyranny of the spoiler police gets into sports...we'll never be able to talk about anything again. Anyway, I used to very much appreciate the half-inning display.

[Jocephus]

[SHOW]

[heyzeus]

I finally have HBO Go, so I get plenty of time to watch shows while rocking the baby to sleep. I'm watching Silicon Valley now, and it's wonderful, which shouldn't be surprising given it's a Mike Judge joint.

[33anda3rd]

Silicon Valley is great, especially (and this is a big one, so don't look if you don't want to know)....

[SHOW]

the fact that the whole show pretty much exists to tell one brilliant dick joke in the last episode.