We’re reaching an age where today’s children are less likely to watch live television. Between DVRs, YouTube, Hulu, and streaming content available on Netflix, Little Miss Techie and Captain Computer won’t know what it was like to be in front of a television at a certain day and time to catch newest episodes of their favorite shows.
No more double header of 90210 and Melrose Place or the bonding in college common rooms over Thursday Must See TV. They won’t have the nail biting experiences that my housemates and I experienced in grad school as we rushed home from Friendly’s with ice cream sundaes as to not miss a minute of the latest South Park episode.
DVRs enable our kids to have episodes of their favorite shows accessible ready to play at a whim. Tech Savvy Daddy and I stream episodes of Lost on a laptop if we are traveling and can’t wait to watch it at home on the DVR. Little Miss Techie and Captain Computer can watch clips from favorite PBS shows on PBS Kids or PBS Kids Go or skits from Sesame Street on YouTube.
And while Netflix introduced the ability to stream movies and TV episodes for instant gratification back in November, they just announced that South Park and Nickelodeon shows like Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, iCarly, True Jackson, VP, and SpongeBob SquarePants are now available for streaming.
The ability to stream is a wonderful thing. The content you want, ready when you want to watch it. Instant gratification.
But for me, 139 episodes of South Park I can stream off of Netflix is more Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny than I ever needed in graduate school. In this case, delayed gratification was probably a good thing!
Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
©2012
This is going to sound really OLD of me, but I remember being home sick in middle school and watching the same channel all day because I didn’t want to GET UP to change the channel!!! (Not to mention we probably only had about 15 options!) Now, when we are visiting my parents (who don’t have on demand, etc) Lucas truly can not understand why they can’t make Handy Manny or Dora appear the moment he requests it!
We don’t have TV reception in our house. Our TV is only for videos and DVDS. With a computer and the Internet we don’t miss much anymore. We’re still light watchers, but are big fans on Hulu.com. And of course, we were able to watch election news and debates online.
We’re going to have to wait for Flight of the Conchords to come out on DVD, though. 🙁
I remember as a child being upset that song we heard on the radio couldn’t be paused or repeated, which makes me old, I guess.