Waiting for Streaming TV Options

It is very disappointing. I look forward to 6:30 to 8:30 on weekdays to watch TV5 Monde's fiction programs. Today, the channel disappeared.

I had been surprised to find that the local cable was broadcasting TV5 Monde and DW after switching to digital cable. I was worried that the cable operator may have been sending these signals out of ignorance. My fears for these channels may have been correct.

It is particularly painful to realize that better television exists but we are stuck with 100's of un-watchable options :(

I wonder when we will have streaming options available in India. 

Update - The channels have re-appeared after 3 days. I hope they will stay :)

Shouldn't society be more helpful to victims of crime?

Two crime news items struck my attention, especially with a show I saw on TV5 Monde this week. 

The first news was about a person accused under the IT act possibly because the police did not know that the American date format is mmddyy and not ddmmyy :) A fairly obvious case of mistaken identity creating havoc in the life of an ordinary person.

The second news was the arrest of a landlord for not getting antecedents of his tenants checked! The tenants got into a fight and murdered a neighbour. As it is, getting someone to give accommodation on rent is very-very hard. I am sure filing papers with police will make it even harder and it is very doubtful if it makes the city any safer. I would be inclined to look at the landlord as a victim of the crime. His life is bound to be affected by what his tenants did.

The show on French tv was about victims of crime. In this episode, it was identity theft. One woman discovers that she is supposedly married when she tried to get married! Some woman had used her identity to get married. Why would one need to do that? Anyway, the victim has been struggling to get her past cleaned up.

In another incident, someone had defrauded a lot of banks by overdrawing on accounts by using the identity of a person. He is now stranded without any credit cards and is trying to clean up his fake past. He has to suffer little indignities like his clients looking at him strangely when he pays a large restaurant bill in cash!

It is easy to find that huge sums of money are spent on fighting crime and punishing criminals. Usually, few object to spending even more for these activities. Yet, I am not sure if any money at all is spent by the society in helping the victims.

Wouldn't it be more reasonable to accept that given human nature and our knowledge of biology, some crime will happen. Shouldn't we balance the expenditure - spend less on hopelessly trying to eliminate crime and spend some money on helping the victims cope.

Digital cable and discovering European channels

I was saddened by the disappearance of BBC Entertainment from India. Hence, it was quite a surprise to channel surf and find German channel DW in English and TV5 Monde, French with English subtitles on many of the shows.

The first pleasure is the pleasure of watching a show without interruptions. I think I have not had that experience since watching PBS in US 40 years ago! And I do not have to run to decrease volume during the announcements! It is such a civilized experience :)

I like the documentaries as they offer a different perspective. E.g. there was a show about crime or rather its impact on the victims. I am also delighted to find that French cinema has not been taken over by Hollywood. The story matters and is not overwhelmed by special effects. I had loved French cinema in the 60's and 70's, especially the New Wave, and could watch films by Truffaut, Rohmer, Bresson, Bunuel and more any number of times :)

I wanted to give feedback to Rajya Sabha TV and Lok Sabha TV where the interruptions seem unnecessary. However, the feedback form asks for too much information and, at the end of it, it mentioned that I had entered an incorrect character and I could not find any. I had just used [0-9a-zA-Z,.]. At best there may have been an enter as well. It doesn't matter as the suggestion would have been ignored anyway.

I like these channels as they often have discussions which are not shouting matches, speakers being interrupted in mid-sentence and obnoxious behaviour by the comperes. There is, though, an unfortunate trend to follow the commercial channels and make the shows look similar with multiple windows and occasional aggressive behaviour.

Even DD could dispense with ads and schedule a break between shows where longer informative commercials could be shown. I saw such a commercial on DW of Frankfurt Airport and I watched it!

My father did not like it but I would have liked to have been born a European - well, actually, a Finn!

Would Google TV be the solution

My television viewing has come down over the years. One of the major reasons is the ads. I checked that in an hour's show, the show time is less than 40 minutes with the ads and announcements making up the over twenty minutes. (I wonder if the channels cut parts of the show or were the original shows as bad.)

I have not been fond of Tivo-like solutions because chances are that I will record and never watch a show - just because it can be done any time. A number of dvd's stare at me - unseen for a year or more.

There is another possibility. I could start recording a show but start watching it half an hour later and skip over the ads. May be one day, I may actually change my subscription.

Or Google may make it irrelevant. I can see the potential of Google TV if the ads inflicted on a viewer are reduced. I estimate that over 90% of the ads on tv today have absolutely no interest or relevance to me. If the ratio holds true for others as well, it would imply that Google (internet) tv could reduce the ads by a factor of 10 and retain the same interest/relevance level for an individual user.