Yes, it seems like a really recent term to me. I first heard it when the writers strike began and never before that.
When I think streamer I think of people on Twitch or YouTube who stream themselves. No idea where calling streaming services/sites “streamers” came from but it always confuses me.
Mostly just poking fun. It came off as an odd flex (laughing at people who choose to pay for media) while also repping software that has features locked behind a paid tier (a subscription, at that)
For what it's worth Plex has been around since 2009. Emby on '08 and Kodi in '02. So anyone pirating before Jellyfins start around 2018 pretty much would be using either Plex, Emby, or Kodi. Frankly, Emby sucked until just a few years ago, and at least for my purposes for my purposes Jellyfin and Emby don't cut it. Back when I was trying to decide which to use I didn't like Kodi, but I haven't kept up with it so I can't speak on it today.
Plex also hasn't always been subscription only, or at least semi-frequently offer lifetime deals so it's just as reasonable as paying for something like access to real Debrid or whatever.
I-i mean yeah, what losers! Anyone who isn't self hosting bubble upnp streams to connect to their video player are living in the past man!
I was mostly just poking fun. Right now my media is only consumed at one location, so I primarily use Kodi on an Asus mini PC. I will likely keep Kodi as a client, and move to Jellyfin as a server in the future to allow for more clients.
EDIT: I understand downvoting my original tongue in cheek comment. Downvoting my response to someone’s follow up question is pretty odd though. Especially the guy signing in with multiple accounts to do so 🤨
“They should be fucking paying me for the amount of questions I am asked about a film I am not even in,” Crowe said. “It has nothing to do with me. In that world, I am dead. Six feet under. But I do admit to a certain tinge of jealousy, because it reminds me of when I was younger and what it meant for me, in my life.”
Because the fuckers producing the shows make the music and sound effects 5x louder than it needs to be but the dialogue half as loud as it needs to be.
It’s because they’re mixing dialogue for the center channel speaker. Most people don’t have a center channel on their TV or sound bar, but some "Dialogue Mode"s will exclusively play the center channel and drown out the sound effects. It’s a trade off, but one that most manufacturers don’t even give the option for.
For me, at least, it’s the fucking bad audio. So goddamn often the sound makes someone difficult to understand so I watch most things with subtitles.
I don’t have to do that with games. Why? Because I get separate volume sliders for music, sound effects, and speech. Trouble understanding just means I need to adjust those to make the speech louder over music and fx.
Why in the hells tv and movie audio tracks don’t have this separation I don’t understand at all.
I’m also hearing impaired and am just really glad that captions are becoming so popular.
It used to be that YouTube was rarely accessible to me. There would be a tiny amount of content that had subtitles (sometimes baked in, like epic rap battles of history does), but the vast majority of videos just weren’t fun for me because I’d miss too much. These days a good chunk of popular YouTubers have curated captions and another good chunk are clear enough speakers that the automatic captions work.
I’ve actually been watching more YouTube in recent times than ever before specifically because I’ve been discovering all this content I previously wrote off. There was recently a post somewhere that introduced me to Technology Connections. And from there, I figured I’d check out some other names I had heard about that might be interesting, Linus’s tech tips and ElectroBOOM, and both had captions, too.
I’ve started turning on the Subtitles, as it seems as if newer shows and movies are harder to understand. At first, I thought my hearing is going, but not only can I hear the music in the shows just fine, I can watch old shows and movies from over 10 years ago and understand them just fine. In my opinion, it is as if they are putting less volume on the vocal tracks, or maybe using microphones or recording techniques that are not ideal for the spoken language.
It’s actually voice technique for the most part. Traditional old microphones weren’t as good at recording so actors were specially trained to speak and articulate well to get past the interference and background noise since filtering wasn’t really done. As microphones and technological advances improved so did the microphones and the need for special articulation became less and less until somewhere in the 70s or 80s the culture in film shifted to normal voices to have better immersion between the audience and the movie scene. And it just went from there. Nowadays our microphones are so good that even whispered conversations in intimate scenes can be well recorded. So the actors basically just use their everyday voice or try to emulate a real accent which are often slurred.
There’s a couple reasons why I use subtitles all time. Firstly I’m getting older and can’t hear as well with background noise. If my wife is banging around in the kitchen I can’t hear dialog from the TV. With subtitles on I don’t have to mess with the volume.
Another issue is media producers (TV and film) have this idea they need to blast you out of your chair with sound effects and music. So if you turn up the volume enough to hear the dialog clearly, you’re going to get blasted by everything else. Trying to manage that with the volume control is damn near impossible. Interestingly I’ve noticed “dialog boost” appear on occasion in sound track options from my streaming provider. I use it when the option is there. That kind of indicates a global problem.
An issue related to sound leveling is actors used to come out of theater where they learned to annunciate loudly and clearly. It seems actors don’t get proper stage training anymore and now it’s okay to mumble and fail to annunciate. A decent director should never allow that.
I remember reading about Page's situation before seeing the 'coming out' episode in Umbrella Academy. I was really happy to see how they handled it in the show, including what seemed to echo some of his own issues with people who had trouble accepting him. Hollywood seems to have taken on the "token gay person" in nearly every show, but very few actually take the time to explain any of the problems faced in the daily lives of those who transition.
And Hollywood's gay character is ALWAYS the same: "gay" voice, fashionable, sassy, uptight, obsessive, but no real emotions or depth. It's like someone once told them what gay men are like based on a 90s stereotype and they just stuck with it.
Honestly I’m really tired of it. OK cool, some story lines benefit from having gay characters, or their universe is broad enough that yeah you’re going to run into them at some point… But Hollywood seems to have decided that EVERY show must have a gay character, no matter how forcefully or awkwardly you had to add them to the cast. Great, you’ve openly embraced the LGBTQ community, we get it. And yes there are a lot more of us than most people realize, but the larger percentage are NOT out, not immediately accepted by all of their friends and coworkers, and most certainly not safe to show their true nature in general public. I mean it’s cool that Hollywood wants to show an ideal world where those things are possible, but it seems to me that if they really wanted to make an impact then they should be showing what really happens, how people are getting hurt physically and emotionally, how children are being disowned by their families… Show the real-life drama that is driving people to suicide and give us shows that actually make people think about their actions towards the community. I know, it’s really too much to hope for because -GASP- it might hurt their ratings.
This is so interesting to me because for the longest time, the only queer stories ever told in Hollywood were the tragedies - happy queer characters are relatively new, and I think space for both is so important. Hollywood can absolutely be doing more in showing some of the current issues our communities are actually facing, but there’s huge benefit in showing possibility models - especially for young people and their parents. So many parents are terrified of what their kid’s life is going to be like, because how they think of queer people has been influenced by decades of tragiqueer storytelling - those positive stories can help a lot.
Hmm I guess I hadn’t thought about it as role models. It’s certainly a good thing to show that LGBTQ’s are regular people too, and acceptance is a beautiful thing, I just feel like they’re over-doing it and they are just going to drive away the people who actually need to hear this message. I hear complaints about “woke being shoved in everyone’s face” and this is the sort of thing that comes to mind. Fortunately I’m starting to see some shows like the new Quantum Leap where gender-nonconformity isn’t the central theme but rather the character just are who they are, nobody makes a big deal out of it, and there might be some episodes that deal directly with their trauma. I feel like this is a better way to send a message without immediately scaring away those who are reacting negatively against people being themselves – basically a Conservative tactic where you sneak things in a little at a time so people don’t notice.
Regardless, I really hope we’re reached a turning point where the next generation won’t be so damn focused on gender roles being black&white. Hopefully we find a balance somewhere that lets everyone just start getting along with each other.
People are generally pretty lazy, uncreative and easily influenced - you show more of the exaggerated ideal on screen because society lacks imagination. They can handle little to no nuance.
So while I understand your frustration, there is also the reality that if you show that all people get disowned by their family, then you normalize/perpetuate that behavior even further (especially in less experientially diverse areas). It becomes and remains "one of the steps" of the process of coming out our meeting outed.
Basically, if someone comes out on a generic, middle of the road CBS TV show like the big bang theory or something... and the out character is building up fear about a pending negative interaction with the parent character, and the parent ends up saying, "we knew all along... And we just love you as long as your safe and happy" - well then that interaction actually imprints something on real life grandma in Missouri. She sits with that for a bit and processes, discusses a bit with friends at the salon maybe, and when her granddaughter, who she loves, tells her that she likes girls one day, grandma (who is caught off guard and doesn't have much imagination) reaches and finds that big bang theory moment as an example of what a "good grandma would do" and she repeats a version of it.
So again, I understand your frustration, but the above is (a portion) of the motivation to show those influencing "examples" in media.
Yeah that does make a lot of sense. And while I was reading your reply another thought came to mind. I do actually process the shows I watch, but I bet a lot of people just ‘absorb’ what happened and move on without really thinking about it. However it’s still in the back of their mind, and it still provides a fresh path for the brain to take when an unknown situation comes up.
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