Bits and Bobs: Grow Your Own, Part Two

 

There’s a fellow over on YouTube who found a way to recreate Twentieth-Century-style television in his own home. As I understand it, he populated a server with three different playlists offering three full sets of content, operating live and independently, and then plugged it into a vintage analog television. While I’d never go this far, it does show what’s possible using everyday tech that we didn’t have access to back then, with a little ingenuity and some programming skills. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/k_BkD85yIg0?si=8WhzrqTXJUcJruQG

He managed on a much grander scale what I’ve been doing for the past decade and a half: acting as the Programming Director for my own imaginary TV station. This currently involves gathering,  planning and implementing three hours of entertainment every night, the equivalent of what used to be considered Prime Time back in the day.

It didn’t start that way, but the writing went up on the wall back in the early ‘80s with the introduction of home video machines: VHS and Betamax. I was an early adopter, or as early as I could afford to be. It was the Big Game-Changer for we the Great TV-viewing public: suddenly we were no longer at the mercy of the Big Three all-powerful TV networks (plus PBS). Not only could we decide what we wanted to watch when we wanted too watch it, but we could preserve our favorite television series and films so that they would always be there for us when we wished (and had the time) to revisit them.

The concept of the private individual as video librarians had never really occurred to professional TV programmers until that day — but some of us were already well-acquainted with keeping personal libraries of the books we read and the the records we loved and the comics that we gathered. Adding TV and Movies into the mixture was a natural. The introduction of DVD turned the trickle of home video enthusiasts into an explosion. And I guess the point of this longish ramble is that if you’re going to take on the responsibility of being your own Programming Director, it helps if you already have that Librarian Instinct, and you’ve been Gathering Material for a long while. That’s part of the job that never stops. 

I don’t have to tell you that cable and networks and streaming services are crap, and Expensive Crap at that. It’s something I hear all the time. What you should know is that you don’t need them. What you should know is that no one understands what you like better than you do, and nothing is more satisfying than arranging your life by your own design. Whatever that means to you. In the area of video entertainment, paying for streaming services is far and away the least cost-effective way of doing it. 

I lost access to free over-the-air TV when I moved into town from the country in 2010. This was a blow, as I’d lived all my life with free over-the-air TV.  For a while, I tried filling the gap with a DirecTV subscription; but this was really unsatisfactory for reasons that you’re all probably familiar with. Oh, I found a few things to watch, even discovered some new things — but I also found that the old reliable DVDs, and then Blu-Rays, and then digital files streamed in my own house from my own computer, served me better. 

I now have a set-up that relies on all three, plus the odd free service such as YouTube. It’s a set-up that I figured out for myself, over a long time; and though it’s hardly the state of the art, it works for me. Your mileage may vary, and there are plenty of tech-savvy channels and articles out there to show you what’s the latest and greatest. My interest doesn’t particularly lie in the tech side of things, and it’s not what I’m going to be focusing on in this series, but you’re going to need something akin to these basics at the start:

• A television and sound system that’s right for your space
• A blu-ray player
• A region-free DVD player (very important!)
• A TV steaming box (I use AppleTV, but any will work so long as they offer the ability to connect to your server)
• A dedicated server computer. If you have an older computer that you’ve retired for everyday use, it will be perfect for this purpose. It doesn’t have to be the best and the brightest. It just has to run.
• Home Wi-fi.
• On the software side you will need installed on your server (or TV box or both) some kind of media player: Itunes and Infuse are the two I use.
• And most important: Time, plenty of it, and the librarian’s dedication and curiosity to sniff out the programming that tickles your fancy wherever it may be.

Here’s a tech link that I found helpful: https://theaterdiy.com/how-to-set-up-a-media-server-for-a-home-theater/

Connect your TV to the speakers, the disc players and the box, make sure the Wifi is up and running, connect the box to your server computer, and you’re ready to roll — that’s all the tech I know or care about. The only thing needed now is to take responsibility for the Programming. 

Because just as it’s true that You Are What You Eat, it’s also true that You Are What You Put into your Eyes and Ears and Brain, and you need to feed yourself a Balanced Diet. You wouldn’t walk down the street picking up and eating any piece of trash that you saw, would you? The same is true for content. And creating the daily menu is a job that will suck up just as many hours as you care to throw at it.  

The good news is that you have all of History to choose from, without limit. Over the next few installments I’m going to post links to resources, providing examples, discussing the history of broadcast entertainment and going over my own weekly schedule in detail. I hope you’ll follow me down this odd Road of Yellow Bricks. If you do, I’ll be the Man Behind the Curtain at journey’s end.

—Thorn.