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I was listening to some pretentious film critic yesterday complain that modern films have stopped being artistic or intellectually challenging, because there’s a huge audience of people who are exhausted all the time. They don’t want media that makes them think, that challenges their assumptions, or even requires their full, sustained attention. Comfort media, like mac & cheese for the brain.
Fallout has become exactly that - some vague, nefarious organization as antagonist; raiders & feral ghouls as unambiguously bad cannon fodder. Just move it to a new city, put in some iconic landmarks, and let the money roll in. I can’t honestly think of a franchise that gets past 2 without falling into that trap, but I just started another run through FO4.
It’s even easier with digital broadcast. I finally had to give up my PCI tuner, because who puts PCI slots on a modern mobo? $25 will get you a USB TV tuner capable of getting all the OTA and cable channels. I used to get, like, 7 analog OTA channels - ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and a regional independent - but I get 30 digital. All the majors have added 3-5 channels of SD reruns or other filler. I mean, it’s mostly shit, and the only thing I actually watch is local news, but for a one-time $25 cost, it’s a great supplement to streaming.
My biggest problem with MythTV is it doesn’t interface with streaming, so I use Kodi on the frontend to source from mythtv, netflix, hbo, or whatever.