this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts

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HBO should use a different bumper for streaming. (self.showerthoughts)
submitted 2 months ago by JasonDJ to c/[email protected]
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The bumper...I don't know what it's called...that little clip with the snow that fades in and reveals the logo.

It's terrible.

For one, a lot of people actually don't know what TV static is. Analog broadcasts stopped almost 16 years ago, and before that, most younger people had cable.

For another, static is really difficult to compress. It looks horrible and consumes way too much bandwidth for just a couple of seconds that won't even load right. If anything, they should cache a local copy of the bumper in-app in a format that doesn't look like ass when every pixel changes every frame.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The 1984 Gibson novel Neuromancer begins with the line, "The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel."

At the time, this unambiguously meant the speckled gray of analog TV static: radio noise amplified and played out through a CRT's scanning electron gun. However, before too many years had passed, new TVs started displaying a solid blue screen when tuned to a dead channel.

And in 1996, Neil Gaiman riffed on Gibson's line, in Neverwhere: "The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

this is awesome.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

For one, a lot of people actually don't know what TV static is. Analog broadcasts stopped almost 16 years ago, and before that, most younger people had cable.

That's the neat part, people don't know what it is, and will find out the history of it if they decided to look it up. There's a reason Marvel's intro where they flip through all the comic book is so popular and recognizable, it's their history.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I wish marvel would go back to that... Nowadays with the juggernaut that is the MCU we have that weird CGI intro for "MARVEL STUDIOS" that shows clips from previous movies.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

NPR did a podcast on those "bumpers" (there's a term that I don't recall). HBO wanted to change theirs for the reason you indicated as well as the fact that it was rather long compared to Netflix's and others. They paid a lot of money to develop others and also do testing\ polling with end users. The original beat out all the rest because it's been their bumper for so long.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

In the UK they’re called ‘idents’. You can find a huge collection of UK ones here https://theident.gallery/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I prefer the original too. It’s like the macOS boot sound and Apple trying to get rid of it — it’s too much of a classic.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

a lot of people actually don't know what TV static is.

What? Everyone knows what TV static is. This is like boomers claiming that kids don't know what vinyl records are. You just think everyone younger than you is stupid...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I was also very confused by this statement. One of my computer screens is still doing it from time to time. Seems still relevant to me

[–] possiblylinux127 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

But do you know what sound they make?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Depends on what's on the vinyl.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The sound of a horny Platypus reaching climax?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They should bring back the original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPYbzfwIJRA

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

This has been my ringtone for years

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Holy shit, that brought back so many memories.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Region locked for me, bummer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I'm sorry. Perhaps if you search for "hbo logo flying through space" you'll find something.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

it could be something like "hbo.. if you like it, zazlav will probably kill it. enjoy!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I always thought it was an apt metaphor for HBO as a service. Starts out analog and low resolution (because of the compression issues but it helps the visual) that clarifies what it is before having proper branding arrive. As a former user of HBO Go and HBO Now, it's nice to see them finally find their identity.

But yeah, that logo bumper needs to change.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

HBO Max, for the brief period of time it existed, had a more fitting 'bumper'. Hacks, which started out as a 'Max Original' still had it in season 3, but The Penguin, which was a Max Original until it wasn't, has the fuzzy version (I've had players that struggle with it a bit, but I doubt HBO gives a shit about the quality of my experience pirating their stuff)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If they stick with it, it’ll sort itself out over time. They are most of the way there by now. The newest codecs are pretty dang good.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Video codecs mostly work by tracking movement, predicting which pixels will change, and striving to only encode the pixels that actually change or change dramatically. In other words, compression looks for patterns.

All of that goes out the window when you try to compress static. There are no patterns. It simply can't be compressed. This isn't a matter of the algorithms not being good enough. It's a fundamental limit of information theory.

Anything fancier amounts to embedding the intro into the compressor as a well-known pattern. And at that point, you're better off just caching a 4K version of the intro as a standalone video file directly in the app.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Why not just have the app dynamically generate the static with random numbers every time. There is no video file of white noise, and bonus the bumper intro is never exactly the same twice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's a good idea. They could probably do something similar for the audio.

They'd have to code around the rest of the animation and audio effects, but the size of that code would certainly be smaller than the rendered audio and video.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

These are both really cool ideas and seem like a fun project.

[–] JasonDJ 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You guys are basically describing the old Demoscene.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Love that stuff, it's so cool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Maybe we've gotten used to that very particular white noise pattern and anything else would feel wrong?

Completely pulled that out of my ass, for the record.

[–] JasonDJ 0 points 2 months ago

Do you think dynamically rendering 4k snow is something your typical FireTV stick is capable of doing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Sure, you may have thought up this opinion in the shower, but it's not a showerthought.