On Tue, 14 Aug 2018, Iznogoud wrote:

> Wow! I did not know people have that much time to watch TV.

Maybe you should read newspaper or magazine articles about American TV 
viewing -- average numbers of hours per week, etc.  The truth is out 
there!  For example:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-did-tv-watching-peak/561464/

That says the average household is watching about 8 hours of TV per day, 
but that's been cut down a little from the peak at 9 hours per day because 
they are now watching so much more Netflix and other non-TV video.

But the thing is, I have a family with a wife and two kids, so my daughter 
watches a couple of those, I watch a few with my wife, etc.  Probably more 
than half of it is just archived for possible later viewing (e.g., much of 
PBS documentary programming).  Here's what I watch:

The first 15 mins of Colbert, because it's news and comedy in one.
Five sitcoms at about 21 mins each per week
60 minutes (44 mins long!)
PBS documentaries I can find time for

So what does that add up to?  During the season it's about 3 hours 40 
minutes per week or 30 minutes per day plus the PBS.  I save the PBS shows 
because I'll watch them someday.  A lot of that stuff is good for 
educating the kids -- Nature, NOVA, etc.  So my family watches a lot less 
*TV* than the average family, but that's really because the kids watch so 
much Netflix, YouTube and Amazon -- it's way too much and I need to cut 
back on that.

When I watch TV (or movies/videos on the television), I don't just watch 
it, I also do stuff on my laptop while the TV is playing.  For example, 
all that code I wrote for messing with the videos was written while I was 
watching other shows.  It's not all dead time!  According to Wikipedia's 
entry on John Von Neumann,

"Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and 
once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. 
He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television 
playing loudly."

So maybe you've been missing out!  ;-)


> But this message is my endorsement for youtube-dl. It is amazing. I get it
> straight from Github and build from source. And here comes the kicker, I no
> longer look at youtube videos on the browser anymore, because:
> 1. firefox freezes when I do,
> 2. there are commercials,
> 3. ...
>
> I youtube-dl the URL and then play the files with MPlayer from the 
> terminal. Solid.

Yes!  Also, you can use it to download every video from anyone's video 
feed, and then run it again later to download just the newer ones.  I've 
been doing that.  For example, this script grabs every video from the 
Guitar Fun Works YouTube channel, but if you run it again, it gets the 
ones that weren't already downloaded:

----------start script on next line-----------------------
#!/bin/bash

ARCHIVE_FILE_PREFIX=Guitar_Fun_Works_
LIST_NUMBER=UUzHejm-3CH563z8O1j5nKvQ

youtube-dl -ci -o "%(uploader)s - %(upload_date)s - %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" --download-archive ${ARCHIVE_FILE_PREFIX}archive.txt https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=$LIST_NUMBER
----------end script on previous line---------------------

Note that if you change the two variables, you can use it with a different 
playlist.

Best,
Mike