Pluggers by Rick McKee for January 29, 2025

Our 14 year old TV is fading but given the caliber of the TV shows, it doesn’t matter….

Small screen TV what about reading the screen on a smart phone ;-)

I bought a bigger tv, put away the glasses. Again.

I picked up an old Mad magazine and found I couldn’t make out the little cartoons in the margins even with my reading glasses.

The caption writing has become so bad that it’s hardly worth having them on the screen. I don’t think AI has learned about different accents because every time there’s an accent shift — like on “The Closer” [old TV mystery series about a female police detective from Atlanta who becomes the Chief of Major Crimes in LA] — the text becomes gibberish. If it were a real person typing, I would think that they have their fingers on the wrong row of letters; however, a person doing that wouldn’t do it consistently in every episode.

I can’t read the closed captions fast enough anymore so I don’t try. Makes watching 48 Hours tough when they use closed caption to let you know what the suspect is saying/muttering/slanging. Don’t have any idea what the language challenged person is saying/lying about.

Binocs? Sure Tom

That’s why we have a 65” tv.

Some Pluggers wear their coke bottle lenses.

So true! (Almost!) I hate when so many of the tv shows use texts on cell phones in the plot, can’t read those!

Fortunately for me, one of the friendly people on my route had put a big screen TV out to the curb. I asked about it to be sure, and he said it wasn’t working good but I could have it since he was indeed getting rid of it. I think he’d been having trouble with it due to using it in a damp basement or something, because all I needed to do was find a replacement power cord and it’s worked fine for me. I never cared about the size of my TV but I have enjoyed it and I do sometimes turn on the captions as my hearing is not what it used to be and I haven’t sprung for hearing aids yet.

Oh, I have a big screen but I hate when they display a text on a phone or a letter and I have to get up and cross the room to read it.

Bought a bigger screen just for that reason but occasionally I still have to pause it and get closer to see it.

I went from playing video games on a nice big desktop monitor to a smaller laptop screen. Anything I have to read is a struggle.

I need voice assistance for those people who call into radio stations. They’re usually on some sort of device and calling from their car. I don’t have a clue what they’re saying. :)

Maybe he can change the size of the captions? And we are getting close to the Superb Owl when TVs (and other video stuff) are usually on sale.

It’s the white on white mouseprint in the medical ads that make me never want to use their products.

My TV remote has an “Aspect” button that will enlarge the screen up to 3 times, which is usually pretty helpful. Some sports use very small font in the bottom banner that has the running stats of the games.

hmm… doesn’t look all that small to me… (oh, wait… I was looking at this with my binoculars… silly me!)