https://www.xumo.com/products/xumo-stream-box
Yeah, the ol’ nearly obsolete local cable company finally enticed us to get the streaming box as a hub for all the digital-video entertainment available to us. The box itself is not a big deal, but some of the channels accessible by just the plain-old Xumo itself are really quite good for us old-timers, yes!
This is really how the TV was meant to be enjoyed when the initial promise of Big Cable’s ‘500 channels’ (but nothing good on any of them!) was touted lo those many years ago. With this crazy Xumo, there are channels on now that are so niche (but, truly, highly addictive, and not in that creepy AI/algorithmic zombie-trance way) that it’s hard to believe we could have watched television any other way.
There’s a channel that’s Lieut. Frank Columbo all day & all night. Also, various Cook’s Illustrated / Milk Street shows like America’s Test Kitchen & Cook’s Country — no other programming allowed!
Maybe our favorite one is this thing called The True History, or TH, which is basically esteemed university professors just reading their lecture notes on every subject imaginable. Religion, history, politics, pop culture — the whole epistemologlical shmear on the big bagel of human knowledge!
What’s great about this The True History channel is that the production value is on the primitive side: no loud music, no dizzying graphics that flash & fade every 5 secs. This stuff will make you listen closely, but in a good way, not in a gimmicky way, and your attention-span deficiencies will begin to lessen. And really you don’t need to keep your eyeballs on the screen, since the star of the show is the oral presentation, the words themselves. And it’s less precious and clever than what your typical modern-day audio podcast aspires to. Again, this is good, straight-up brain-food, nutritious & growth-inducing.
OK. So that’s The Columbo, The America’s Test Kitchen, The True History; you can substitute the Curiosity Stream for the times when you need to get a dose of programming that’s younger & hipper than The True History — very little loss of informativeness.
Two on the shoe for your First Monday of December now…
You must be logged in to post a comment.