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We went up to my grandparents' family cottage in Vermont because several of my cousins and aunts and uncles, including two from Australia, were up there for some late-season skiing. And obviously, we don't see the Australian branch of the family very often, so we make an effort to spend at least a few hours together on the occasions when any of them come by. And we had a lovely time.
But we noticed one interesting difference between a number of the folks in the family and us. Some of the people in my family prefer to have a television playing as background noise during social occasions. They don't want to WATCH it, unless there's an interesting sports event on; rather, they turn it to random Home and Garden shows or the like -- cooking shows, "how things are made" shows, home remodeling and interior design shows. They turn the volume low enough that you can hear that people are talking, but not what they're saying. I think they just like having extra human voices in the background, and don't like having big blank black rectangles sitting around -- they'd rather have some motion, color, and human sounds.
When we've been over at their house, they've had the Chromecast default screen on, which is a rotating selection of landscape and artistic photography. If they've got something like that, they don't need actual TELEVISION on the television; they just don't like having a visual blank.
But we noticed one interesting difference between a number of the folks in the family and us. Some of the people in my family prefer to have a television playing as background noise during social occasions. They don't want to WATCH it, unless there's an interesting sports event on; rather, they turn it to random Home and Garden shows or the like -- cooking shows, "how things are made" shows, home remodeling and interior design shows. They turn the volume low enough that you can hear that people are talking, but not what they're saying. I think they just like having extra human voices in the background, and don't like having big blank black rectangles sitting around -- they'd rather have some motion, color, and human sounds.
When we've been over at their house, they've had the Chromecast default screen on, which is a rotating selection of landscape and artistic photography. If they've got something like that, they don't need actual TELEVISION on the television; they just don't like having a visual blank.