Decline in Content Quality & Exclusivity of Content

[tbake0155]

I'm sure at the end of the age spectrum for most viewers, but to me it seems like things are less serious. 

 

I've never watched channel superfun but I can sense the goofiness of that environment permeating into the rest of the content.  I may be wrong, but I think they should be more serious at least some of the time.

 

Lukes segments seem to be the most serious with the least corniness and goofiness.

 

Just an opinion and critique.

[FunkyFeatures]

Lately it's been a bit dull, but I don't mind. As long as it is LinusTechTips, I'll watch it, nowadays I am looking more forward to CSF than LTT, but I consistently watch them both. I really don't like the trick where they did the new scrapyard wars/builder challenge on Vessel only with no YouTube release, as my free Vessel just ran out

[mikat]

1 hour ago, Johnmakuta said:

Have the last few videos out seemed dull or forced? The Ethernet stuff was cool as was the virtual computer vs real computer (though I wished they used more than one VM utility). But the painting a graphics card? Yes that's cool but it's not groundbreaking! What is it with all the how to basics videos!? It just seems like they are trying to make videos to stay afloat instead of making their well thoughtout content. And though it is more of the project videos that I like, the Gaming pc/ pizza warmer was just stupid.

yes.

 

26 minutes ago, FunkyFeatures said:

Lately it's been a bit dull, but I don't mind. As long as it is LinusTechTips, I'll watch it, nowadays I am looking more forward to CSF than LTT, but I consistently watch them both. I really don't like the trick where they did the new scrapyard wars/builder challenge on Vessel only with no YouTube release, as my free Vessel just ran out

builder challange wat.. can you link me a source?

[FunkyFeatures]

1 minute ago, mikat said:

builder challange wat.. can you link me a source?

I believe it's the thing they are doing with the BS mods crew. Vessel sent me an e-mail at some point telling me it was Vessel exclusive, and not just a 1 week exclusive

[Teddy07]

havent watched many videos lately because they seemed strange and not very interesting

[Markmjb]

Well, if these 3 channels they run would release a video once a month I would shame them for re-polishing older videos, but they create so much new content, i don't mind that they revisit stuff like "how to install a graphics card". 

They are keeping up to date with stuff like VR, and I do believe a video was promised about 3d-printing some while ago *looks at @LinusTech *   and if you look at their holy $h!t video's, or the workshop from Luke, they are putting in a lot of effort. It can't be christmas everyday with these videos.

Note :  I do wonder, is Linus compensating for something by handling really big stuff in the holy-$h!t-videos  ?   

[PlayStation 2]

Not really you. When they feel that they need to do a video on how to choose a fucking motherboard then something's wrong.

[mikat]

18 minutes ago, FunkyFeatures said:

I believe it's the thing they are doing with the BS mods crew. Vessel sent me an e-mail at some point telling me it was Vessel exclusive, and not just a 1 week exclusive

i'm going to check my email then

[Yoinkerman]

49 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Not really you. When they feel that they need to do a video on how to choose a fucking motherboard then something's wrong.

They've always done videos like that though

[Johnmakuta]

5 hours ago, DevilishBooster said:

It seems to me that they are experimenting with some new content formats and trying to see which way the company should expand. As @LinusTech said a nuber of months ago during a WAN show, there really hasn't been anything exciting to shake up the hardware scene lately: graphics card performance for new releases is boringly predictable, same with CPUs, monitors have had some impressive gains but that has been drowned out with the noise of a new model being released every couple months. When you start the business with review and unboxing of computer hardware and guides, and that ave slows to a crawl, its really hard to keep the business going without branching out and trying new things.

 

Personally, I like a majority of the new content, but some of it is kinda bland. That being said, it is completely unreasonable for any one person to expect LMG to cater to their taste in video content. Transision periods are always rough, but I think the crew at LMG are handling it pretty well and I look forward to seeing what they bring next.

I'm not asking to cater to my own taste but it just feels like a lot of their stuff lately has been bland (like you said). I love channelsuperfun and techquickie but I feel that videos like their "How to install a graphics card" should have been in techquickie.

[Psykomantis00]

The main reason I started watching LTT was because of the unboxings. Now he acts like it's beneath him to do an unboxing of a product. The videos that have come out in the last year or two have been pretty crappy. It's gotten to a point now that I thumbs down the video when it starts and if I make it through the entire thing I may thumbs up (probably not). Watching half assed attempts at building something that is literally going to be torn down right after the video is just boring. The whole room water cooling thing was such a joke and showed me exactly what kind of work to expect from the half ass crew (as I like to call them). I'm one more dumb multi video project away from unsubscribing. Linus has tried to turn this into a legit media company and I don't see it working out if it continues on the path they are on. 

[Master Disaster]

Also its a tad convenient that Scrapyard Wars 4 won't hit Vessel until after the free year expires don't you think? Especially after Linus agreed to start making a Vessel exclusive series. That smacks of collusion in a big way.

 

BTW Vessel sent me an email yesterday with 7 reasons why i should subscribe, number 6 in the list was blank. It was just 6. and nothing else??

[KemoKa]

I'm gonna just come out and admit it here - I've lulled as far as actively watching LTT's videos goes and I'm not sure that I'll ever recover. I don't mean to say that the quality has slipped, not at all, I think the quality is top-notch as ever. But good cinematography just isn't enough. You need to have good content that appeals to a wide group of people and it has to be really interesting. Not only that but the people presenting the show have to know what they're talking about to make it interesting. Unfortunately, that's where LTT falls short. None of them have the level of experience in the tech industry that others have. I remember seeing a video that showed most of the crew of LTT struggle to put their own machines together. Are you serious?

 

Linus did an excellent job putting LMG together and making it grow extreeeemely quickly, but that shows his skill and experience as a businessman and as a YouTube personality, not as a tech expert. He can put together gaming desktops and servers, sure, but even he has to turn to the experts when something like a Whonnock failure happens. He went through and bricked 3 expensive server motherboards trying to build something as simple as a PFSense router, and with the growing pains of LTT, the inexperience of its members is starting to show as they're grasping for straws, trying to find something they can make videos on that won't turn off or baffle their audience.

 

Say what you will about them, but I think that the best alternative in terms of content, quality, business model and actual host experience is almost certainly Tek Syndicate. Logan is more of the groovy, charismatic and outgoing personality of the channel. Maybe not the most tech-oriented, he's more artistic, but he's certainly the face of the channel, and at the very least he has enough experience to put together a FreeNAS box or PFSense router out of an old PC without breaking everything. But Wendell? Noooww we're talkin'. One only has to look at Tek Syndicate's Ultimate Nerd Compound video to know that Wendell alone makes LTT look like child's play all by himself. Wendell takes and explains concepts that LMG would never think about touching as far as explaining to the end user. Install Arch Linux? Use ZFS and BTRFS to ensure that you don't lose your data? Build a router out of parts you pull from a dumpster? Attach a Retina display to a lamp arm and use it as a monitor? Use VT-d extensions with a KVM to get GTA V running on a windows virtual machine under Linux? Setting up your own surveillance server with a Linux netbook and a couple of USB webcams?

 

LTT would look at those and say "Oh no, we won't do those" because they'd be scared that it'd turn their viewers off, not get them likes, etc, and that's even if the crew knew anything about how to do any of that stuff. But the thing is, that's the sort of stuff that people will want to see, because even if you don't know what IPMI stands for or does, even if you don't know how to use VI, even if you're baffled at the concept of using OpenBroadcaster to stream multiple players to an ubuntu server and pitch it to multiple channels at once, it will at the very least inspire curiosity about those things to some people and gets them thinking and experimenting with that sort of stuff. And if you watch and participate in TeamPGP streams, you'll know that Wendell has a much more vast wealth of knowledge to share while teampgp plays games. LTT never could have told you that if you plug a server NIC into a desktop motherboard with an onboard Intel NIC that it will allow the onboard NIC to use the server protocols and functions on the server card. But Wendell just brought it up in passing when a GTA server was loading up. Priceless. Brilliance. I drink the man's words like alcohol.

That's why LTT is bogging down at the moment, because they're starved of things to make videos about. It took them five years, but they got there, and now it's starting to affect their viewing value imho. Whereas Tek Syndicate has a massive list a thousand mile long of things that they could make videos on, and probably will in the future. Not to mention they've managed their business much more conservatively compared to LTT. They're focusing on content, not on making money or expanding quickly. They take few sponsors, they don't have a high amount of income, but they have made an absolute bucketload of awesome videos and plenty of topics about which they can post more videos because they have the experience and resources with which to do them.

 

TL;DR, Linus is running out of things to talk about because he's exhausted both the consumer hardware field until more products are made, and the bounds of his experience (as far as I can see) - Tek Syndicate is one of the few alternatives that will dare to touch upon much more esoteric subjects that most average people won't go near. Basically, Wendell is the Gaben of computers.

[BuckGup]

The quality is an all time high. They are just testing new ideas and not everyone is going to like change you old senile curmudgeons 

[LAwLz]

Going to post in this thread since the video doesn't have a thread yet (timed Vessel Exclusive).

So I decided to check Vessel one last time before it goes away for me, and I saw "AMD vs Nvidia for Video Rendering - Adobe Premier and Media Encoder" and thought "oh nice, finally a video that will interest me". Sadly, it missed an extremely important part which I think makes the video inconclusive. They did not compare quality of the outputs. I don't have an Nvidia card so I can't compare how good/bad their encoder is today, but back in 2011 the quality of CUDA encoded videos was God awful.

Here is a comparison (and the source for the images, since I can't make my own).

Mouse out = x86 (pure CPU)

Mouse over = CUDA

Side note: Anand does not mention which preset he used for the CPU encoding so I am going to assume that it was something around fast or very fast. If he changed that to slower, veryslow or placebo then the difference would be even bigger.

 

I was expecting at least a basic image quality comparison of the H.264 output from the different setups. Not even anything fancy like a PSNR measurement, but at least something. Maybe post some images or mentioning it. This is the second video about hardware accelerated video encoding which completely ignores image quality.

I would personally trade speed for the far superior quality, unless the encoders have gotten a lot better since then.

[2FA]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

snip

I've noticed that as well with other videos. I can't think of specific videos but there have been many recently where critical information is left out rendering the whole thing almost null. Another thing is that large portions of the videos is introductory information, as in you have to watch 3/4 of the video before seeing any testing or results. Also, results that are presented are very basic in information, an example being comparing GPUs and only showing FPS results. Jay on the other hand will discuss the technicalities for about only a 1/3 and then talk about the results and why they are like that for the rest while displaying more information such as temps, clock speeds, fps, memory clocks.

[Psykomantis00]

11 hours ago, KemoKa said:

One only has to look at Tek Syndicate's Ultimate Nerd Compound video to know that Wendell alone makes LTT look like child's play all by himself. Wendell takes and explains concepts that LMG would never think about touching as far as explaining to the end user. Install Arch Linux? Use ZFS and BTRFS to ensure that you don't lose your data? Build a router out of parts you pull from a dumpster? Attach a Retina display to a lamp arm and use it as a monitor? Use VT-d extensions with a KVM to get GTA V running on a windows virtual machine under Linux? Setting up your own surveillance server with a Linux netbook and a couple of USB webcams?

 

LTT would look at those and say "Oh no, we won't do those" because they'd be scared that it'd turn their viewers off, not get them likes, etc, and that's even if the crew knew anything about how to do any of that stuff. But the thing is, that's the sort of stuff that people will want to see, because even if you don't know what IPMI stands for or does, even if you don't know how to use VI, even if you're baffled at the concept of using OpenBroadcaster to stream multiple players to an ubuntu server and pitch it to multiple channels at once, it will at the very least inspire curiosity about those things to some people and gets them thinking and experimenting with that sort of stuff. And if you watch and participate in TeamPGP streams, you'll know that Wendell has a much more vast wealth of knowledge to share while teampgp plays games. LTT never could have told you that if you plug a server NIC into a desktop motherboard with an onboard Intel NIC that it will allow the onboard NIC to use the server protocols and functions on the server card. But Wendell just brought it up in passing when a GTA server was loading up. Priceless. Brilliance. I drink the man's words like alcohol.

 

LTT is childs play compared to Tek Syndicate. Wendel builds really neat stuff sometimes and can actually show you how to do it. Luke "builds" a fallout 4 pc that looks like shit and then takes it apart a day later. I put builds in quotations because he literally just crammed all the parts in there and made it work for the time it took to record, then took it apart. It would never last like that. That's the difference. LTT half asses everything just so they can rush a video out on it. Linus half ass painted a motherboard. Half ass paint a car with paint rollers. Whole room water cooling. The cringefest goes on and on but I'm sure you get the point. If they didn't half ass everything they do it wouldn't be so annoying.

 

 

Linus Halfass tips. We don't know what we're doing.  <-- Should be the new slogan. 

 

[KemoKa]

1 minute ago, Psykomantis00 said:

 

LTT is childs play compared to Tek Syndicate. Wendel builds really neat stuff sometimes and can actually show you how to do it. Luke "builds" a fallout 4 pc that looks like shit and then takes it apart a day later. I put builds in quotations because he literally just crammed all the parts in there and made it work for the time it took to record, then took it apart. It would never last like that. That's the difference. LTT half asses everything just so they can rush a video out on it. Linus half ass painted a motherboard. Half ass paint a car with paint rollers. Whole room water cooling. The cringefest goes on and on but I'm sure you get the point. If they didn't half ass everything they do it wouldn't be so annoying.

 

 

Linus Halfass tips. We don't know what we're doing.  <-- Should be the new slogan. 

 

Yes. Sadly. With the little Theme dwindling and slowing down in pitch and speed.

Such a shame - they used to be so good. Now I don't even bother to check their feed on YT anymore. In passing when it shows up I have to blink to make sure I didn't see it correctly - did I just see a video that said "how to install a graphics card?" "Office Shenanigans"? "Sticking 8 video cards in a server"? And did I just see several iterations of videos on subjects that have already been covered in the past? Sometimes for the third or fourth time? It's pretty obvious that they're running out of things to talk about.

 

Hell, I've put ten times as much support into Tek Syndicate by buying (VERY nice) T-shirts, mice and music than I have into LTT because with Tek Syndicate you actually get a return on your investment in the content, even if it takes a little while. Whereas the thought of buying a crude "Sleep is for pussies" Tshirt has never even crossed my mind.

 

It's really disappointing - not a year ago and LTT were easily the hottest channel out there, in albeit quirky and humble circumstances (which imo made it better). Now they're becoming mediocre, with a noticeable rift forming between LMG and its follower base.

And Tek Syndicate is just slowly and steadily roving through the inferno like they set out to do in the first place.

 

[AresKrieger]

The only thing I've noticed is that haven't done many product reviews but that's more due to few new and cool tech items being released as of late, I mean sure some of the videos recently have been more simplistic but not everyone know things obvious to many of us on the forums, I'm sure they are working on another project but those things take a lot of time, so don't expect one right after another.

[soup]

6 hours ago, Psykomantis00 said:

 

LTT is childs play compared to Tek Syndicate

Mmm so a pretty much new techy can watch "the Tek" and get frightened off Tech for life?  Yes Wendell knows his shit but the spots he does assumes the watcher has al least a modicum of knowledge about the subject (LMG seem to be trying [and judging by the comments failing] to appeal to all levels).

Different target audiences.

 

5 hours ago, KemoKa said:

Hell, I've put ten times as much support into Tek Syndicate

 

Strikes me as a tad trollish to come onto somewhere and say it is so much better somewhere else.  If Tek syndicate is so much better in your eyes stick to that.

 

 

[WynLore]

I personally think that their workload is actually not as manageable as what they think it is. I mean, these guys upload videos pretty much every day. I know Linus has to pay Luke, Edzel, Dennis, etc..., but damn... slow it down a bit, LMG. Its not that LMG isn't running out of ideas, IMHO. I just think they put a bit too much on their plate, thus why I think the quality has dropped.

[KemoKa]

3 hours ago, soup said:

Strikes me as a tad trollish to come onto somewhere and say it is so much better somewhere else.  If Tek syndicate is so much better in your eyes stick to that.

So far, in terms of youtube, that's exactly what I've been doing. Sticking to that. But the LTT forums are quite far removed from LMG itself, and I think the community here is quite excellent. At least when it's not toxic from new hardware releases and the subsequent fanboy wars. The forums are definitely a place I still feel like I should support because it allows me to directly help others instead of waiting it to be covered in an LTT video. It's almost become a platform unto itself, imo.

I come here to give honest advice. Recently that advice has had to answer to quite a few people (hint-hint this thread you're on) who are getting tired of the repetitiveness of LMG's videos and/or the occasional unchecked caustic behaviour on the forums. They look for suggestions as to what they can do for new content and maybe a more mature audience. So what do I do? Tell them to stay here because the acidic LTT forums are amazing and brilliant and wonderful all the time? Anyone who has been here for any good length of time knows that that's simply not true. So I give them an example of what they're looking for. And it just so happens that my most favourable example of that is Tek Syndicate. Say what you will, but it's better advice than telling them to stay and watch videos about installing graphics cards.

[Psykomantis00]

On 3/24/2016 at 11:27 PM, KemoKa said:

Yes. Sadly. With the little Theme dwindling and slowing down in pitch and speed.

Such a shame - they used to be so good. Now I don't even bother to check their feed on YT anymore. In passing when it shows up I have to blink to make sure I didn't see it correctly - did I just see a video that said "how to install a graphics card?" "Office Shenanigans"? "Sticking 8 video cards in a server"? And did I just see several iterations of videos on subjects that have already been covered in the past? Sometimes for the third or fourth time? It's pretty obvious that they're running out of things to talk about.

 

Hell, I've put ten times as much support into Tek Syndicate by buying (VERY nice) T-shirts, mice and music than I have into LTT because with Tek Syndicate you actually get a return on your investment in the content, even if it takes a little while. Whereas the thought of buying a crude "Sleep is for pussies" Tshirt has never even crossed my mind.

 

It's really disappointing - not a year ago and LTT were easily the hottest channel out there, in albeit quirky and humble circumstances (which imo made it better). Now they're becoming mediocre, with a noticeable rift forming between LMG and its follower base.

And Tek Syndicate is just slowly and steadily roving through the inferno like they set out to do in the first place.

 

So true. They could put out a lot more content easily if they would just do unboxings. An unboxing video could be quick and dirty, one take with no script, just do it off the cuff. They could do 3 of these a week very easily with minimal editing. Record a 3-5 minute video of the unboxing with a quick run down of the product and then slap the intro on the front, the sponsorship on the end and upload that bitch. I like unboxings because I want to know exactly what I'm getting in the box. I don't understand why he thinks unboxing are so bad, it was my favorite part of the channel. What I remember from when I first started watching Linus was the amount of unboxings he would do. I watched shit get unboxed that I didn't even have any interest in. Now I'm surprised if I don't close the video within the first 3 minutes. 

[soup]

@KemoKa.  Hint hint, see my " failing[judging by the coments]".

 

No one (or at least not me) is saying watch videos about installing a graphic card, they (OALM) are saying "DON'T WATCH if you are not interested", having BASIC in the title should tell you what level it is aimed at.

  Not a personal attack.  But you (TINY) should just not watch videos not aimed at you, coming on here (Forum and Vids are fairly closely linked ) to advocate somewhwere else seems a tad trollish to me.

 

Big takeaway :-  "Horses for courses".

 

Quotes aren't working properly so please excuse the formating

[KemoKa]

3 hours ago, Psykomantis00 said:

So true. They could put out a lot more content easily if they would just do unboxings. An unboxing video could be quick and dirty, one take with no script, just do it off the cuff. They could do 3 of these a week very easily with minimal editing. Record a 3-5 minute video of the unboxing with a quick run down of the product and then slap the intro on the front, the sponsorship on the end and upload that bitch. I like unboxings because I want to know exactly what I'm getting in the box. I don't understand why he thinks unboxing are so bad, it was my favorite part of the channel. What I remember from when I first started watching Linus was the amount of unboxings he would do. I watched shit get unboxed that I didn't even have any interest in. Now I'm surprised if I don't close the video within the first 3 minutes. 

Absolutely ^this. Unboxings were what made LinusTechTips the YouTube stars that they are today, they garnered most of their support from doing them. And it wasn't just because they did unboxings - it was the style in which they did them. They weren't the boring, scripted run-downs that other tech channels did - they were totally improvised and sometimes involved products that Linus had almost never seen or even heard of before, so he had no idea what to expect. Hell, even watching him unbox a massive toy fire engine was fun because it was, as you said, off-the-cuff and entertaining.

 

I think LTT needs a back-to-basics thing where they just go out and unbox stuff. Doesn't matter what it is - server NICs, Celeron 300As, whatever - just so long as it's improv with someone overbalancing on a steadycam... somehow... that would make them great again.

 

MakeLinusTechTipsGreatAgain.