I noticed the same thing probably 15 years ago when I bought a TV with a digital tuner. You mirrored my experience exactly with one thing to add - another thing that cracked me up was when they would order it in Spanish!
That pausing thing was annoying - on Friday or Saturday nights though you could usually change to another channel and find someone else watching the same movie at almost the same spot that didn’t have it paused.
Oh and around 1985 and 1986 I wrote my own software to guess calling card numbers between midnight and 6 am. I would either use Sprint or MCI access numbers and get about 20 working codes per night.
That's awesome. Nothing better than finding a code (turning on the screen the next morning). I got into it a little later and by that time a lot of software existed at least for the c64. I use to wardial in my sparetime and I published fun findings for a local zine for my areacode. Finding endpoints connected to a modem was a treat. Nothing better than figuring out you have to connect at 7,2 baud/parity instead of standard 8,1 then you are promped with a menu.. Fun times..
That pausing thing was annoying - on Friday or Saturday nights though you could usually change to another channel and find someone else watching the same movie at almost the same spot that didn’t have it paused.
Oh and around 1985 and 1986 I wrote my own software to guess calling card numbers between midnight and 6 am. I would either use Sprint or MCI access numbers and get about 20 working codes per night.