I don't know about the reading as we are not there yet.
DD2 would watch tv or dvd all day if we would let her. I have noticed it is much easier to have no tv time, than little. If she gets to watch 20min few times a week she keeps on asking it all the time. (I work fulltime so there is really no time for her to watch it everyday) When she keeps on asking (whining) for tv or dvd she has hard time concentrating on anything else, no playing, no puzzles, no books. It is much better that she has no tv time except on special occasion (long trips, mom and dad busy, being sick). Without tv she can entertain herself very well and seems to have much better time than being in front of tv
One Saturday we tried to see how much she will watch if she can decide. This is how it went: wake up, watch dvd, eat fast breakfast watch some more dvd, go out to play and when coming back watch some more dvd, eat lunch and go back to watch dvd, you'll get the trend.
I'm bit the same way (especially with computers) so I understand her very well. I read more books during the months we were out of internet than rest of the year!!!!! I hope someone would restrict my computer time so I would use my evenings more wisely LOL
I am like you with the computer/tv thing. We don't even own a tv, because I totally can't control myself. When I was a kid there were very strict limits put on how much I could watch and I didn't learn to set my own limits. That's one of the reasons we don't have strict limits for DD's screen time (which is all computer time, since, as I said, we don't have a tv). I think you are setting a kid up to binge if you impose limits and then suddenly remove them. But I don't think you can assume that the binge would continue if the freedom continued. DD chooses to use the computer on average about half an hour a day. She rarely uses it for more than an hour, and many days much less. Once in a very long while she does binge, but usually only if it's been a while since she's used it at all. Just my two cents.
OP, I call it "reading" any time a kid can figure out what a word is out of context without help. I call it "reading fluently" when a kid reaches the reading-everything-in-sight stage, which is usually at around the 3rd grade level (and was for us). I wouldn't worry about a kid who isn't reading yet at 4, even if the early steps were there. I don't think there's that much of a connection between knowing letters and reading. And many kids learn at surprising and uneven rates. At barely 4, if he's not ready or interested yet that's just fine, IMO.
