Cable TV or.....

Thoughts? 

I just came off the "promo deal" they had me on.... the price is now perilously close to $50 a month for what amounts to basic cable with locals. While a handful of the channels are digital, many are not and look like something from the 50's complete with snowy pictures and wavey lines.  

If my wife would agree with me, I would stick a HDTV antenna up in the back of the house, which I already have BTW, and cut the cable off totally. My ignorance of world events would then be totally astounding.... some might argue that is already the case. But be that as it may....

I looked into Dish and they are just as expensive..... a few bucks cheaper over the 24 months..... but still pricey. 

I called TW and they offered a piddly $4 discount for 6 months, and that was from the Customer Retention Dept..... they must not really be trying hard to retain customers with chump offers like that. 

It would not bother me one bit to go to an antenna for a while..... that is free and there are actually a pretty decent number of digital off air channels in this area. I would suffer some Fox News withdrawls and my wife would do the same on the food & HGTV networks...... the kids are out of the house as of July, so..... ?

Advice? 

I only have the free-to-air digital channels now. Used to have Sky TV, but it got too expensive, and out of 200 channels we were watching maybe 10 or 12 at the most. I watch most of my TV via the various online players.

I have Dishnetwork and I'm considering cancelling all this cable stuff and go internet TV. You can practically get all the channels the whole world has to offer for a fraction of the cost (there's a ton of it for free). The best part is.....no commercials!!

The only thing you'd have to setup is a good network at home and use an HDMI cable or go wireless.

Here's some links I was looking at:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/digital-audio/roku-2-streaming-player-140031

http://www.igrad.com/articles/?best-internet-tv-cable-tv-online

These are just a few I've gone through, but I'm sure there's plenty more info on the net.

Since all of those TV sources are digital now I've found that when I pay a LOT for a service that the bits are shinier.  Plus having 2,143,922 different channels of crap to choose from helps me decide what to watch (I ended up spending all my time in the channel guide trying to find something on).

HTH!

At one time... quite some time back, I was actually an installer for Dish network.  It worked out pretty sweetly. 

I did a few installs for them each month, and they gave me the "dealer showroom package" which was essentially everything up there on 3 different satellites turned on.   I sat down one day and clicked through all the channels that were active as I counted them. I had 420 active channels. All of the premium movie channels, world channels including Aljizerra, and the Japan channel. Channels from Africa and Europe as well as Asia. Channels in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, it was a hoot. 

With 420 channels, the amazing thing was we tended to watch about 12 of them on any sort of a regular basis. At one time they also allowed you to buy the basic package and then A-la-cart your other favorites for $1.50 each. They stopped that. 

About the second or third year on this deal, Dish changed how they did business and basically set up their own install crews and chopped the profits for subs like me to near nothing. They got sued over the contract violation but we got the short end of the stick.... After not selling any dishes for 6 to 8 months, I came home one day to some pitiful sounding girls..... the TV was "broke" because nothing was playing..... that's when we signed with TW. 

Internet streaming would not bother me a bit but they don't have the major channels streaming yet..... HGTV, AMC, FoxNews, CNN, and no locals are streaming yet either.... so that wouldn't work here, my wife seems to need the TV on all the time. And HGTV is "the" channel. 

Huh, well... you seem to be right.

It would seem that things are a tad more progressive here in Canada. Most of HGTV Canada shows are streamed, as are all the news channels available here, Discovery, SciFi (which we call "Space") and so on. I even stream PBS. I suspect that traditional forms of broadcasting will begin to disappear within a few years as more and more people view their content online here.

But it looks like things are way different in the US. It appears that networks are beholden to the distributors in a way far more restrictive than here (and this is why I call them parasites).

That being said, it sounds like you and/or your wife may have a wee TV addiction problem. Should we post an intervention thread?

i have never paid for cable.
ever.

and i've never felt like i was missing a thing.

never.


LOL


you watch to much tv, get outside more.

and write more music, and record it.

oi vey

Guitarhacker

With 420 channels, the amazing thing was we tended to watch about 12 of them on any sort of a regular basis. At one time they also allowed you to buy the basic package and then A-la-cart your other favorites for $1.50 each. They stopped that.  

There's actually been studies done that show people watch an average of something like 8-10 different channels no matter how many they have. Exactly which channels may change over time, but the number doesn't.


I have Directv and pay a bunch for to watch relatively few channels. And we don't really even watch all that much.

But I don't think the business models between the cable/satellite providers and the stations are set up to allow for ala-carte to work easily.