Cable TV made its debut in 1948 so it’s not like it’s new and modern or anything.
Books, radio, telephones, TV, VCRs, video games, PCs & the internet - these are all ways for people to sit on their lazy arses. Cable TV is just one more, but I don’t see how it’s inherently worse than other ways of sitting on your arse.
I’d consider Tivo or something similar if I had the dough, but I can’t justify spending $10/month on top of cable fees unless there was more good stuff on, and the box could read my mind. Netflix is, at worst, better than a premium channel. I had starz for two weeks and discovered I was quite likely to sit through crap movies just because they were on. This way, at least I get to choose my poison. The system is fairly painless, too.
If you get an HDTV, then with your antenna you can pick up “extra” channels. I did that over the summer and now get five more channels that my local cable does not offer, plus the picture is a lot better. Four of those channels were PBS so I get some interesting stuff there. You might want to think about that option instead. The only problem is that HDTVs are still pretty pricy. You might be able to get just an HD tuner and hope it down converts, but I don’t know anything about them.
I still have cable, but it’s only so I can record shows. The second I can get my hands on an HD recorder that’s not TIVO I’m dumping my cable.
I used to have a great situation.
My local cable company used to let me just get “shit cable” plus HBO. I paid like $10 a month for shit cable (which was just the networks, and like 2 other station, TNT and USA maybe) and $13 for HBO.
They cancelled that plan at some point, and so I went on a search for the cheapest way possible to get HBO.
Turns out that was DISH Network. But, they didn’t have a “shit cable” package. They just had “basic cable” which was $25 per month. HBO on top of that cost $14. So, that’s what I pay now.
I don’t watch significantly more TV than when I had shit cable plus HBO. I watch ESPN, some food network stuff, occasionally watch “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”.
If you’re not wired to be a TV junkie, you’re probably not going to watch too much.
If you are paying for netflix. The cable cost would be the difference of cable minus the netflix. It is really not that much. I have a phone,cable,internet deal. About 90 a month.I do not like the phone part because wife thinks she NEEDS a cell phone. The land line is there because it is needed for fax machine wife wont give up.
Mythbusters,South Park.HBO History Channel,Link tv. Democracy Now, Cspan,INN ,Mosaic.boxing on HBO. Beats regular tv all to hell.Plus movies. HBO has had very good serial shows,like 6 feet under,sapranos,the wire,Deadwood , Far better than reg tv.
Remote controls were made specifically for those with the opposable digit…
I imagine that this thread has brought out polarized individuals motivated to air their side (SDMB in a nutshell?), but I am ALL FOR cable. I watch a ton of shows, more often than not educational, but also lots of what others would call crap. On Demand and DVR/Tivo/ReplayTV allow me to control what you watch and when, sans commercials, but occassionally I watch “live” shows such as last night when I watched back-to-back documantaries on Discovery Times (“Inside a Death Camp: The Sobibor Story” and “The War Detectives In Pursuit of Eichmann”).
Oh, and then there are those wonderful writers and producers at Nick, Disney, Noggin, etc, who are assisting in educating and raising my kids…
That’s great news. I’ll have to look into it. Altho, if she orders every ep, that might add up to close to cable fees…
We are in the vast minority in our area who do not have cable. Glad to see a few similar folk around here.
I noticed the extra HDTV channels (as did my daughter). At times I appreciate that they include a couple of weather channels. Of course, that kinda brings up my personal disaffinity for much of technology and modern marketing. I kinda don’t want so many choices - especially if the “menu” is not in a form I find extremely user-friendly. These extra channels are lurking out there behind my “standard” ones, but I don’t have a TV guide listing what they are and what is on them.
Heck, I’ve had this new TV for 2 years, and haven’t really learned how to use it. It has something like 7 different inputs or modes or something such that at times I have to push buttons almost at random just to turn it on - depending on whether someone before me was playing a game or watching a DVD. I’ve never even learned how to switch directly from one channel to another other than flicking thru all of the channels in order. I’ll learn how to do a particular function, but then if I do not do that same thing for a couple of weeks, I will have forgotten the precise combination of buttons/settings that is required. We bought compatible TV and DVD/VCR at the same time, but have never gotten around to programming the equipment so that we can use only 1 remote. Clearly an instance where the technology is far more sophisticated that this particular user. And this is an area in which the old fogies feel our teenage spawn is clearly letting us down, as none of them are showing any significant technogeekage ability.
So, WRT cable, since I haven’t even come close to mastering the technology currently in our house, I’m really hesitant to bring in more technology if I don’t NEED it.
This morning I was thinking about it in these terms. Assume cable would cost $5-600 a year. I wonder how folks would respond to the choice between having cable, or having $100 cash to spend on whatever they wished?
To clarify - that last sentence was based on our having 5 members of our family.
If cable is about $75/mo, for a non-minimal package. For a family of 5, that would represent approximately 1 meal out at a restaurant, or a night at the movies. It’s something all 5 of you can use, practically every day, not the worst value out there.
Assuming you have cable on the one TV in the living room, you can also get your reading in, since you can give up the TV on Wednesday to someone else who really wants to watch a certain cable show.
OTOH, it’s a lot harder to give up cable than it is to have never lived with it in the first place. Going forward with cable is a pretty permanent deal, especially with kids who may wind up pretty pissed off if you try and take it away later. It’s not a christmas gift that you can choose to not get next December, that needs to be part of your thought process.
That’s a good analysis, cheesesteak. Thanks.
The $ issue is not clear cut. Our family clearly could afford it if we wanted to, without giving up anything else. But lately I’ve been thinking about the recurring costs today’s generations incur on “communications” that our ancestors did not have to budget for. Cable or satellite TV, computer internet, cell phone in addition to land phone line, TIVO or DVDR, and probably a couple others that slip my mind.
It is so easy for folks to think that each and all of these are necessities, whereas I tend to question whether I really need or want each element.
And individually, each can seem quite affordable. But in the aggregate, they can quickly add up to well over $1000 a year.
I have a bit of trouble saying “no” simply because I do not want it, because such a decision directly impacts all of my family. So I was trying to figure out a way to come up with a comparison of the savings. Even if you divided the cost of cable equally among the 5 of us, I’d rather have $100 I could just spend as I wished - maybe one fancy round of golf, some stuff for my fish tanks, or maybe just to blow at a card game or 2, than to have cable every day. Or, given your comparison, I personally wouyld prefer going out to eat as a family one more time a month than we currently do. Or spending a grand on a family weekend somewhere. Or even putting it into savings.
I’m all about the technology.
In my household, they would choose to have cable TV.
My in-laws love the Filipino programming they can get on The International Channel. That was the main point in our staying with Time Warner and not opting for DirectTV or Dish Network.
My daughter is the prime demographic of Noggin, and would flay the skin off my bones if I got rid of Cartoon Network, Anime On Demand, MTV and VH1.
I now hate watching football in standard definition, and I won’t watch hockey in standard definition any longer.
My wife loves that I love the Food Network. She benefits whenever I see a new recipe I want to try. Other than that, she’s the one least hooked to cable.
Every family chooses where and how it wants to spend its household budget. Good luck with your decision.
No Cable?!
Goddamn Dirty Hippies!
I tend to think the same way you do about the communications bills, I try to keep them all down as low as possible and question whether we really need each one. What drives me nuts about all these types of companies is they clearly cater to those that want tons of services and don’t care about those of us who only want “basic” service. For example, cell phone plans that start at $40 and give you a billion minutes per month. I know people that spend $150 a month on a cell plan easy, for me that is way too much. I only need a hundred or so, but no one has a $20 a month plan.
Cable is the same way. For years we had no cable at all, I never had cable growing up. When my husband and I moved, we ended up getting the $12 a month cable just to be hooked up, without it we couldn’t even get the big network channels. I resisted taking the step to get more channels, like you I didn’t need to watch more tv. But I did covet having DVR, mainly because I want to watch a few shows but I hate having to remember to be home when they are on. I resent scheduling my life around tv at all, but programming the VCR was more trouble than it was worth, remembering to switch and rewind tapes, having the tape run out, etc.
So now I found a deal with Dish where I pay around $35 per month and that gives us about 70 channels and DVR on 2 tv’s. I find that with DVR, I actually watch less tv, not more. I just set it up to record the shows I know are worthwhile to me, and then when I do sit down to watch tv I have a list of my shows to choose from to watch at my leisure. It cuts down the “watch and flip mindlessly” sessions. So that can actually be a benefit. I admit for the first week or so I was attracted to the many new channels and watched a lot of tv, but it quickly wore off when I realized 90% of it was crap. But there are a few channels I really like. Until the day I can pick and choose my own channels I guess I have to buy the whole thing to get the 5 channels I want.
Shop around, I refused to pay $80 to comcast for DVR so I looked at Dish. Then when I went to cancel my cable, suddenly comcast was able to give me a much better rate. I still went with Dish, but I learned that places will compete with each other on price even if they don’t advertise those rates.
We have satellite, since reception is no too great where we are, but no premium services and no DVR. We don’t watch all that much, since time is now more valuable than money to us. A DVR would just get filled up with stuff I should watch someday but would never get around to. When I travel, I look at HBO etc., but there is never anything there that makes it worth paying for.
I realize that cellphone bills and DSL bills and satellite bills were something I never had to deal with when I started working. On the other hand, for the cost of 3 cellphones on a family plan, we talk to our kids for thousands of minutes a month, which would have cost a fortune in the old days of relatively expensive long distance. For us, cellphones are a tremendous bargain.
Netflix is good for old shows, like The Prisoner and the Muppet Show, which you just can’t rent any other way. One nice thing is that you get a disk at a time, which is not so overwhelming. And they make returning the disks very easy - postage paid and the mailer is right there. Our kids convinced us to get it, and it’s better than we thought.
We have it and there are offerings that make it worthwhile but the price is ridiculous. I’m on the fence about the whole thing. I hate those rat bastids at Comcast with every fiber of my being. But there are some programs that aren’t offered on regular TV that my husband and I really enjoy.
Yes…we watch too much tv.
I love cable, so I can watch Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert on Comedy Cenral, and of course, Brian Lamb on C-SPAN.
If I didn’t watch TV, I’m sure I’d find some equally non-productive way to spend the time. I suspect this is true of most people.
I don’t have cable for pretty much the same reasons. 1) I’d probably watch too much (esp now that the WX is getting bad) and 2) I’m cheap.
Anything good (Battlestar Galactica for example) will be out on DVD.
Now I know I’m missing out on the contemporary SDMB discussions but that is something I can live with.
I get ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox, the CW (subchannel of ABC’s HD feed), and an independact station.
If I didn’t get decent reception UI would probably go for cable (or sattelite)
Brian
Well, I’m glad we had THAT little discussion!
Last night my wife and I were chatting as we cooked dinner (spaghetti - yum!).
In an effort to be helpful and contribute to our ongoing discussion of whether or not to get cable, I said I had heard that she could download eps of the Daily Show for a buck. She responded, “Well, I won’t have to worry about that after tomorrow.” When I replied, “You ordered cable?” she launched into a couple of minute tirade on how unreasonable I was being for denying the rest of the family cable, etc.
Silly me, I thought we had been discussing whether to get cable. Tho I expressed my preference against, I was not aware that I had the ability to “prohibit” such things in our home.
So looks like my household has joined the cable yea (if not entirely YAY!) camp. And my main goal is to not sulk and be pissed about it. I would have preferred if she had simply ordered it without discussing it with me, instead of raising it as though it was up for discussion and then acting upon a unilateral decision without telling me.
So - my daughter is coming home from college this evening. What should we watch on TV tonight!