We do not have television in our home, but we do own a television, the actual physical object, which we use to play video games and watch DVDs. We haven’t watched broadcast or cable television on our television set in about 3 years. We prefer life without it. We can watch our favorite TV shows commercial free on DVD, and we often do, but because each program eventually ends without running into another program, we exhibit a lot more control over how much we watch.
This.
I have a 27" Sharp that I bought back in '92 or '93. It was easy then, just go to the store and buy a TV. But now its dying and I’ve been pounding on it for a while. So I’m trying to figure out all this LCD, plasma, DLP, HD, SD, 1080 vs whatever, and all that, so I can buy a new one.
We decided not to replace ours 10 years ago, after the one we had was broken in a move. The only time I really miss it is when I’m home sick and don’t feel like reading. We’re not really philosophicly against it and we let the kids watch some when they go to their grandparent’s. I can imagine when we would have time to watch, otherwise, really.
We have the standard official Family TV in the living room, a 19" color portable, but since a couple of years ago it was taken over by La Principessa in a bloodless coup in order to serve her All-Buffy-All-The-Time agenda, neither of us has a use for it unless she’s in school, in which case we run down to Family Video and then watch a movie real fast before she gets home.
Otherwise, we have Netflix Instant viewing to keep us happy, not to mention the entire Internet, and I watch DVDs on my computer (with the Buffy soundtrack running behind me, of course).
She also inherited an ancient 12" B&W portable that’s up in her bedroom, and that only gets Channel 17 because the channel knobs broke off, which she turns on in the morning while she’s getting dressed so she can feel, I dunno, like grownups feel when they’re getting dressed to the Today show.
And I do believe there’s another 19" color portable down in the basement, which used to be hooked up to the Playstation up in Bonzo’s room, but since he left for college and has WoW on his desktop anyway, he no longer needs it, so it went down in the basement and the Playstation got hooked up to the living room TV set so La Principessa can play–of course–Buffy: Chaos Bleeds.
We’ve got one TV hooked up - our 27’ color TV in the family room. We used to have one in the bedroom, too, but my husband would stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. watching movies and needed to remove the temptation. So it’s now downstairs in storage.
When I was living in my mom’s house, we had a TV in each of the bedrooms (all 4) and several other rooms, including the upstairs rec room, the sun room, the living room and the kitchen. It was kind of stupid - basically if you weren’t taking a crap or entertaining, a TV (sometimes two) would be blaring in the background. Consequently, we rarely sat down together as a family for meals. Even if we had, it wasn’t like we would have talked to each other anyway because the damn TV was on. I like to veg out in front of the tube as much as the next guy, but it was kind of sad now that I think about it and completely unnecessary. Also annoying - I hate having all that media bombardment so continually.
Big-ass TV, digital cable, Tivo. Gotta have my Dodger games!
One, though it’s kept tucked away in the basement den.
We made a conscious decision to not put it in the living room or the bedroom, because it would make the living room more conducive to socializing and the bedroom more conducive to sleep and err… other forms of socializing.
We don’t really watch much TV per se… it’s mostly used for video games or DVD-watching. If I didn’t get such a sweet deal on the cable as one of my employment perks, I’d probably have cut off the service a while ago. When we do watch TV, it’s usually tuned to Food TV or the Toon Network, since most prime time shows suck hairy donkey balls.
Yes, but no cable. It basically exists as a viewscreen for the DVD player and the Playstation.
We killed our TV about 7 years ago. A great decision, I think. We do have a wide-screen HDTV monitor for our DVD player, and about 700 movies. So we still watch a lot, but not television.
We get live music in the coffeehouse two days a week, usually see at least one movie at the theater every week, and rent a couple new movies a week, too. So we’re not lacking for entertainment.
We’ve rented some series to watch, most notably a marathon month of watching every Soprano’s episode, but in general find television programming unappealing. We visit friends houses for big events like important football games (Seahawks playoffs, Super-bowl), but when we visit friends and try and watch television with them, it doesn’t hold our interest.
I don’t have a “TV”.
I have a 23-inch HD computer monitor which spends most of its time displaying computer images, but sometimes I watch DVDs from the DVD player, not from the computer, and occasionally I plug the VCR in to take advantage of its analogue cable reception. (It was gummed up by tobacco residue when I lent it to my then-smoker father, so I can’t actually use it to watch tapes.)
However, in the past two years of cable-TV subscription, I’ve watched maybe 10 hours of TV, and at $25/month, I’m thinking of just dropping it.
I may get an over-the-air analogue-and-HD receiver, the kind you plug into a USB port on the computer. But I may wait until I move upstairs to get better reception. The alternative is to pay more each month and subscribe to digital cable and get a box and get some specialty channels I’d actually watch.
But neither of those are a high priority.
No TV, giving rise to the problems mentioned above. And persuading the UK TV licensing people that you don’t have a TV is an interesting exercise.
They sent me a bill. I called them to say ‘I have no TV’. They have promised to send an Enforcement Officer to ‘inspect the premises’.
Currently living in the UK but prior to this, my last apartment in Moscow came with a TV. I switched it on twice in three years, for a combined total of maybe 8 minutes.
Live in the USA. I have 3 TVs, though only one in use. 2 in storage (1 i’m trying to sell). Its a 32in HD LCD. I love that TV. 
I have cable…
I have 5 TV’s plus a tuner in my computer so I guess 6. They’re all 13" except for a 26". I don’t have cable and don’t watch them much but I often have them on when I’m doing stuff like cooking. I miss cable but it’s not worth paying for 150 channels when I only want maybe 6. I see a trend of streaming shows on the internet so evendually I’ll be able to see what I want for free.
We have six TVs in our apartment, one in each of the bedrooms and one in the living room as well. The biggest one is the widescreen HDTV, which belongs to me and is in my room.
A tv and dvd player, no cable. Didn’t have one for the first few years of marriage. I hate commercials and we don’t watch most shows, no point in paying for any cable packages. I think we use it about twice a month.
Err, not trying to brag. I’d rather read, Mr. Lissar would rather play computer games.
Toronto, Canada.
I have three tv’s at my house. 2 27" ones in the bedrooms and one 65" in the living room. Several others stored around the house but never used.
One 32" in the living room, probably the last generation of CRT sets put on the market. My MIL (who lives with us) has one in her bedroom as well.
I spend much more time using my computer than watching TV, and I’m not really a big fan of what’s on most of time, anyway. I would like to watch movies in the bedroom, though, so it’s either get another TV for there, or get a laptop.
I have two: one larger one here in the study, and a smaller, older one that sits up in the guest room for when my parents come to visit, since they like to watch the news and weather, and they can pick up some of the local stations from up there.
I haven’t watched “outside” TV in at least two years, since cable got too expensive; I gave up on commercial networks long before that. But I do watch a lot–Netflix rentals and my own video/DVDs. I like to create film-fests, and have been doing 3-5 films of special chosen actors on weekends lately. It’s Michael York today!
We have a television set, but it does not receive any channels. We don’t get cable or anything.
In our house we mostly watch DVDs, when anyone is actually around for long enough to sit down and watch something.
I have one 19" Toshiba. About 4-5 years old.
In most of NYC without cable you don’t get anything but static, so when I first moved here the TV was purely for watching DVDs. As soon as I could afford it, I got broadband Internet and the absolute cheapest bottom-dollar cable possible - $13/month for the basic networks, TBS, Food Network, and a lot of garbage (public access, shopping, non-English). Mainly I wanted something to flip on in case of a huge news event or to watch Letterman once in a while. I was very pleased that Food Network comes as part of the package - it almost makes it worth missing the Daily Show and Colbert.
Since my boyfriend moved in the TV is on a lot more - he likes it as background while he’s on his computer while I prefer NPR. When he was out of the country for a few months I hardly ever turned it on, but I spent a LOT of time on the computer.
We don’t have any way of recording except an old VHS, and since neither of us wants to deal with programming the thing (or buying blank tapes) we either watch shows when they are broadcast or on DVD. The only shows I really have to watch are American Idol and Lost, and usually I’m at work when AI is on so I frequently catch up on YouTube later. I find YouTube a lot more addictive than TV, actually.