cutting the cable
in the past year we noticed that we barely use our cable service.
i would sometime tune in to CNN or to watch a game, but other than these rare cases all the tv shows and movies we are watching is stuff we downloaded over the internet.
sometimes we would make the mistake of watching the broadcast of Lost or Heroes.
but the advertisements were driving us crazy.
about 1/3 of the hour-long episode is consumed by ads.
we don’t watch too much TV.
just Lost, Heroes.
sometimes BSG, Daily Show, Colbert Report, Meet the Press.
all are available online.
for movies we either go to the theatre or download.
so we made the decision to get rid of the cable.
called cablevision and gave them the news.
since we also use their broadband and phone service (hopefully we’ll replace it with skype soon) it was actually cheaper for us to downgrade our package to minimum rather than disconnect completely, at least for the next 6 months.
we already found good use for the ~ $100 in monthly fees we are going to save.
decided to get the Sony Bravia 46“ XBR2.
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I found this blog doing a search for “Boxee” (apparently I had made a typo and should have typed Boxy) and am curious as to whatever it is you are developing. Just thought you might like to know how I found the blog. That said:
I got rid of my cable completely. More and more tv stations are offering their content online. They also seem to be integrating ads in the shows themselves (say someone drinking a Coke on Heroes or Stephen Colbert hawking some shirts on his Colbert Nation website.) It’ll be interesting to see where this all leads. The reason I got rid of my cable is that the internet offers the stuff I want for free and “On Demand” so-to-speak. There are startups like Joost that will be vying for everyones attention, but what Joost and others aren’t really touching on yet is what’s available on torrent sites. I’m able to watch the best action/drama Life on Mars (a UK show) that nobody with a cable box in America was able to see (the first series just started airing on BBC America. I’m already done watching the second series.) Then I can watch an episode of Australian Idol if it tickles my fancy… followed by a one-off tv musical from 2004 called AD/BC that hasn’t repeated on television since it aired. Then Heroes (commercial free) followed by a block of DS/Colbert – also commercial free. How can cable even compete with the internet at this point when the internet is global and free. The only thing cable has is that it’s instantaneous and you can watch it on a big screen easily. Though the internet is making leaps speedwise (I can download an entire episode of Heroes in about 2.5 minutes time) and it’s getting easier to hook your computer or portable devices up to televisions.
i always loved typos
glad it brought you to our blog.
we can’t say much about what we’re doing, but i fully agree with your observations. i think more and more people will find cable to be too expensive now that there are alternative ways to consume media.
[...] Over the past few weeks, there’s been a significant amount of discussion surrounding the situation between media center application boxee and video streaming service Hulu. When boxee first disclosed that Hulu’s “content providers” requested to be removed from boxee, I was disappointed from a viewer’s perspective, yet I can somewhat understand both sides. The networks backing Hulu do still depend on a demand for cable, and as boxee has gained popularity, there’s been a number of movements suggesting that people ditch their cable service. [...]