Goodbye cable TV

Jason
Friday
10:56 am

Hello Geek6 readers! It has been far too long since we last chatted about life, food and high geekery.

Okay granted, it was all my fault. I purchased a house, painted it, then recruited everyone who offered help to help us move (including the boss Josh (which he complained about the next day (puny man))), and then cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my parents that moved in.

And then there is the fact that we sort of moved to a rural area outside the city (yea surburbia! (really far away surburbia!)). And with that there is no actual cable company. It is all satellite television. And that means no cable broadband either. But bonus, I think our area is wired with fiber optic lines.

And phone? We have not had a landline in four years, but looks like that will be dragging its way back into the house just because it will get us a cheaper rate on the DSL than just the standalone DSL. Well that and the fact that Sprint gives me 0-1 bars of service where our house is (even though four blocks away its back up to 4-5 bars).

So this week I have been working and doing research. Research on how much broadband internet and satellite would cost out there. And from what it looks like I would be dropping at least $25 bucks a month on television, $47 if I actually got the package with SyFy and ESPN. And it looks like it I was going to try terrestrial for my television. But when I hooked up my fancy dancy antenna all I got is the local religion channel (yay Utah!) and the digital Telemundo. My Spanish is a bit dated and sadly two years in high school and four semesters in college isn’t going to let me keep up. I need my Destinos.

To this point for internet, some of my neighbors have been nice enough not to secure their wireless. So while I don’t use it always, I can check my mail really quick or check the weather. But looking into the internet resulted in a couple of things. Like I said, no cable high speed. No large corporate DSL services. I have two options for internet.

• The local communications company offers fiber optic DSL. But it is the only fish in the pond. And it gets to set its own price. And the landline phone is brought back into it.
• The Wireless Wireless Option. Yes that is right. I can have a company slap an antenna on my roof to receive a wireless signal, which I can then slap my wireless router on to receive a signal.

Both of those options are not necessarily cheap, but not exceedingly expensive. Well unless I want a higher download speed. I think I will go with 6mb in hopes its fast enough. Though I will be ready to pull the trigger on the 12mb connection if need be.

So you put three things together, cable+internet+phone, and we are probably looking at close to $100 each month with services, fees and taxes. And frankly I don’t want to pay that much. Even more when I use television mainly for live sports and the news. Most of my television shows I watch online anyways.

So I made a choice (took a long road to actually get here eh?). I am giving up television. Television that is connected by a cable that is. And instead I will rely on the marvelous world of the internet to provide me with my entertainment and news. And here is how:

• Movies: I knew paying nine bucks a month to Netflix would pay off! We don’t make too many movies in theatres anymore so we are on delays now anyways. But even with only one movie at a time from Netflix, their instant watching function is quite great. And hooking up the laptop to the television is old hat for us.
• Television: Like I said, I watch most of it online nowadays anyways. I am sure Geek6 readers are well aware of our affection for hulu. And I have just discovered Zinc which is more of an aggregate taking all the available online content that would not necessarily be on a service like hulu. Which means I can now secretly watch my Batman: The Brave and the Bold without jumping all around the web for it.
• News: Maybe I will go back to reading the newspaper. I get it for free at work. And for journalism being a chosen profession of mine, I really should be supporting my dying profession. That and the internet. I will just need to start visiting my local news sites a bit more I suppose as well.
• Sports: This is going to be the hardest. Living in Utah and being a fan of Texas sports teams is not conducive to watching those teams. My best bet is the Dallas Cowboys which get national attention most the time. But the Texas Longhorns and San Antonio Spurs are a bit more rare with select game of the week airings. And the Houston Astros? Well I will get them the 6-12 times a year they play the Colorado Rockies, the local television team. I might edge into the realm of the unethical, but sites like justintv.com and channelsurfing.net will give me my link into games that I will look for. That and the radio which will pick up games on the weekend.
• Music: It has been a long time since MTV and VH1 actually played music. It have been even longer since I actually used them for music. For the most part I have been using the now defunct Yahoo! music and Pandora when I am not parked on a sports talk radio.

So I don’t know. Am I crazy? Or am I a genious? Am I being lazy? Or am I being cutting edge? All I know is that I don’t have to deal with infomercials anymore.