Abandoning Broadcast Television
I’ve abandoned all broadcast television for good. The process began years ago when I became a disciple of TiVo, and realized that there was no reason why I should ever watch anything at any specific time again. I also realized that I could avoid commercials - which I abhor. (I actually enjoy some commercials - just not during programming.)
More recently however, I’ve eschewed all forms of broadcast TV by ending my DirectTV subscription. Essentially at this point, I get all of my television via Netflix and AppleTV. I was inittially quite surprised at the quality of the performance of video streaming over broadband - it’s very good (especially if you have 3 mbps or better). Netflix also has a robust selection of content available via streaming, so all’s good there. With AppleTV you can run anything you get from iTunes. Add in Boxee and you’ve got access to even more content. (Although no Hulu - which is sad. And stupid.)
In the end, I went from paying about $60/month for DirectTV and Netflix to an $18/month Netflix expense. With that kind of savings I could buy a series each month on iTunes, own the content, and still come out ahead. Of course, I could never watch that much TV - so I stand to save a lot of money. The only real loss is live sports programming; but I haven’t given up hope for finding a solution for watching Ohio State football. If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably invest more to buy a Mac Mini and install Plex on it - which would give me added features and content - but it would have cost me more too. Meh.
If you are interested in moving to Internet video and leaving your cable/dish subscription behind, Forbes has published a very readable article on the topic, and I’m more than happy to answer questions if you leave one in the comments section…
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Comments:
I love me some Hulu! As soon as I can get MythBusters online, with no more than a day’s delay, I will have no reason for cable.
Two things.
1, not sure how well this will work out for you, but you can normally find pretty good sports feeds by going to http://atdhe.net/ the day of the event.
2, did you break your rss feed when you redid the site? I keep getting an update that says “this feed contains no entries”. I had 3 such updates today whenever I checked. Dunno if the problem is on google’s side or yours
I am much pleased with the new arrangement.
I’d bet it is only a matter of time before the Big Ten network has a live internet feed. Of course the subscription fee will be substantially higher than Nexflix…