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We're Done with the Dish... 5/7/2007 11:33:43 AM
…and we’re not going to cable TV, either.
OK, it’s not quite as dramatic as saying I’m throwing off television altogether, but I’ve never had a significant problem with TV as a form of entertainment (especially once I discovered the DVR and stopped watching commercials). What I do have a problem with is paying hundreds or thousands of dollars a year for hundreds of channels I don’t watch and that sometimes don’t come in — usually during a show I like to watch.
When we moved in to our home two and a half years ago, we got the dish. Satellite service was about $40-$50 a month, whereas cable TV started at around $80. It worked well in the winter, but we had problems with it during the summer. Finally, after I missed the season finales of “The Dead Zone” and “The 4400,” we canceled and took advantage of the cable company’s $19.99 a month for the first 16 months offer.
The cable worked all right for those 16 months, but at the end of that time the cheapest plan we could move to was $80 a month. The special plan we were on would have gone up to over $100 a month.
So, we decided to give the dish another try, all the while wondering if we couldn’t find some way to get rid of commercial television altogether. They mounted the dish higher this time, up on the roof, and during the winter and early spring months it worked well, even during bad weather.
Then last week, it stopped. Our late April showers were apparently too much and we were without most of our channels for a week.
So I’m done. We were paying $52 a month (after taxes, etc.) for a service we did not even fully use because when it comes right down to it, we watch about an hour or two of TV a day and half of that is on broadcast TV.
What’s the alternative, you ask, if you don’t want to just throw out the television? Well, for those like us who watch an hour or two in the evening and don’t have an addiction to channel flipping (like my dad), there is an option that the patient populace can explore.
It’s called Netflix. They send DVD’s right to your door. You can choose a plan that delivers anywhere from 1-8 DVD’s at a time. The DVD’s include movies from all genres including classics and new releases.
They also include TV shows that have been released to DVD — and in this digital age nearly every show (and all the ones that I watch) come out to DVD within a year. For example, Season 3 of “The 4400″ is coming out this month. It ended in August and season 4 will begin next month, in June. I admit being a little disappointed that I won’t get to pick that show up again in a month, but in one year I can get the entire series delivered to my door, entirely commercial-free.
Not only that, but some stations are starting to put their episodes up on the web. Almost all of NBC’s shows are available the next day on their internet site (www.nbc.com) with limited commercial interruption. And when I say “limited,” I mean that during each normal commercial break, they play one 15-second commercial. I plan to finish “Heroes” on nbc.com on Tuesday nights (regular airing is Monday night) and will continue to watch season 2 the same way.
Comedy Central has about three weeks of “The Daily Show” archived at any time for viewing, as well as “The Colbert Report.”
So….we started yesterday. I signed up for 4-at-a-time and should receive my first movies tomorrow or Wednesday. In the meantime, Netflix also offers some of their DVD’s on-line for instant viewing. Right now they only have 1,500 titles available, but that should grow as they expand that section of their business. The movies tend to be older, the sort of movies you see re-aired on TNT or TBS on a regular basis and watch even though you’ve seen them before. It kind of reminds me of channel flipping, except there’s more on.
So here I go…I’m not sure yet how well this plan of mine will work but I will keep you posted.
