Oooh, the change theme continues in Casa de Scraps!
So. For quite some time I’ve been itching to ditch our current cable subscription. Partially to cut our bills down, partially to remove the draw of aimless channel-surfing that sucks away an entire evening when I could be doing something much more productive. It’s a whole save-me-from-myself thing, really.
It’s not that we don’t enjoy certain television shows and channels–we do! I do! That didn’t stop me from watching other things just because they were on, though. And while we loved the freedom that our DVR subscription gave us, even that was loosing some of it’s luster. If it were just me I would have pulled the plug on cable ages ago, but I wanted to be sure that my preferences weren’t going to prove a hardship for Todd, either.
That meant research and looking into what was really available, these days, from legitimate alternate content providers. Turns out, there’s a lot, and the wishes that we could “just pay for the stations we want” are getting closer and closer. In the mean time we’ve opted to rely on the streaming services of Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant Video to supply our home entertainment needs.
It was sort of ridiculous how much equipment I returned to the cable company at the end of August:
- 1 HD DVR receiver and remote
- 2 regular cable receivers with remotes
- and 1 digital converter with remote
plus all their assorted cords and cables. (I know I took a picture of it, but it seems to be hiding from me!) The transition went fairly smoothly aside from the inevitable up-sell attempts. Always with the bundle up-sell. Do. Not. Want.
The first weekend we were sans cable was Labor Day weekend and we were planning to spend it at home. There was a lot of getting to know our new options going on and we started watching a new show we’d meant to watch when it started 2 months ago, but never got around to adding to the DVR list.
Over the last week or so we’ve been figuring out where our favorite shows are best watched from–some from Hulu Plus if you don’t mind the small commercial breaks, but others we’ve decided we’ll more than likely pay the $1.99 or so per episode to watch uninterrupted on Amazon. Netflix is still our go-to for full seasons of older television favorites, and when I brought home a Roku box we were able to add other stations (including music stations) to play with. So far I loved being able to pull up my Armik station on Pandora and have it play through the television while we ate dinner.
As with all change, there was some hesitation on our part, and a fear early on that I had urged Todd into something he ultimately wasn’t going to like. Being the wise man (different from wiseguy, of course) he is, he also pointed out that we could always add the cable service back should we find that our streaming options just didn’t suit us.