Tuesday, July 5, 2011

I am a TV addict

I have to admit that I am addicted to my television. I really like the things I watch on TV a lot. I schedule my TV watching time ever so carefully, utilizing my DVR to its maximum so that I can get in all of the things I want to watch. I also get very cranky if something disrupts my TV. If something does not DVR right, if I miss an episode of something, I just get cranky.

I find this just a little on the sad and pathetic side of life, though really I do not care. There are worse things in this world to be addicted to than CSI. Also it is not like my TV addiction keeps me from the real world. I have a fairly active social life, and I see sunlight on a very regular basis. So all in all I feel comfortable with this problem.

Only it is expensive. I mean seriously expensive.
We have FIOS (mostly because Time Warner is the devil and their internet people think we are some sort of crazed spam planting hackers and won't allow us access). Now FIOS is a lovely service. It is fast, it has all the channels and bells and whistles I want (and then some), and it rarely ever gives me any problems. We have all the channels. ALL OF THEM! If a channel exists in their lineup, we have it, including the movie channels. Now if I could get rid of every sports and news and foreign channel (ohh and shopping and religious channels) I would, but they don't offer that option.

I would also rid myself of any HD options since we don't have an HD TV, because I actually can not tell the difference between SD and HD. Funny story: When we went to buy our current TV the guy at Best Buy was trying real hard to sell us on HD, despite my telling him I couldn't tell the difference. He did that comparison test where they turn on two TV's side by side and ask you which one has the better picture quality and then reveal you chose the HD TV. Well I looked at both for the longest time and finally chose one. They honestly looked mostly the same, though one was a little less fuzzy. He really thought I was screwing with him and picking the SD on purpose. I swore to him I wasn't. I just have vision issues. HD means nothing to me and neither does 3D. Not that I care as it saves me money on TV's (for now) and movies.

I digress.

So cable is expensive. I think we pay around $150 a month for cable (less if I can keep the husband from renting movies on demand, but not that much less). I mean like $30 of that is the fees for the equipment, and then there are extra charges for all the movie channels (and I actually watch Showtime and HBO series so that is the justification for needing at least those two stations), and I am sure some random charge for solar flares or something like that. But that is a lot of money.

So I have been looking into saving money lately and I decided that since I can actually watch all of my shows online for free, and with services like Netflix and Hulu+, I can pretty much get everything I want from TV to movies for less than $20 a month, perhaps I should cancel my cable. Now of course I can't watch my shows when the air, I have to wait until the next day mostly, and as of yet I have not found a way to watch Top Chef, and there will be no random couch surfing and catching strange cool crime shows or History Channel specials, and there will be a lack of Food Network, and a few other small things, but they are all small things.

I should be fine for my TV watching needs and come out a lot cheaper in the end.
I should be fine.

So why am I so freaked out about calling to cancel my service?

1 comment:

  1. We haven't had cable in the entire history of our relationship. *I* haven't had cable since I left Nebraska, and only had it then because someone else in the house wanted it. Hulu & Netflix have allowed us to watch TV again, and we've been very happy with both things. It'll be ok I think...

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