I can’t believe I actually did it, but I canceled cable (FiOS TV actually), but not for the reasons you think. I have to say it feels weird and I fill a little disconnected, which is very odd since I really didn’t watch it much. But there is something comforting about knowing there are 100 HD channels at my service if I get bored. But then again, that comfort isn’t worth $60 a month.
As for the why, no it isn’t because I’m going to get my content from the internet. Because unlike college kids, the nicest display I own isn’t on my laptop and once you are accustomed to HD, it’s hard to go back.
I canceled because I realized that without Football, all I watch is broadcast TV and movies. So I can get all the OTA HD I want for free on my Vista Media Center with an antenna, and all the HD movies I can watch for $21/mo from Netflix.
Now that’s not to say I’m never going to watch Netflix watch instantly on my new LG BD300, or that I won’t download anything else via other means. But after selling my two CableCARD tuners (thanks Robert) and not paying $60 a month to Verizon for the next eight months, the $880 I saved was more than enough to pick up a new Pioneer VSX-91TXH AV Receiver which features both TrueHD and DTS-HD decoding.
So today is the first day of my life without cable TV — and counting.
Congrats, I tried to do this too, but Comcast offered me a sweet deal to keep being a customer so I’m sticking it out for now. I have a funny feeling that this is only the beginning of a new trend for television. The cable and phone companies may have a monopoly in most of their locations, but competition from free PVR/OTA content and internet delivered content, is actually starting to put some pricing pressure on the big telcos.
I’ve been cable free for 2 years (still pay for it through my stupid HOA), but I download most shows I watch in HD .mkv format off torrents, and they look great on my 60″ screen. I know they are still compressed, but I rarely see any artifacts, and coupled with the fact that there are 0 commercials in the files, it’s a winning solution. I use them with my media center pc as well.
I tried the dual ATI external cablecard pc thing last year and sent it back after less than a week.
Patrick,
My problem with VMC and MKV is you can’t fwd and you can’t integrate the shows into the same list as the Recorded TV.
What I’ve found is that I never think to go over to My Videos to find something to watch. I suppose if I ever watched everything in Recorded TV I would.
I’ve seriously considered doing this next summer – but then what would I do with my Hauppauge HD-PVR? Might be worth a trial run though. I’ll follow your experience to see how it goes.
Ben since your going OTA, are you going to give Windows 7 Media Center a try? I downloaded it today. Going to give it a try tonight on my box. Let us know how it goes for just OTA.
Congrats Ben. I will be watching the experiment closely and see how long you last. I think you’ll make it until next football season.
Craig,
Nah, I’m still gun shy from the TV pack. At this point I’m just happy that my MC environment has been stable for a month. I literally forgot how stable it could be and don’t intend to do anything that will mess it up.
Between going back to Vista SP1 and adding a Blu-ray player everything once again seems right with the world.
I’m actually thinking of doing the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for a good indoor HD antenna?
John,
Sorry, but I don’t. If you search OTA HD you can find a story I did a long time ago on how to pick out an antenna. I still recommend antennas direct.com, but I don’t know if they have any indoor ones.
I’m trying to dump Time Warner Cable right now for the same reasons and I am trying to get Media Center working as I would like, but it is a bit painful as I’m trying to bridge the worlds between Windows (WMV/AVI) and Mac (MPEG4/H.264). I wish I could easily use my H.264 encoded MPEG4 with Windows Media Center/Xbox 360.
Bill,
That’s a tall order now and in my opinion not really obtainable with Vista in any satisfactory way.
Luckily Windows 7 is supposed to fix this by adding native support for H.264 as well as enhancing the playback of 3rd party files — you’ll actually be able to ffwd now.
I dropped DirecTV about 18 months ago in favor of OTA HD and Netflix — I don’t miss it one bit. In fact, I have over 100 hours of unwatched programs on my 2 TiVo HDs and a Netflix queue that is over 70 titles deep. All of the Colts games are broadcast on local stations in HD, even if they are the Monday ESPN games.
I keep telling my wife how we should buy a new projector for the home theater with all of the money we’ve saved. 🙂
Carlton,
No doubt the NFL is easily covered. Unfortunately college football isn’t as simple and as a devout FSU fan, the family of ESPN networks is a must unless I want to start watching half the games at a bar. But I suppose that even with all those $5 beers, it’d still be cheaper than cable.
Ben,
What are your impressions of the Pioneer VSX-91TXH? I have been on the fence about this AVR for the last month.
P.S. When your thinking about the Bucs season, just remember it could be worse, you could be a Jet Fan or Lions.
Dallas,
I haven’t even gotten to play with it yet. It arrived yesterday, but I’m in CES all week so I don’t get to play until I get back.
I have been thinking about doing this for a while now, and reading this makes me want to do it even more. The problem I have is my wife. She isn’t very tech savy and is happy with DirectTV. Oh well, I’ll just keep trying to persuade her.
[…] in December when I wrote about how I canceled cable, I received some greate encouragement and was solicited for updates. Well obviously I haven’t […]