Ben Drawbaugh

I canceled HBO today, again. I decided HBO wasn’t worth it to me after upgrading to HD back in ’04 and they continued to crop movies and normalize sound today. Despite HBO continuing this practice, HBO Go and three months free pulled me back in last year. The thing is the free months are over and while $17 a month isn’t going to make a significant impact to my budget, I just don’t use it. The movies are still unwatchable and the original programming is still too few and far between. Even with HBO promising to add 5.1 to HBO Go, I doubt I’ll ever choose to watch it over waiting and renting the Blu-rays. Ultimately it just comes down to me not seeing the value and part of that is because of the competing services from Netflix — I’m not talking about Netflix streaming wither which as far as I’m concerned is “just for he kids.” I’m talking about the Netflix tried and true disc business. For $1 more a  month than HBO charges, I get to watch 1+ new release movie a week in the greatest sound and picture quality available today, and my kids get to watch all the Hello Kitty and Thomas Trains episodes I’ll allow; on the big screen, my cell phone or our tablet. With all that, who has time to watch HBO?