What had been an on going discussion is finally in action and I'm wondering how it will effect life. Will I really miss TV? Will not seeing Formula 1 devastate me? Will basic TV continue to flow even if we're not asking for it? Will Netflix cover the gaps?
These were all questions we had along the way. Of course, we knew we weren't the first ones to do this. For years I've known people without cable TV. But for me it always felt like a necessity and I'd keep paying huge amounts month after month after the bundle package price came and went.
No more! This had to stop. So after spending the evening at a friend's house who has no cable TV and relies on Netflix and also the internet we got to talking. This lead us to the call to the cable company yesterday to eliminate the pay TV and the home phone line. Funniest part was the front line customer service from the cable company. They argued with us about "what are you going to do?" and "You need to have cable." instead of coming up with a plan that would keep us as customers. But for truth in advertising, there wasn't anything they could have done. We wanted to cut our costs drastically. So off the TV signal went but they said the phone would take longer to disappear.
Well I am here to say we both survived the night. I played some WoW and she, wait for it, read a book.
Come this morning when I got out of bed and powered on the strip controlling our router and television I decided to see if any signal was coming through. Sure enough, there are a couple over the air stations to pick up and they don't cost us anything. Huge win here for us.
We did subscribe to Netflix as two of our closest friends without cable TV have done that and I went out and bought a Playstation 3 to stream it to the TV and also because Gran Turismo 5 is coming out in 2010 finally. So I wanted that anyway and now it'll double as helping get Netflix to the TV.
So we cut a $180 cable bill to $50 to continue to get the internet only and $9 for Netflix. That savings will pay for the hardware investment of the PS3 by the end of March. I am excited about this. She is too since I've told her the monthly savings are hers to do what she wants with.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteSaw that you posted on my blog so I thought I would do so on yours. I am very interested in this experiment, since I find I do not watch much cable TV these days despite the large bill every month for it. I am experimenting with Netflix streaming on my PS3 and I am very impressed to say the least.
If only I can get my live sports on here (unfortunately my Red Sox & Celtics are on cable-only channels) I would do the switch in a heartbeat. May have to experiment going radio only on those...