So, I had to call and have them turn on the cable tonight. Bills are details I don’t like to be bothered with. Usually, I blindly send money. The City of has been overpaid by 4 months or something.
It raised an issue. What if I removed the monthly cable bill altogether. What are my alternatives? Satellite, replaces one bill with another and they don’t always play well with TiVo. What about the Internet? A lot of attention is going to this lately. AppleTV, Joost, the Roku/Netflix box, Hulu, and whatever.
What do I watch
If I wanted to dump the cable company and go with Internet+DVD+AppleTV, what would I miss?
Battlestar Galactica – new
Dr Who – new to the US
Recent random stuff; Deadliest catch, 30 days, etc.
New HBO, this is getting drastically less
Law & Order, not as good this season
ER, boooring
Random old movies, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Total Recall, etc.
Southpark – new
Local channels come through an antenna and can get picked up by TiVo. All four or five.
So, what’s available to rent purchase on iTunes?
Torchwood 1-2
Farscape 1-4+
StarGate 1-10
some HBO
Financials
Cable is $89.34/mo for Basic, Expanded, Digital Service (WTF?), CiniMax, HBO, the Box, and taxes. This would be 30 $3 movies or 22 $4 movies or ~3.5 TV seasons or 45 $2 TV episodes. Podcasts are free. Music is purchasable.
Ok, why is Suddenlink charging for Digital service when they want to switch everyone over to it for cheaper service call? And the FCC is about to mandate it next year so they can sell the UHF/VHF spectrum.
The hardware costs for AppleTV are “fixed”. $230 for 40 gig or $330 for 160 gig. Assuming that $45/mo in content is purchased the payback period is 5 and 7 mo, respectively.
Advantages
One nice feature is the integration of iTunes w/everything. The MacBook, AppleTV and RAID box can all play music and podcasts off one another. With an AirPort, this can be transmitted wirelessly w/o a computer on the other end. Some content is on iTunes that is not available on TV. That’s a surprise.
Content is not available by just turning on the TV. It’s on demand and my decisions affect cost directly. I no longer support entities I disagree with. Pick and choose TV.
Can be cheaper.
Disadvantages
Cable is really, drastically cheaper than this. TV shows should be $.50/episode and movies $1-2 for old and $3-4 for new. These are rentals and low quality at that. Rented content is expensive.
No DVD player in the AppleTV.
TiVo is far less useful. It can still download content of it’s own and I’m already locked in at a low price. So, I won’t turn it off
It’s hard to push RCA outputs over coax cable. These existing TVs in other rooms all use coax, because it’s more efficient to wire and runs longer w/o degradation.
Hours of delay in the purchase decision to viewability. Downloads are sloooow. I’m not willing to jump carriers unless NTS screws up or dies. AT&T and Suddenlink are fast, but really awful to deal with.
Overall
Local TV is about the same. TiVo will work with it. Need to look for digital antennas.
It’s a different idea. There will likely be some hiccups.
I can experiment with the Mac Mini. It does have a player and play most DVDs. iTunes is built in and all the remote controls are there. It’s just a little bigger.
Battlestar Galactica is my big hook. When they slow for a short time halfway through the season, I’ll look at cutting the cable. Most of the others, I weaned myself off of. No more Survivor, Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives, etc. And HBO keeps canceling all the good shows and throw up absolute crap for replacements. I’ve almost cut just HBO off. Idiots.
Maybe, this is something I want to do and maybe not. The 1st episode of Season 2 Torchwood is downloading right now. I should read more anyway.
