Bye Bye Cable!

We finally did it! Over the weekend my wife brought up the idea of ditching cable again. We'd been weighing pros and cons and were sitting on the fence for quite awhile, but on Sunday when it came up we both just said, "Let's do it!" And so after one phone call with a persistent cable rep., our cable is no more.

We really hadn't been watching much TV at all. I would tune in to G4 for X-Play in hopes of seeing coverage on a game I care about. But that was usually wasted time and there are plenty of both written and video(my preference) reviews for games online.

I LOVE AMC's "The Walking Dead". And though it can't be seen for free online, each episode can be purchased soon after its TV airing for two bucks. And I'd MUCH rather watch it commercial free on MY schedule anyway. Granted, watching movies and TV on my computer isn't as cool as watching on my TV, but I'll eventually buy the blu-rays for the full experience, and in the meantime 8 bucks a month is a lot different from 80 bucks, which is what we're saving now, since we also downgraded our phone service. (No caller ID, so we're back to screening every call with the machine. Sorry folks. Try my cell instead!)

The only gap left to fill in my normal TV watching is my "lunch break tv", which used to be the Daily Show and/or the Colbert Report (incidentally, two GREAT ways to keep your hand on the pulse of American pop-philosophy, even if you don't agree with the ideas and assumptions presented), though Comedy Central recently started playing movies in that time-slot instead. As of now, the previous day's shows are put up on their websites, so no problem there.

And if those websites stop posting full episodes, I've been looking for time in my schedule to enjoy a geek podcast now and then anyway. (I usually listen to theology/apologetics teaching podcasts when I exercise and the rest of my work day demands too much mental focus to listen to podcasts.) Yesterday I downloaded a bunch of different episodes from a variety of board game enthusiast podcasts, so I think I'm all set.

So... why have we been paying for cable for all this time? Hmm. It must have been for the privilege of watching "Two And A Half Men" on at least two channels at any given time of day.