Living without cable tv
A little over a month ago we canceled our cable-tv. I can already hear the scream of Anne, our house guest in October.
It wasn't so much to save the money - although that's nice - but because we thought it wasn't worth what we were paying. Time Warner Cable are experts in that fantastic ability to nickel-and-dime you with "fees" on top of the actual cable bill. Pisses me off.
So what do you do with a 40" flat-screen TV when you no longer have those beautiful HD channels to show on it? First off, we've started subscribing to Netflix. Awesome way to rent movies: you put the movies you want in an online queue and they show up in the mail within two business days. And not just movies, also tv-series and pretty much everything else that's been put out on dvd. I've already seen almost three seasons of The Sopranos, which I never saw while it was being sent on TV.
Besides that, I've moved the media center pc into the living room and hooked it up to the TV. In Denmark we had it setup with Windows XP Media Center and a dual-tuner TV card, but here's it's a plain Windows XP and no tuner card. So what can you do with it? A surprising amount!
Netflix Watch Instantly: "Get movies streamed instantly to your TV"
- free when you already subscribe to Netflix. Among the things you can stream - in full-screen format - is the great tv-series Heroes and also the quirky comedy 30 Rock.
Hulu.com: "Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free"
- "videos from more than 50 content providers, including
FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and more". Includes The Simpsons, The Daily Show, Family Guy, The Office, The A-Team, Airwolf (80's retro FTW!) and much more.
Joost.com: "Free online TV. 28,000+ TV shows, 480+ Channels"
- in their own words: "It's video – more than 20,000 shows, with more added daily". Includes everything from CNN to Bewitched to Star Trek to Comedy Central to CBS Evening News.
NBCOlympics.com: "2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing"
- live coverage and highlights from the 2008 Olympics. Major downside: no full-screen option (big issue when you're running 1080p and the clips are 480i max.)
The downside: most of these are only available in the U.S. The upside: I'm in the U.S.
I was pretty sceptical about live streaming. I honestly thought it needed a couple more years before it became a viable alternative to 'live' TV. Not so- it works right now. For the non-techies (i.e. someone who's not comfortable hooking up a computer to their TV and not just handling a remote control) it's still a while off, but if you're willing to put up with some tech fiddling it's almost on par with TV and better in several respects.


