Goodbye TV

october 3, 2010

When my wife and I moved into our new house close to six years ago, we ordered satellite TV and a DVR. It was the best thing ever for me since I grew up watching local channels via a roof antenna. Last year, we upgraded our Dish to HDTV and really enjoyed that.

Friday morning, we woke up to find something we had happen before. Our DVR was on the fritz. It seems that Dish DVRs really don't like the slightest of heat waves and die pretty much on the spot if they get hot (this was the second DVR to suffer such a fate). 

So, my wife and I talked it over and decided that instead of replacing the DVR, we would go ahead and cancel our $40/mo satellite subscription. She did not watch that much TV and I recorded a lot of TV that got watched late at night. And at $40/mo that's almost $500 a year that we'd save.

We are going to get an antenna on the roof and get locals -- mainly for local news and PBS for the kids. We will still have Netflix streaming and one disc rental. But, that is about the extent of the TV consumption in our household going forward. There is a sense of freedom that comes when we walk into the livingroom and think, "Oh what's on?"  And then realize, who cares? We don't get any of it.

So with that, I bid goodbye to Sarah Walker, Michael Westen, Jim Longworth, Boris Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz, Neal Caffrey, Eli Wallace and Marshall Mann. But, the people I will really miss are Adam and Jamie; my favourite Iron Chefs, Masaharu Morimoto and Michael Symon; and of course Alton Brown.

Sure, I can catch most of these characters on Hulu or any other internet sites, but really, I think I can find better uses for my time. Thanks for all the entertainment, I won't miss you guys that much.


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