re: #291 Justanotherhuman

Yeah, I never imagined in my wildest mental scenarios that getting decent TV reception would cost $100 or more each month, esp when it used to be free, with ads picking up the tab for transmission by networks.

We conquered some of that with a wireless router, first using an Xbox, now a DVD player, but everything we watch usually has a year or more lag. Doesn’t really bother me, though, since we’re not huge TV viewers and we get not just older TV shows, but also movies and foreign content as well by streaming Netflix and others. If we want a more current movie, we just go to Redbox. We don’t really miss cable since there is so little on it that we want to watch.

Fewer and fewer shows I watch anymore are ones that I can’t just watch on Hulu with a day or two delay. Hell, right now I’m watching old episodes of Top Gear on Netflix, something that even a decade ago would have required buying the series on DVD. There’s Youtube, BlipTV, and a host of other video hosting sites that make it possible for me to watch things that either are no longer on TV or never were to begin with.

It’s already absolutely fucking ridiculous in this country that we lag so far behind the rest of the world in terms of internet speeds and wifi access. But the sort of pay schemes in play are highway robbery. I pay an ISP to use their internet service in order to use an XBox whose Gold membership I have to have just to watch Netflix which I’m also paying. Only other option is to settle for whatever mush is playing at that moment on cable TV.