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Journal grub's Journal: 1 Year Without Cable 42

Journal by grub

Friday, November 7, 2003. A coworker and I were having a great lunch at an East Indian place a short walk from the office. We got on the topic of television. She's my age (37 at the time) and has never had cable or a TV set (since then she has bought a small TV and DVD player, still no cable) I was saying how crappy TV had gotten; loads of commercials, not much interesting substance. Indeed I had previously written about this in my journal once or twice (NB: the rambling first entry was written whilst under the influence of something the Canadian government is in the process of decriminalizing in small quantities. I leave the JE there for the sake of embarrassing completeness.)


My coworker said "If it's that bad why don't you cancel your cable?" I shot back "I've thought about it." which I had many times. She replied "So just do it, what's stopping you?" I realized at that moment that the only reason was simple: lazy inertia. We walked back to the office where I phoned up Shaw Cablesystems and cancelled it while keeping the cable modem access.

There are some interesting TV shows that I do enjoy, mostly documentaries such as Nova (PBS) and The Fifth Estate (CBC) or Star Trek. When I met my girlfriend, EvilKim(tm), she thought it was a bit odd but appreciated my viewpoint.


I get a a few standard FAQs and comments from people which I'll address here:

How do you get information/news?
My city has two daily papers both of which are online. I also check out Google's Canadian news service which is updated 24x7. In the mornings a news radio station is my alarm. I really don't know how having dozens of channels consisting sitcoms and home renovation shows can make one better informed. The bit of news on television pretty much sucks. They are a handful of sources, I prefer reading via google's service where there are dozens of views, some with a local skew, rather than listening to the tanned talking heads of CNN. All in all, I think I'm quite well informed, thank you.

Don't you get bored?
No way. For hundreds of years there have been things called books. Since dropping cable my reading level has shot back up to levels where it was years ago. Also remember that you're reading this on a computer: I like to play games. ie: the Thief series of games is incredible and has new fan missions coming out all the time. Recently I added an XBOX with an Xecutor3 modchip (it was far easier chipping the XBOX than it than my brother's PS2) and I have a load of emulators (NES, SNES, MAME, and over a dozen others) that we can play great old retro games on as well as mainstream games.
We don't only read and play games. There's another wonder of our species called speech. I've been at houses where they have TVs in the bedrooms, living room, rec room, even the kitchen. People will just stare at this inert piece of furniture without any higher brain function. Besides, Kim and I enjoy each other's company. If we were to sit in front of the TV well then we may as well have just stayed at our respective houses.

Oh I'd die without TV!
No, you wouldn't. TV is a very new invention in the history of our species.

Playing games? That's no fun.
Maybe to you, we don't find watching sports "fun": spectating is not participating. At least gaming requires some input. Regardless of that, we would likely never spend 3+ hours of an afternoon gaming. Life's too short.

You sound like a zealot!
I hear that a lot. The stoned rant in my journal notwithstanding :) I try not to tell people what to do with their lives. I'm just relaying my own experiences. Conversely, it's the people who are hooked on TV that rave about how I'm missing out on life or whatever. They are the zealots that take offense to my Just Not Giving A Turd about the latest Survivor, ER or Trading Spaces.

What do you do when you have people over?
Eat, talk, swim, sip wine, laugh, whatever. Human interaction is a wonderful thing. Personally I think it's a poor host who puts on the TV and has the company sit there watching it. I didn't go to their house to watch TV, I went to be with friends.

What about movies?
Hey, I just cancelled cable. I still watch movies and the rare TV show that I enjoyed :)
The Rig: My ATI Radeon 9800 Pro's composite video-out and the SB Audigy 2's SPDIF connect to my 5.1 surround receiver via the TV inputs. Because I want to control it from the comfort of my couch I bought an ATI Remote Wonder remote control which works by RF not IR so it's not line of sight and has a ~10M range.

I can watch DVDs, xvid, divx, et al ad nauseum. Recall earlier how I mentioned a few shows I've enjoyed. New episodes of Nova/Enterprise/etc are available right after they're shown and without commercials (or pledge drives in the case of PBS shows).


Would you ever get cable again?
Highly unlikely, however if I could get channels a la carte I'd possibly reconsider. The idiocy of having to pay for sports channels and home renovation channels just so I can get Space pretty much kills the chance that I'll ever have cable again.


So there you have it, one year without cable. The initial shock of not having droning background noise has long passed and I've put the extra $50/month into my RRSPs (.ca retirement investment funds). Most importantly I've not spent hundreds of hours on the couch staring at a plastic box. Time that I've spent living.
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1 Year Without Cable More

1 Year Without Cable

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  • Cable free :) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Spunk ( 83964 ) <sq75b5402@sneakemail.com> on Monday November 08, 2004 @01:48PM (#10756269) Homepage
    Woo. I've been cable-free since I graduated college. 4 years of my roommates choosing what to watch just made it not interesting anymore. When I found my own place, I didn't even get a TV. (Until my mom brought Grandma's TV over and left it there - she thought being without one was very strange.) I don't miss cable in the least. For movies I now have Netflix - it's rare that I have time to watch a movie and I don't have at least 1 DVD from them around.

    • Re:Cable free :) (Score:2, Interesting)

      by phrasebook ( 740834 )
      Until my mom brought Grandma's TV over and left it there - she thought being without one was very strange.

      Yeah, what's with that. My mum thought the same thing. She offered to buy me one!
    • Until my mom brought Grandma's TV over

      I gave my TV to my grandma! That is almost 5 years ago now. It was a super duper big screen. Finaly she could read those tiny subtitles on the foreign movies.

  • We walked back to the office where I phoned up Shaw Cablesystems and cancelled it while keeping the cable modem access.

    Whew! You have cable modem; thats really all that matters.

    I won't have cable for 6-8 weeks- and its the lack of cable modem OR ANY MODEM thats FREAKING ME OUT. In My temporary apartment, I was without cable modem for 4 days. On the 3 day I used my laptop's modem.

    Now I don't even have a phone line to hook into (though my laptop does have an IR port, hmmmm, cell modem, maybe?!)

    To be h

    • P.S. (Score:2)

      by mekkab ( 133181 )
      Do you know how I learned enough chinese characters to decipher my favorite take places name? Teh intarwebs taught me [eccentricflower.com].

    • Yeah, I read your JE about no cable modem. It's a bitch for me to reply as my work IP blocks are banned again so I'm doing this through VNC to home. Gotta love broadband ;)

      Anyhow, as to the HBO original programming... I'm in Canada and don't think I can get HBO yet. Regardless, if I can it'll be on top of all the sports/home reno/cooking channels as a $PREMIUM$ channel.

      That all said, I've checked out The Sopranos and Carnivale thanks to BitTorrent and eMule. :)

      I was never a big TV viewer but really didn
      • didn't realize just how much TV has a grip on society

        Interesting side note. We've been living in a temporary apartment drastically closer to where my wife works. Her commute went from an hour to 20-30 minutes. What did she do with this extra time? Use it as an incentive to go into DC and explore its rich art and cultural offerings? See friends in DC?

        Nope. She just watched more tv. Which is to say she watched tv. (previously our TV was in the basement and she/we'd come home and not even see it. N
  • I have a cable modem (god I love it, mmmm kiss kiss hug hug). I get basic cable because you get a "discount" on your cable modem if you are a cable subscriber, and the cost of the basic cable is slightly less (or the same, I can't recall) than the discount (clever eh?). It consists of all the local channels, some Chicago channel, the National Geographic Channel (way awesome) and a bunch of other crap channels I never watch. So basically they try to hook you into one of their premium services via the basic c
    • Back in the early '80s the FCC was getting flooded with complaints about rising cable fees. Forced with the threat of more regulation they figured out a way to charge more while making it took like fees went down. Previously "basic" service was everything but the HBO type channels. They split the old "basic" tier it to two new service tiers, "basic" and "expanded basic". "Basic" only had the local stations, C-SPAN and the Home Shopping Zone and "expanded basic" had the rest. Combined the new fees might be m
  • I've been TV-free for the past 1 1/2 years. It's blissful.

    Instead, I've raked up a HUGE collection of books. When I need to watch something, I just hook up my desktop machine to the music system, and bingo!

    I spent this summer at a certain high security national lab, so I really was stranded for Internet connectivity too -- and I realized that I really had more of a fulfilling life that way.

    No Slashdot, no newsgroups, no temptation to check my mail obsessively compulsively every other minute.

    Unfortunatel
  • I've never had cable. My parents have never had it and managed to raise me without sitting me in front of the TV for extended periods of time. I never bothered to get it in college, even when it was offered cheap. I've never bothered to get it afterwards either. I can't imagine paying for even basic cable. I've never seen anything on cable that's compelled me to want it. Most shows that are considered good end up on DVD (or the net) anyway, so it's not like I'm completely out of luck if I stumble across som
  • ...for about three years now. Teh Intarwebs are my television. I do, however, download episodes of Futurama and Family Guy to watch while I eat candle lit dinners for one.

    What's really scary is how infrequently I spin the FM dial away from the local NPR station these days... the horrors of old age!!!
  • I'm with you. I Haven't watched TV for 5 months, and I can honestly Say I'm a better person b/c of it. I've lost 30 pounds, picked up a new programming language, my grades have gone up, and Many other bonuses.

    I recommend it too any one who is sick and tired of that idiot toob.

  • My wife and I haven't actually used the television for anything other than video games and the occasional DVD rental for almost three years. We went on a vacation not too long ago and while bored in our hotel room at one point, happened to turn on the television. Commercials have either gotten terribly asinine and degrading in the past three years, or we've just become unacustomed to the consumer garbage being shoveled around. It actually started to make us angry to watch the tube, because of how inane eve
  • have to have it. if i couldn't watch baseball during the summer, i'd go nuts
  • Sounds great! I've always wanted to do the same thing, when I'm by myself the tv rarely gets turned on.. I've talked about getting rid of it before, but the missus isn't keen on that at all.

    You've inspired me to make a greater effort to find alternative forms of entertainment, I think it will be "do anything except watch tv", sounds good to me.

    It's surprising how much time i waste in front of the damn thing.

  • Addictions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @12:51PM (#10766841)
    I'd ditch cable if it weren't for Mythbusters, Monster House, South Park and the Daily Show. The first two I never miss (Mythbusters is probably the best science show on TV right now) and the second two I catch when I can. The only network shows I watch are the Simpsons and Law & Order. My wife loves Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics, and on wintery days she cross stitches and watches old movies.

    You're right, there really aren't many good TV shows on, unfortunatly many of the few good ones are only on cable. My MythTV based PVR makes things better...

    • All those shows you like are available on various P2P networks :) I've watched MythBusters a few times myself, it's entertaining and I've learned a thing or two. The Daily Show would be the one that would be stale if you didn't get it right away. That all said, the new shows are available right after being broadcast on the east coast.

      When I decided to get rid of the cable I wasn't watching lots at the time but the actual thought of disconnection seemed almost scary. The first while was a bit weird but then

  • cancelled it while keeping the cable modem access. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @01:28PM (#10767175) Homepage Journal
    My cable provider won't give you a cable modem without cable TV. For that matter, they really want you to have "basic" cable TV to get a cable modem. If you want a cable modem with "broadcast" cable TV, they slap on a surcharge.

    Nor can I get DSL at my house. (40,000 ft to C.O.)

    That said, there is one good service for TV - it helps shut down the brain. That can be quite useful as bedtime approaches, because sometimes it's tough to stop *thinking*, and it makes it tough to get to sleep. Kind of like an electronic version of Sherlock Holme's 7% solution.
  • I watch three TV Channels: Discovery (for Mythbusters), Cartoon Network (for [adult swim]), and FoodTV (for Good Eats). My wife watches those shows with me, but also likes Charmed on WB and Trading Spaces on TLC. So we could live with those five channels or, indeed, those few TV shows.

    Ideally, we'd be able to download those shows, or have them available on demand, for a small monthly fee. No reruns, no commercials, just content, available whenever we wanted it.

    Thankfully, we don't pay for our cable at the

  • Ah (Score:2)

    by jidar ( 83795 )
    The Internet killed TV for me years ago.
    You know I have a TV, cable TV and a tivo... for my wife. The only thing I watch on TV (Chiefs football!) I could watch without cable. I live in front of my computer though and watch a handful of shows on occasion by way of Internet piracy. Sorry I guess.
  • When I moved to AZ a little over two years, I wasn't able to afford cable(poor university student, yup). My new roommate had an antenna, but when he moved out that December(I moved in in August), he took it with him. I bought a TV, so that I had a place to attach my DVD player, but so far I haven't even replaced the antenna. That will be two years ago this December. Books, games, baking cookies, flying airplanes(my expensive hobby, which I can do more often since I'm not paying for cable) - there's a lot yo
  • When I moved to find work last June, I opted not to get cable. It hasn't even crossed my mind to get it again. I'm finding lots of ways to spend the extra time. At the moment, I'm making a serious pursuit of photography, reading more, writing a novel, (which is not going very well) and writing letters. (Yes, actual letters, with a pen and paper.) I'm also keeping a very active email correspondance with my friends in Oklahoma, Florida, and Ohio, and other parts of Texas.
  • I've been without cable or regular TV since... 1997!

    I think I tried turning it on New Year's Eve to watch the ball drop in 2000, but got no reception, so just gave up.

    I don't think there's anything wrong with television, but if you're going to have a habit, you may as well do something like get a good MJ or extacy habit going ^_^
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Actually, I never have enjoyed Television as much as I have enjoyed my computer.

    Both my mom and sister were, and still are (at least my mom), very much into TV. When I was growing up, they would turn it on and expect me to sit there with them, but when I declined, they would claim that I didn't want to spend time with them... I like spending time with them, but I dislike spending time with the TV with them merely present. It's different.

    Anyway, after all this, I recently acquired a decent 42" rear-project

  • Thanks for posting this, we need more people to advocate alternates to TV. My wife and I have been cable-free since 1998. There are the few rare things I'd like to watch (Formula 1 racing) but for $40+ a month, no way.

    But now if you took away the DSL, you'd get a different reaction...

  • I bittorrent movies and a few speciatly shows (daily show, Trailerpark Boys, The Office, Simpsons) and watch them on my Computer.

    I watch the shows when i discover something worthwhile.

    I appreciate that functionally, my computer has kinda become my television.

    I am very certain that sitting around consuming the broadcast/cable garbage would destroys a person. I cant stand the yammering of my tv-addicted coworkers ranting about some nonsense sitcom/reality show.

    i do try and suggest dailyshow/tbp/the offic
  • We are almost 3 years without cable tv. We still have cable modem acccess as nothing in our area is competitive (SBC Ameritech area). Our kids are improving in school. One is just below the special Accelerated classes (less than 2% of the population gets to take these classes), up from average grades years ago. The other one is learning Piano, Voice, cooking and a few other things (just turned 7). He can already bake his own cookies, cake and bread.

    Before this, when we actually had Cable, there was ne

  • was the last time I had owned a TV. Until then I had been a major TV junkie (something which contributed to ruinously wated teen years). The summer of that year, I packed my bags and went on a foreign exchange to Germany. When I got back, all the schedules had been changed, some shows were gone and I was too lazy to get back into it. I was off to college anyway, and didn't really have the cash to get a TV.

    It's fun to tell cable telemarketers that you have no TV. They don't seem prepared for that at
  • I've never had cable (except for a 4 month period at my apartment when the previous renters didn't cancel their subscription)- I have a television in my bedroom that gets only the ABC, FOX, CBS etc - even when I go to houses with cable, I end up only watching the channels I know, if I even watch tv at all.

    I've never gotten bored (I work outside for 15 hours a day so I don't have much free time anyway- except weekends)- instead I read, hang out with friends- and we actually go OUT and DO THINGS or TALK, as

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