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Cutting the Cord: Paralysis by Analysis

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Just an observation: In my old blog days, I’d write my daily blog entry first thing in the morning; something to do while I imbibed coffee and tried to jumpstart my brain. That was a different job. The rhythm of my current employment is such that things tend to get quiet after 3 p.m.  I’m refilling my coffee cup at 2:45 and scratching my fuzzy head as I try to think up some blogfodder.

People aren’t looking for content at 4:30 pm. People want content at 7 a.m.  I just can’t seem to switch the beats of my workday.

Anywhoo…

I’ve been talking about “cutting the cord” at my house for a long time. Long time. Cutting the cord involves cancelling your Dish/Cable/ISDN television service and going only with those channels you can grab off your Over the Air (OTA) antenna, or pull through an internet service using something like an Apple TV box or Roku.

In short, you get your TV content via Internet, not a Dish/Cable/ISDN provider. We already pay for Hulu Plus on the Roku. ($7 per month). That would be fine, but… we watch virtually zero television shows from the Big Four networks.  The missus and I watch the AMC series (Mad Men, Walking Dead, and the defunct Breaking Bad). We watch a lot of DYI and HGTV.  And we watch a lot of cable news.

This is the terror of cutting the cord. AMC shows aren’t on Hulu. They take a while to migrate to Amazon Video, if at all. DYI and HGTV have actively blocked the repurposing of their digital content from Roku and Apple TV channels. Cable news is available on Roku, but coverage is spotty and the picture quality of the digital packages from Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN are all shit! Absolute shit! I guess they think everyone is going to be watching their digital video uploads on an iPhone while sitting in an airport. Watching them on a 100 inch screen in our home theater is painful.

So… I’m Chickenshit Jones. U-verse has bumped my TV package cost time and time again. It’s ridiculous how much I’m paying them for television. It’s time to make a stand. It’s time to act. But… I’m hypnotized by the siren song of the status quo.

On tap for this weekend: Getting our ancient OTA digital antenna hooked back up and the tree blocking it trimmed down. Perhaps even purchasing a TiVo unit so we can DVR our OTA channels. I need to get up the nerve to make the cancel call to Uverse, but I’m terrified.

Terrified? Of what?

Terrified of sitting down to be a vegetable and actually having to work to find content that bores the living crap out of me.


5 comments

  • Sue

    October 31, 2013 at 11:26 pm

    Wow, I don’t think I could take the plunge. I would miss my local networks too much.

  • Angela

    November 1, 2013 at 6:25 am

    Uverse is awesome! I’m never getting rid of mine…:)

  • Vanessa

    November 13, 2013 at 4:57 am

    Our cord was cut a few years ago now. I thought I would have withdrawal, but I didn’t. Neither did the kids. Now, we have Internet service, and get Netflix over the PS3. Also have VUDU, and Amazon Prime videos, and a couple others Dane signed up for – Crackle and something else I can’t remember. Any news I want to see I get on the computer anyway.

    I love no commercials. I love being able to watch things when I want. I love being able to pause or rewind when I want. The control freak in me simply adores not being a slave to network TV or cable anymore. The miser in me loves not having a cable bill anymore. Win-win. 🙂

    Go for it, you won’t be sorry.

  • Rabbit at Rest

    December 6, 2013 at 9:34 pm

    […] are on Day Ten of Cutting the Cord. No network television except that which is on Hulu. MBW and I have been enjoying Netflix’s House […]

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