Over the Air
The lack of immediate, instant-on content turned out to be what I missed most about cable. After a hard day’s work, I used to be able to flop on the couch, hit a button on the remote, and have TV before my eyes. But the computer takes work. I wake it from sleep, open a browser, decide what I wanted to watch, and tap in the address. I have to coax content from the TV that used to simply flow from the cable box. And I’m not always in the mood.
As it turns out, all it took was a pair of bunny ears to fix the problem. In our lust to solve everything with the Internet, we had totally overlooked free over-the-air broadcasts, and the HD tuner our television already had for picking them up. After some rummaging in the closet and digging up an antenna, we were in business with at least a dozen free channels on tap from a moment’s notice. Granted, they seldom showed what I wanted to watch, but for that quick, on-demand distraction when all you want do is nap, broadcast fits the bill.
HD, and the Lack Thereof
Do not cancel your cable subscription if you intend to show off your awesome 1080p plasma in all its glory. A majority of Internet video falls well short of the 1080p content that lured you over to that majestic $4,500 Pioneer in the first place.
Sure, Hulu will do 480p, and YouTube will even do 720p, but true 1080p stuff remains elusive. Vudu’s specialty set-top box will do it, and Microsoft’s Zune Video store for the Xbox 360 will soon, but those will both serve it up on a pay-per-download basis. Ramped-up compression also keeps it well shy of true Blu-ray quality, and $4 a download is not cheap.
That said, cable faces many of the same issues. A majority of the content still goes out in standard def, and even the handful of stations claiming full HD quality have often been compressed to extremes in order to fit more channels in. We noticed many of the same blocky digital compression artifacts on our cable HD stations as we do on downloaded HD programs.
Unforeseen Benefits
I won’t lie: We cancelled cable to save $100. But in the absence of that copper umbilical cord, we’ve experienced a number of other advantages as well.
You might expect me to proclaim how we all watch less TV now and have time to ride bikes and put solar panels on the roof and help orphaned children. But that’s not true. I probably watch the exact same amount of TV that I always have – my days haven’t gotten any shorter, and the television is still a fountain of relaxation.
I just enjoy it more. Rather than passively consuming the shows and movies that cable pushes in front of me when I have time to watch, I actively seek out the ones I want to see. I watch TV series starting with the pilots, because I can. I finish every show, because it’s still there even if I get interrupted. I watch shows that people have always recommended to me, like Mad Men, because they’re just as easy to get as shows that I didn’t really want to watch on cable, but ended up watching simply because they were always on, like Family Guy. In a strange way, I’ve declared my psychological independence from cable programming as much as I have claimed my financial independence from it.
Conclusion
Cable is doomed. Outside the outrageous fees, inflexible bundles and horrendous customer service that most scum-sucking cable providers have become famous for, the existing cable system doesn’t provide the freedom or variety that the Web does, making cancelling cable an increasingly attractive option for the discerning consumer.
Right now, the biggest barrier keeping most Americans suckling at cable companies is quite simple: ease of use. We know plenty of people who can’t even manage to figure out their cable boxes, much less a full-function computer. And for them, cable remains the best option.
But that barrier is crumbling. Set-top boxes like the Roku player and even consoles like the Xbox 360 are emerging as easy-to-use Internet video players, and while they’re still imperfect, the gap is closing. And as broadband saturation increases, 1080p content won’t remain a scarcity forever, either.
Get a little adventurous. Blow the dust off that old PC and clip your cable. You won’t look back.
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RSSMy name is Brad Stewart. I am a student at Northwestern University in the Medill School of Journalism. For my final project, I am reporting on cable, satellite, and online television. I was hoping to speak with anyone willing to share their exprience briefly about your experience canceling cable TV. If interested, please email me at bradstewart@u.northwestern.edu. It will only take ten to fifteen minutes of your time and will be extremely valuable for my story.
Thanks,
Brad Stewart
Medill 2013
First, i started out with my Desktop. Before this whole endeavor, I moved my barely used desktop into my bedroom. For reasons that I do not care to explain, I ended up hooking the PC in there to the 17'' monitor instead of in my living room that houses a 50'' plasma. This desktop is a pretty solid PC. good graphics card, proc, but more importantly, a 1TB hard drive. About a little over a year ago, I decided to put all my digital media that I have obtained on this hard drive. So, while we are in bed, we can have access to every television show and movie that I have on that computer using WMC for windows 7. Honestly, although it lacks some of the bells and whistles that it could have via plug ins, my biggest turn off for this program is the fact that audio syncing seems to be off at times. currently, I am checking out a number of other programs out there, but currently I am still on the hunt for the right one.
Forget the Keyboard and mouse! Although I do still have a wireless keyboard an mouse stowed away for when I actually want to treat my media center as the computer it was naturally put together as, I solved my problem by heading over to ebay and purchasing a cheap $10 USB remote control. It has more buttons than you will ever need which integrate with WMC exceptionally well.
Of course, my bedroom is not the only room in the house, and is certainly not the place I do most of my TV/Movie watching. In my living room, I have an Xbox 360 that is hooked up to my prized 50'' plasma TV.
There are a few ways that you can watch digital media on the xbox. I first tried the whole syncing the xbox media center to my desktop's media center. I was not a fan of this for very long, as I found that Xbox media center was very particular on which files it decided to be compatible with.
I solved this first by simply using the video library function under "My Xbox". After setting up my media hard drive as a shared drive on my desktop in the bedroom, I was able to browse and watch the videos on my xbox remotely. This worked quite well, and I was able to get some of the files to play that I was unable to do with the media center function.
I went even further my installing TVersity on my desktop. Tversity makes it a little easier for those who are not especially savvy with setting up shared folders in windows. With little configuration, it allows your xbox to see your media with ease, as well as gives you a few more bells and whistles like being able to watch youtube and hulu videos. TVersity also claims that videos will be encoded so that they will be compatible with xbox playback.
Either method, video playback quick and quality has not suffered a bit as long as you don't have your home networked bogged down by downloading or other bandwidth intensive activities.
All in all, I have said good bye to cable and I never plan on going back.