Why I Don’t Need Cable TV
- Image via CrunchBase
I live on a very limited budget, in a rural area where the only cable TV is satellite TV. So, when I moved out on my own I looked into ways I could cut out some costs. I don’t watch a huge amount of TV (my leisure hours are generally spent reading or playing computer video games), but there are some shows that I definitely don’t want to miss, and living where I do I cannot be guaranteed even free network TV reception.
But I determined fairly quickly that I could do without satellite or cable TV. I would have high-speed internet anyway for my gaming, and most of the shows I want to watch are easily available online legally (no pirates here!) through the network websites or through services like Hulu. Add on a cheap but handy service like Netflix, and there’s very little that I can’t find, somewhere, streaming on the web, and what’s best is that I can watch it on my own time, according to my own schedule.
And I don’t have to watch it on my computer monitor, either. I can stream it straight to my TV, thanks to things like MediaFox (a version of Firefox built to look good while streaming videos) or Boxee (A wonderful program which helps with streaming content to a TV/entertainment system that aggregates content from Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and a ton of other providers).
So I can get the shows I want to watch for free (or at least very, very cheap via Netflix) over the internet with no or very few commercials, or I can pay through the nose for a cable/satellite subscription. Really, it’s a no-brainer.
Oh, and there are ways for folks outside the US to access services like Hulu or Pandora using proxy services, but I tend to hesitate to give out information on the proxy services willy-nilly, lest they get blocked too!
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