Well it was bound to happen again. Sooner later the stress would get to be far too much. The unjustified bill in the mail every month. The succumbing to just watch what’s in our queue on Hulu instead of actual TV. Realizing that the vast majority of what we watched was from or on FREE over the air television anyways.
Cable is canceled. Again.
Well it’s FIOS TV, to be exact.
We didn’t get off to a good start when they put me up to a plan I didn’t ask for after NOT giving me the discount plan I asked for. And after a year in handcuffs to a locked in contract, I dropped down a tier and cut the landline to hope I could swallow the cost more as we picked up a Mifi for Missy and looked to get a second car, along with my freelance juggling lately. It still felt like too much. So I called, dropped the TV as well, and upped my internet back up to 25/25 Mbps (oh, FIOS is sweet for that). I’d say my plan is pretty obvious. My TV is over the internet and over the air, and It feels a little bit better this time around.
All of the underpinnings from my last cord curt are still there. Dell XPS 1210 laptop still VGA’s up to the 42′ plasma (thought still stuck at a 4/3 ratio, forcing me to use the zoom option to watch widescreen almost correctly). PlayOn, a software I bought a license to for $40 is now useless for pushing Hulu to Xbox thanks to the laptop hookup on the same TV, but now requres a yearly subscription to access more content, or the very same content on my iPad or iPhone. PlayOn is lost on me. Never really worked without frustration anyways on my over requirement 1.6 dual core, 2.5 GB ram laptop I attempted to serve it from.
One new thing I was pleased with was something called CoolTV. It’s a music channel being served by our local MyNetwork station at the 22.2 slot over the air. It’s, you know, like MTV used to be. Where they play videos. A quick mention on Twitter Sunday gained some interest from people in the area.
Another surprise is how much we’ve just left the TV off. Instead of having it on just because while sitting in the living room chair working on her many new ventures, I know Missy will often leave the TV off on a Sunday morning. Without the multitude of options of Food Network, or Home and Garden television, I wonder if the TV will stay off more, or end up on a Pandora music station instead (which is mostly what we use Boxee for on the television) I know I sat down at the dining room table to work on a few things with only my iPad to catch up with this week’s WWE Smackdown with. Another new wrinkle in our television watching.
In the end, that little extra we pay for internet, the one disc Netflix option, and suffering through ads on Hulu, TeamCoco.com and WWE’s YouTube page are worth the value for simply entertainment.
Is your cord cut? How long have you gone without? I’m hoping to have a bit longer run this time.