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My girlfriend and I went AppleTV + Netflix about a year ago, and we haven't missed cable at all (I don't watch sports). The Netflix catalog is sub-optimal and l

My girlfriend and I went AppleTV + Netflix about a year ago, and we haven't missed cable at all (I don't watch sports). The Netflix catalog is sub-optimal and lacking some important content (HBO shows like The Wire, for example) but it's also great if you have certain niche interests and like to watch an entire TV series (Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the X-Files, for example. And now Star Trek!). We also tend to spend less overall time watching TV. There's something about the ease and pull of flipping cable channels that keeps you watching, whereas with Netflix, you have to actively commit to another episode/movie. That requires a certain cognitive effort and in most cases, we'll find that after one or two 30 minute (well, more like 22 minute) episodes, we're done for the evening.

evilduck 15y ago
Our decision was pretty multifacted (see my other reply), but we also switched so we can also evaluate how we value what we watch, and force upon ourselves some changes of habit. It's a little bit of a lifestyle experiment. When we blindly spent $60 a month and got unrestricted time access to channels, we ended up not thinking about how that money is spent entertaining us and how we valued what we watched. We weren't directly allocating money towards what we valued. The result was that the TV was always on, we'd be leaving on whatever came on next even if it was of little interest, turning on crap shows as background noise because "nothing else is on", turning it on in the bedroom and staying up later than necessary just because there was something to watch, putting off doing the dishes or housework until a commercial break, not watching it meant we were wasting the subscription cost, etc, etc. Not that I'm morally against what's on TV, I just think the passive nature of watching TV is a bad default way of life, overall it was just a toxic influence on our behavior. By having to explicitly select and buy programming, we see where the time and money is spent and what we really value. The cost wasn't totally a primary factor; we're not hard up for the extra $30 a month saved or whatever but it's something we identified as wasteful spending for the derived entertainment value. We play a lot more background music in the house now to replace the TV noise, and I've also finished two additional books beyond my previous normal amount of reading since dropping satellite service (it was hard to focus and read in the other rooms when a TV was blaring). Edit: just a note, we actually switched to this set of behaviors over a month ago and started down this path a few weeks before that, but finally cancelled the satellite subscription last week. It was a transition to change that many behaviors.

evilduck 15y ago

Our decision was pretty multifacted (see my other reply), but we also switched so we can also evaluate how we value what we watch, and force upon ourselves some changes of habit. It's a little bit of a lifestyle experiment. When we blindly spent $60 a month and got unrestricted time access to channels, we ended up not thinking about how that money is spent entertaining us and how we valued what we watched. We weren't directly allocating money towards what we valued. The result was that the TV was always on, we'd be leaving on whatever came on next even if it was of little interest, turning on crap shows as background noise because "nothing else is on", turning it on in the bedroom and staying up later than necessary just because there was something to watch, putting off doing the dishes or housework until a commercial break, not watching it meant we were wasting the subscription cost, etc, etc. Not that I'm morally against what's on TV, I just think the passive nature of watching TV is a bad default way of life, overall it was just a toxic influence on our behavior. By having to explicitly select and buy programming, we see where the time and money is spent and what we really value. The cost wasn't totally a primary factor; we're not hard up for the extra $30 a month saved or whatever but it's something we identified as wasteful spending for the derived entertainment value. We play a lot more background music in the house now to replace the TV noise, and I've also finished two additional books beyond my previous normal amount of reading since dropping satellite service (it was hard to focus and read in the other rooms when a TV was blaring). Edit: just a note, we actually switched to this set of behaviors over a month ago and started down this path a few weeks before that, but finally cancelled the satellite subscription last week. It was a transition to change that many behaviors.