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Good riddance. I cut the cord about a year and a half ago and replaced my cable box with a Roku box. There was a brief period where I missed the background no

Good riddance. I cut the cord about a year and a half ago and replaced my cable box with a Roku box. There was a brief period where I missed the background noise but now I find broadcast/cable television unbearably grating. Frankly I think the cable companies brought it upon themselves with the constant loud commercial interruptions, the garbage programming, and the utterly miserable cable box interfaces.

paul9290 13y ago
I have my Mac mini connected to my TV. With this set up I can watch marathons of whatever TV show I want on various legal streaming sites. Thus providing same background noise you speak of.
- jcromartie 13y ago
  I've found that some sites (at least Amazon) don't allow HD streaming on PCs, while they do allow it on dedicated devices (Apple TV or PS3, for instance). I was all ready to ditch the Apple TV and use a full-fledged PC and then that happened.
ajtaylor 13y ago
I've recently purchased a Roku as well so I can use Netflix. So that combined with Plex + downloaded content means I hardly ever watch broadcast TV any more.
jseliger 13y ago
Good riddance The downside is that cable subscribers subsidize the handful of TV shows I actually want to watch. Individually, every person who quits makes a rational decision, but when everyone quits we don't get a lot of good shows. Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  > Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away. It already is. Netflix is funding a lot of new stuff (House of Cards, Orange is the new Black, lots of standup stuff). Note that this stuff is being received very well by normal consumers and critics alike. They're also funding canceled shows like Arrested Development, Lillyhammer, etc.
  - eropple 13y ago
    They're funding a lot of stuff relative to their perceived size, but they're not funding a lot of stuff relative to the gamut of content that exists. In particular, pilots are something that intuitively I feel like Netflix is going to have trouble speculating on at their size, whereas the networks and cable providers generally green-light a number of pilots per year. Netflix will need to hit on their productions (and have so far, to be sure, but they're betting on the surest of things) and I have a feeling that in the short- and medium-term that's going to result in what they've fielded so far: well-produced but not particularly innovative content with mostly established actors. That's not bad, to be sure, but it's...kind of boring.
- cmsmith 13y ago
  This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hundred million $8/month netflix subscriptions and not see a decline in the availability of quality programming?
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  - destroyAllCable 13y ago
    Here in NYC with TWC, I threw cable in the garbage when my subscription for TV and internet (ONLY, no VOIP service) exceeded $150 a month. I didn't even have premium service. This was in 2010, I think. One month I saw the bill and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. They run a wire to my house, so that the TV reception is better than an aerial antenna. That's what cable is. That's what cable does. The internet service was rock solid, but when they bombard me with a constant deluge of ads offering introductory service at $99 dollars a month (for TV, VOIP and internet), every ten minutes, no matter what channel I'm watching, basically, I expect my bill to be $66 dollars for TV and internet only, AT ALL TIMES. This is the same psychological process where we rationalize to ourselves that $99 is cognitively less than $100, so it must be a reasonable truth that I'm paying a better price than $100, if I'm only paying $99. If they know who I am, because they know whether to enable my cable signal, based on whether I've paid my bill, and they show ME advertisements on MY TV, stating that I can get 3 things for a price divisible by three ($99), when we both know I'm only buying 2 things from them, then cognitively, we both know I should be paying 2/3 of what their hellish TV jingle blasts into my ears every 10 minutes. I'm sitting at work, humming their damned jingle to myself, as I suffer through my 9 to 5 drudgery. Then I come home check the mail box. There are two bills. Cable and Gas/Electric. The cable is more. It's $150 dollars. I'm subscribed to two thirds of their products, and I'm humming their incessant jingle to myself about how all three of their products should cost two thirds of what I'm actually paying for the stinking two thirds of what they offer. The jingle is thus: EYE! OH! DIGITAL CABLE! WATCH A LOTTA CHANNELS! WHENEVER YOU'RE ABLE! THE PRICE IS NICE! LET ME PUT IT ON THE TABLE! ONLY NINETY NINE DOLLARS WHEN YOU SIGN THE LABEL!!! There are trains underground, and I can enter and exit their tunnels twice a day, every day for a month, on trips as long as I can tolerate, and I'll pay less for that than cable. Trains underground cost less than cable. Smart phones might be a secret government program engineered to earn the complicity of the citizenry, in volunteering to carry tracking devices on our person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So what?! It's still cheaper than cable! Cable doesn't keep me warm in the winter. They don't do anything essential to my survival. They don't deliver perishable food to my door. Cable TV can burn.
- philwelch 13y ago
  I can live with going back to reading books and watching movies.
interpol_p 13y ago
I'm in the same position. I cut the cord five years ago and have just been using Apple TV for Netflix. TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.
- deletes 13y ago
  I have stopped watching tv about 5 years ago, have multiple blockers on my browsers and I learned to intentionally ignore physical adds(magazines/boards). It is pretty awesome.
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  > TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. The worst part is that TV ads are a major part of shared culture. People watch many different channels and many different shows, but the large ad campaigns transcend those boundaries. They squat in the shared mind-space and instruct everyone that 'buying your kids junk-food will make you a happy family' (or more insidiously 'your parents should buy you junk-food, because that's what happy, normal families do'). I actually saw one today which discouraged you from asking your friends for help, apparently it's better to pay the company to do repairs than go through all the hassle of having to repay a favour. These sort of campaigns beggar belief, either they are ineffective, or they must surely do serious collateral damage to shared values.
  - ericd 13y ago
    Shoot, I hope my thumb hit the up arrow. Sorry if not. But I think they do do quite a lot of cultural damage.
- backprojection 13y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one. But how do you handle situation? My family usually takes offense, and I can see that I would seem arrogant for doing so. I just don't know how to communicate how intrusive and strident the TV is to me.
deepGem 13y ago
What I fear is the invasion of advertisers on the online channels. Youtube is already getting there. I just hope that it doesn't get as bad as TV though.

paul9290 13y ago

I have my Mac mini connected to my TV. With this set up I can watch marathons of whatever TV show I want on various legal streaming sites. Thus providing same background noise you speak of.

jcromartie 13y ago
I've found that some sites (at least Amazon) don't allow HD streaming on PCs, while they do allow it on dedicated devices (Apple TV or PS3, for instance). I was all ready to ditch the Apple TV and use a full-fledged PC and then that happened.

ajtaylor 13y ago

I've recently purchased a Roku as well so I can use Netflix. So that combined with Plex + downloaded content means I hardly ever watch broadcast TV any more.

jseliger 13y ago

Good riddance The downside is that cable subscribers subsidize the handful of TV shows I actually want to watch. Individually, every person who quits makes a rational decision, but when everyone quits we don't get a lot of good shows. Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away.

selmnoo 13y ago
> Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away. It already is. Netflix is funding a lot of new stuff (House of Cards, Orange is the new Black, lots of standup stuff). Note that this stuff is being received very well by normal consumers and critics alike. They're also funding canceled shows like Arrested Development, Lillyhammer, etc.
- eropple 13y ago
  They're funding a lot of stuff relative to their perceived size, but they're not funding a lot of stuff relative to the gamut of content that exists. In particular, pilots are something that intuitively I feel like Netflix is going to have trouble speculating on at their size, whereas the networks and cable providers generally green-light a number of pilots per year. Netflix will need to hit on their productions (and have so far, to be sure, but they're betting on the surest of things) and I have a feeling that in the short- and medium-term that's going to result in what they've fielded so far: well-produced but not particularly innovative content with mostly established actors. That's not bad, to be sure, but it's...kind of boring.
cmsmith 13y ago
This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hundred million $8/month netflix subscriptions and not see a decline in the availability of quality programming?
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- destroyAllCable 13y ago
  Here in NYC with TWC, I threw cable in the garbage when my subscription for TV and internet (ONLY, no VOIP service) exceeded $150 a month. I didn't even have premium service. This was in 2010, I think. One month I saw the bill and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. They run a wire to my house, so that the TV reception is better than an aerial antenna. That's what cable is. That's what cable does. The internet service was rock solid, but when they bombard me with a constant deluge of ads offering introductory service at $99 dollars a month (for TV, VOIP and internet), every ten minutes, no matter what channel I'm watching, basically, I expect my bill to be $66 dollars for TV and internet only, AT ALL TIMES. This is the same psychological process where we rationalize to ourselves that $99 is cognitively less than $100, so it must be a reasonable truth that I'm paying a better price than $100, if I'm only paying $99. If they know who I am, because they know whether to enable my cable signal, based on whether I've paid my bill, and they show ME advertisements on MY TV, stating that I can get 3 things for a price divisible by three ($99), when we both know I'm only buying 2 things from them, then cognitively, we both know I should be paying 2/3 of what their hellish TV jingle blasts into my ears every 10 minutes. I'm sitting at work, humming their damned jingle to myself, as I suffer through my 9 to 5 drudgery. Then I come home check the mail box. There are two bills. Cable and Gas/Electric. The cable is more. It's $150 dollars. I'm subscribed to two thirds of their products, and I'm humming their incessant jingle to myself about how all three of their products should cost two thirds of what I'm actually paying for the stinking two thirds of what they offer. The jingle is thus: EYE! OH! DIGITAL CABLE! WATCH A LOTTA CHANNELS! WHENEVER YOU'RE ABLE! THE PRICE IS NICE! LET ME PUT IT ON THE TABLE! ONLY NINETY NINE DOLLARS WHEN YOU SIGN THE LABEL!!! There are trains underground, and I can enter and exit their tunnels twice a day, every day for a month, on trips as long as I can tolerate, and I'll pay less for that than cable. Trains underground cost less than cable. Smart phones might be a secret government program engineered to earn the complicity of the citizenry, in volunteering to carry tracking devices on our person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So what?! It's still cheaper than cable! Cable doesn't keep me warm in the winter. They don't do anything essential to my survival. They don't deliver perishable food to my door. Cable TV can burn.
philwelch 13y ago
I can live with going back to reading books and watching movies.

interpol_p 13y ago

I'm in the same position. I cut the cord five years ago and have just been using Apple TV for Netflix. TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.

deletes 13y ago
I have stopped watching tv about 5 years ago, have multiple blockers on my browsers and I learned to intentionally ignore physical adds(magazines/boards). It is pretty awesome.
Brakenshire 13y ago
> TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. The worst part is that TV ads are a major part of shared culture. People watch many different channels and many different shows, but the large ad campaigns transcend those boundaries. They squat in the shared mind-space and instruct everyone that 'buying your kids junk-food will make you a happy family' (or more insidiously 'your parents should buy you junk-food, because that's what happy, normal families do'). I actually saw one today which discouraged you from asking your friends for help, apparently it's better to pay the company to do repairs than go through all the hassle of having to repay a favour. These sort of campaigns beggar belief, either they are ineffective, or they must surely do serious collateral damage to shared values.
- ericd 13y ago
  Shoot, I hope my thumb hit the up arrow. Sorry if not. But I think they do do quite a lot of cultural damage.
backprojection 13y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one. But how do you handle situation? My family usually takes offense, and I can see that I would seem arrogant for doing so. I just don't know how to communicate how intrusive and strident the TV is to me.

deepGem 13y ago

What I fear is the invasion of advertisers on the online channels. Youtube is already getting there. I just hope that it doesn't get as bad as TV though.