Dave and I signed up for AT&T U-Verse back in June 2009. No longer satisfied with the unreliable TV antenna, we took a look at our finances and decided we could afford to not only pay for basic channels but add on a whole lot more. Thus, we found ourselves with 200 channels of television to watch whenever we wanted, especially with our DVR recording anything that wasn't convenient for us to watch live.
There were times since that day when I wondered if we were being good stewards of both our time and money by paying money every month for a lot of junk, really. But then I would remember that saying good-bye to cable would mean saying good-bye to HGTV and that precious DVR, so I'd push those thoughts back and continue channel-surfing and recording.
I'd noticed in the last few months that we didn't have the TV on as much as usual. I'd usually watch an hour of King of Queens before continuing with the evening. We were recording a bunch of episodes of Amazing Race, Glee, and Big Bang Theory but not watching any of them. We actually deleted the entire unwatched season of Glee and discontinued the automatic recording last week when we heard the direction this season was heading.
Well, this morning as we walked into church, Dave was talking about buying a Kinect (we got to try out my brother and sister-in-law's Kinect yesterday and had a lot of fun). I teased him and said, "Well, if we bought a Kinect, we'd have to get rid of the cable." Dave laughed about it, and we enjoyed the service. But after church, Dave said he thought it may be a good idea to get rid of the cable (and not just because he wanted to buy a Kinect). We checked how much we would save every month, how we could access some of our favorite shows, and how much Netflix would be. Everything checked out, so Dave made the phone call, and we are now only able to watch the local networks on the TV. There is no DVR to record our shows. We've lost every show we've recorded in the last few months.
But there is something freeing about giving up all those channels. We can now be more intentional about what we watch. And we can still get online to watch some of our favorites. We decided to sign up for Netflix so that we can have more viewing options, so Dave's excited about watching more of his favorite British shows.
I'll admit that I shed a tear or two at the thought of giving up the possibilities of watching thousands of programs and movies. But now that we're cable free, I'm thinking of all the ways I can spend my time on more productive activities.
3 comments:
The best part about Netflix? Most of the BBC stuff is available for instant streaming.
Yes!
I must say that my husband was pretty upset when I told him that we wouldn't be getting cable television. I told him that we'd pay for Netflix & that internet was a must but that we needed to make sure that we weren't spending too much money on the extras. After a few months, he wasn't upset at all - especially since most of the shows we're interested in are on Netflix anyway.
Good luck!
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