Two weeks ago I called up my cable provider and told them to take their service and shove it.
Well, not quite, but I did tell them to immediately cancel my cable subscription.
I was a bit nervous making the call.
Cable TV is such a normal part of our lives that I felt like I was doing something anti-establishment, rebelling against society. And when I finally got a representative on the phone and they asked me why I was calling, there was a pause on my end before I said I wanted to cancel my service.
And after I said it, I felt empowered, but then immediately foolish for having spent so much money on cable over the years.
I did the math and cable TV really didn’t make sense.
My monthly rate for the HD channels, HBO and a DVR was $80. At any given time I’m watching three to four new TV shows. So that’s $5 per episode. New shows (in HD) typically sell on Amazon and iTunes for $2.99, and if you commit to buying the whole season, that rate is reduced. So the math speaks for itself.
In cable’s defense, the other $2 dollars is going towards live news coverage (CNN, MSNBC, FOX) and live sports.
For me, this is a non-issue. I get all my news, from newspapers (print and online), as well as NPR (any breaking event, such as the President telling us that bin Laden has been killed, is covered live by NPR on the radio and streaming on the internet). And on the sports side, I mostly just watch the playoffs, so I can get that for free with an antenna, at a friend’s house, or bar.
Apparently, dropping cable is also going to save me money on my energy bill. According to a recent New York Times article, DVR cable boxes use more energy than a refrigerator because they are always running full tilt.
While it’s only been two weeks, it is pretty clear that that on the whole, online cannot compete with cable – there is really no debate about this.
While I was able to watch the series finale of Law & Order Criminal Intent the day after it aired on USA (but this was the first time I was able to watch the show in HD with surround sound — my cable provider does not carry the USA HD channel), HBO does not make any of its shows available online to non-subscribers, and I’m going to have to wait until all the episodes of the new season of Weeds have aired until I can purchase them online.
So that’s the tradeoff.
I’m spending much less money, but getting to see fewer shows when they air live. While that cuts me out of being able to participate in discussions about the latest episodes, the savings will allow me to purchase much more entertainment.
One other tradeoff is picture and sound quality.
While the Roku — which is what I’m using to accessing content online — can stream 1080p, virtually all the content out there is 720p. The quality is certainly very good, but cable TV’s 1080i is noticeably better (especially on large screen TVs), and neither streaming or cable are anywhere near as good as Blu-ray. The sound quality of streaming — even the content in surround — sounds thinner than cable.
As I’ve written before, streaming services are taking us backwards in video and audio fidelity.
People have been saying for years that Netflix is going to go 1080p, but I’m pretty skeptical (and Netflix does not do surround sound). Apple TV only supports up to 720p — they certainly seem to think there’s no need to support 1080p anytime soon. And streaming will never match Blu-ray — remember, the file size of a movie on Blu-ray ranges from 30GB to nearly 50GB — good luck trying to stream that much data in a two hour period.
Being a cynic, I think that my foray into cable-less TV could be short-lived.
As I’ve also written about previously, streaming services put internet providers in an awkward spot because they’re also cable TV providers — their internet service is allowing me to watch new TV content without buying their cable TV service. When enough people cut the chord and companies like Comcast and Verizon have serious declines in TV revenue, they’re going to respond by either raising broadband rates to makeup the difference, or enact data caps. It’s really only a matter of time until this happens. I also imagine that they’ll do everything they can to keep the NFL from streaming, or ensure that they have the same blackout rules as MLB.tv.
So far I’m happy with the content options I have on streaming.
While I miss my HBO shows, eight months or so from now I’ll be able to rent them on Blu-ray from Netflix, and usually being able to watch an entire season at once is the way to best enjoy them (also, the audio from the Bill Maher show is available as a free podcast). And Netflix does provide a tremendous amount of content for when I’m looking to watch something to fill time — especially now that every episode of all the Star Trek series and spinoffs are available on streaming (but strangely, the best of the spinoffs, Deep Space Nine, won’t be available until October).
