As I was preparing to move into my own house, I considered the entertainment options available to me. I am not much of a habitual TV watcher anymore. I used to be. I used to love television and had a set of shows I would watch each night. I could tell what day it was by what shows were on. There was a time when a certain show caused a lot of talk in the office on the following day (i.e. Lost) so I had to be up to date or out on the office chatter. Consistent TV watching has waned since I stopped working in an office It got even worse when I was a frequent traveler (I rarely turned on the TV in a hotel room) and even more so with recent events (and if you don’t know what those are, welcome to my blog! We’ll wait while you get caught up…start at Why? and work your way up. Done? Great!).
Since I was on my own I didn’t need to be concerned over what the MMC (Mother of My Children, please see What to Call The Woman Who Is No Longer My Wife or in the side bar for more info on that) wanted to watch and I only need to be mildly concerned over what the girls wanted to watch when they came over. We generally stick with movie nights and maybe TV in the mornings as they wake up and we get the day rolling.
Even though I had become more of an occasional TV watcher, I was still a big TiVo fan. Recording the shows I really did want to watch (mainly Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, The Daily Show, Storage Wars and Mythbusters) always meant I had something to watch at any given moment. But since this has been the Summer of Divorce, most of these shows weren’t first run so I burned through them rather quickly during the rare moments that I actually wanted to watch TV and even during those times, I was only half paying attention. Thus when it came to making the entertainment choices for my new house, I pondered the latest thing in television technology: On-demand.
During the time that I had control over the devices to feed my need for entertainment, I’ve experienced the Atari 2600, Nintendo, a VCR, cable, DVD player, the aforementioned TiVo, the Wii, Xbox and my latest device, the Playstation 3. I got the Wii and Xbox mainly for the games … some for me, some for the kids but I discovered the other options available to me: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon On Demand and a plethora of other assorted services. We got Netflix at first as our on demand movie choice but I was always frustrated with it because there would be a movie I wanted to watch but it was never available on Netflix. I found Amazon On Demand to be a much better choice for movie rental or purchase. I also found it inconvenient to use Netflix because you had to add a movie or TV show to your queue on your PC or smart phone application and then fire up Netflix on your desired device to actually watch what you selected. During the separation, I either discovered the functionality or there was a functionality change that allowed you to start selecting movies directly from the Netflix interface on the PS3. This made Netflix a lot better in my oh-so humble opinion.
With this discovery and the fact that Netflix had a Kid option, the girls were able to browse through the movies and TV shows to select what they wanted to watch. Of course, after watching a Disney movie called Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure sixty-eight times, I'd like to know if there is a way to block certain selections.
On Netflix, I did find several TV shows that I either stopped watching or have never watched before. It was magnificent and furthered my desire to go only on demand in the new place. There was a period a time after the MMC and the kids moved out when all I had was my PS3 to get TV and I started watching episodes of The Office since I stopped watching it a few years ago. Again, I was thrilled and I started thinking, “Man, I should just do this all the time.” More reasons started to collect in my head:
On Netflix, I did find several TV shows that I either stopped watching or have never watched before. It was magnificent and furthered my desire to go only on demand in the new place. There was a period a time after the MMC and the kids moved out when all I had was my PS3 to get TV and I started watching episodes of The Office since I stopped watching it a few years ago. Again, I was thrilled and I started thinking, “Man, I should just do this all the time.” More reasons started to collect in my head:
· Money savings – We were paying for the premium cable package with HD channels that went up to around a $125 a month, although that included the internet connection. I still needed that but I figured I could cut the cost in half by not having the cable channels.
· Not paying for something I wasn’t watching – Related to the money savings is the fact if I’m not watching the TV, I’m not paying for it (well, not as much at least). With cable, if I didn't turn on the TV for a month, I wasted that month’s cable bill whereas with on-demand, I would be paying much less but have a lot more available to me at any time I wanted it.
· Always something to watch – Whether it’s seeing some old movie I forgot about (a lot of those I have rediscovered thanks to a buddy’s blog, Tales from the Queue) or watching the entire run of Cheers from the beginning, it didn’t seem like I could run out of things to watch. Add into the fact that I also had the other outlets like Amazon On Demand, Hulu and stream directly from web sites, my viewing platter was full and never ending.
So when the day came to get connected, I called the cable company and I said I wanted internet only! Unfortunately, THEY said, I needed at least the local channel cable option along with the internet connection. They also proceeded to go through the other packages and by the time I got off the phone, I had the cable plus package along with internet. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger to go on demand only. I thought about sports that I would miss and how I would get two TVs running under this system. You see, I had a TV in my living room and one in the basement. No, I didn’t have one in my bedroom. I hate having a TV in the bedroom and especially going to sleep with it on. This was a difference between me and the MMC and could very well be the main reason we got a divorce (I mean, I really don’t know other than what I have speculated on…again, go back and read my other blogs for more information on that). If the girls wanted to watch TV in the basement, I needed a device to stream the on-demand content and I know there are plenty I could get but when it came down to it, I just went with cable.
Maybe someday I will live the on-demand dream but for now I’ll just the change channels until I find something I want to watch. Truth is, I still have access to on-demand so I can finish off the episodes of The Office I haven’t seen.
And as I write this, I see that all that is on regular cable right now are infomercials and ESPN Sports Center updates I have already seen twelve times. Hmmm...maybe I should have just made the switch to on-demand after all.
Then again, I could just stream Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure one more time...
Then again, I could just stream Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure one more time...
Next time: The small moments
