A Whole New TV World

There was a time when getting cable premium movie channels was a big deal. I never thought it was worth it to pay for it, given limited viewing time, but if a cable company offered a free window for watching I was all over it.

Recently, my cable company advertised such an offer. Watch one of their premium movie channels (with some series made for the channel, too) for free for a limited time. Clearly, they hope a peek will get peple to sign up to pay more. Hey, good luck with that.

Even though I had the time to watch the station, I wasn't even tempted to tune in for free. I have Netflix discs and streaming. I have DVDs and Blu Ray discs. I have online options directly with the stations.

Right now, I have cable for the news stations and sports. And the kid stations. Lamb likes the kid stations, and now Mister devours far more sports than I need. But more TV time is spent with the Wii, streaming content, or discs, rather than live broadcasts. Heck, even with nothing but Wii access to the Internet, I can get YouTube--although for some reason searching on YouTube there is much inferior to searching YouTube via my computer directly. If Wii improves that feature of their game console, I'd be a Wii customer for life even if I never buy another Wii game.

Right now, the only thing I'm thinking of getting is upgrading to HD. And even that sticks in my craw considering that in the interim between analog and digital cable, I could get broadcast HD stations just with an old cable plugged directly into my wall--so I know the digital box disables HD channels, and paying for HD just gets them to turn off the blockage. Grrr.

One day, my children will be grown up. My excuse that they have things they like on cable will be gone. There are so many channels I have to pay for that I never or rarely watch as it is, why would I even want a new channel for extra money that I'd rarely watch? Offering it free just pointed out that fact to me.

I will be sorely tempted to ditch cable and just hook up an antenna for the broadcast channels available--which I understand look pretty good now that they broadcast over the air in digital.

It's a whole new TV entertainment world. I'm not even sure what universe my cable company is in.