cancelling cable

Into the Wild Digital Yonder. part 3.

Projects, Stuff and Things

I got the converter boxes in the mail about a week ago and I thought that it would be easy to hook up the giant antenna that’s attached to the roof of our tiny homestead. But like everything in this house it’s not going to be easy.

I climbed up on the roof to check out the situation, which was rusty.
I’d seen that the cable from the antenna runs into the side of the house, but I couldn’t find where it came out. I looked in the front room, nothing. I went down to the root cellar… (this house is old)… nothing there. I crawled under the front room of the house to look for the cable… nothing. Then finally I went to the outside of the house and gave it a little pull… it came right out. Looks like nobody has used this thing in 30 years. then, thinking of my next step, I decided to see If I could re-route the wire into the window and use it instead of rewiring the antenna. But of course, nothing is easy in this house, the wire is glued into a hole that runs into the screened in porch. No problem, I’ll just dig it out a little with a screwdriver and everything will be peachy. So, after about 20 minutes of scraping of thick tar… the cable snaps and I’m stuck on the roof with only 6 feet of cable. Which barely reaches the window. So I test it out by taping the converter box to the outside of the window and hooking the busted cable into it. There’s nothing like having to point the remote out the window to get it to work, Ghetto style!

Bottom Line: It Works!

I’ll have to re wire the cable, but it’s not going to be that hard… right.

Dear Cable, I'm just not that into you.

Entertainment, Projects, Stuff and Things, The Interweb, TV

Laurel has been pushing the idea of getting rid of the cable for some time. All the time actually. She didn’t have much more than basic cable growing up and even later in her life. I on the other hand have never been deprived of the magic of cable channels and a big library of VHS tapes. It’s not like she’s one of those people who spent their nights reading Tolkien and playing Frisbee golf. But when she moved in with me I introduced her to the wonder that is DVR.

I sort of feel like a drug dealer… telling her, “you know you need it, look how cool this is”

Cable is one of those things (like purchasing an Ipod) where you can start out wanting to spend $40 and end up with a bill that’s over $100. If cable had “A La Carte” pricing for channels I don’t think I would be having this conversation, but the cable industry won’t listen to that until it starts shedding subscribers. Even then their first reaction will probably be to raise the prices on Internet service. My biggest sticking point for keeping cable will be how will I watch sports. There’s not really that many options for live sports online. But really I don’t watch them enough to justify $100 per month.

I could just cut down on the channels and cut out the DVR, but I would rather watch nothing than watch without the ability to rewind. I’m still making the preparations for this plan (along with the DVD selling) so I’ll be updating on my progress.

later!