Do I Really Need Cable? October 26, 2006
Posted by atharkhan in : Law School, Personal , trackbackWhen I started law school, in an effort to reduce my TV viewing to the absolute minimum, I whittled down my cable subscription to “Network Channels.” This is the “never advertised” option which usually runs about $12/month. It’s not HD.. heck, it’s not even digital! But it is better than rabbit ears.
Now that all major networks are offering their entire shows in HD quality over the Internet, do I really even need to have cable at all? Couldn’t I just stream video over the Internet and output it to my TV? Sure, I would have to put up with commercials but is that a bad proposition?
Let’s do the math, shall we?
An average show has about 15 to 20 minutes of commercials per hour which translates to 25% to 33% per hour. I watch Grey’s Anatomy, Boston Legal, Justice (at least for now) and … *sigh* … yes… Desperate Housewives. That means I would have to watch an hour of commercials over those 4 hours per week. And that means, I would have to watch 4 hours of commercials per month. Is that worth paying $12?
How about if I switch to paying for downloadable shows? iTunes charges $2/show. Let’s see… 4 shows a week… times $2/show… that comes out to $8/week or $32/month. Naah… that’s too close to what I would pay for cable. Although.. it would save me a lot of time.
I guess when balancing the amount of time saved by skipping commercials (on a DVR) versus saving $12, I should probably stick with cable. For now.
I really should skip TV entirely.
Comments»
Hmmm… now theres an idea. Actually I thought about doing that. I think the Democracy Bittorent Client/Media Player actually supports this set up.
I’ll have to check into that after finals.
I wouldn’t know, because I don’t really have the time to watch TV, but I believe that with the right tools you could do something like subscribe to an RSS feed for the show(s) you’re interested in and have your client automatically download new episodes as they become available.
It’s not so much about the conscience as it is about time. With BitTorrent (or any other download technology) you have to download the media before you can view it. On the other hand, the shows provided by the networks are streaming media. Meaning: you could watch the show and be done with it in less time than it would take in finding a torrent, downloading it and then watching it. I could be wrong though… What do you think?
Of course, your conscience wouldn’t permit you to download the shows, already stripped of adverts, from BitTorrent…
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