This post over at Get Rich Slowly got me thinking about how I’m currently consuming video entertainment, i.e. television, movies, etc.
J.D. Roth:
To save money, we cut our cable to just the basic channels, which reduced our bill to $11.30/month. We also began to use the iTunes Music Store to subscribe to the shows that we wanted to watch. And over the past year, I’ve become a fan of Hulu, an online service that allows users to watch many past and current shows for free.
More than a year ago, we ditched cable entirely. We bought an HD antenna to get our locals in HD, which is even better than cable because the signal isn’t compressed the way I understand it. For Christmas this year, Ann Margaret bought me an HD TiVo. I paid ~$140 for a one-year TiVo service, but I’m considering ponying up for the lifetime subscription. I don’t anticipate upgrading the TiVo past this one any time soon other than to add an eSATA hard disk for more storage. We’ve spent a couple hundred dollars on iTunes TV shows, and when we rent a movie, it’s almost always from iTunes. We have a Netflix account at $17/month that we use mostly for streaming stuff.
What I have found is that, while our entertainment bill isn’t substantially lower, I consume the content differently. I buy and watch what I want to see rather than surfing cable for something “good enough” to while away an hour of my time. That’s not to say that I don’t waste a lot of time watching TV. That’s certainly true. But I watch things I enjoy more. I am watching through The Wire for the second time. (Just finished Season 3.) Moreover, I don’t watch programming as scheduled because I can consume smarter. My guilty pleasure shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Cops, and Judge Judy I record on the TiVo, watch, and delete. If a case is boring on Judge Judy, I fast forward; I don’t watch commercials; and I don’t worry about missing shows. “Time shifting” my consumption with things like the iTunes Store and TiVo mean that Monday and Wednesday night classes don’t prevent Ann Margaret and me from sitting down together to watch The Big Bang Theory & How I Met Your Mother and Lost respectively.
What it comes down to for me is that with the way I consume video entertainment now, I am in control. I say what, when, and where. This has the unanticipated effect of making me more responsible in my time management. In the past, I knew what time it was by what was on TV. “SVU is on so that means it’s time to start thinking about sleep…Now the news is on so it’s time to feed the sugar gliders and get ready for bed…Watch the weather forecast…Time for bed.” (Ever watch a late football game on TV and feel like it was earlier than it was because the 11/10c news was on?) Now, that responsibility has shifted back to me to say, “I don’t care what’s on the TV. It’s 10:30 and it’s time for bed.” Doesn’t always work that way but when it doesn’t work, I can’t blame the TV.
While J.D.’s point is about how to save money on video entertainment, my point of view is slightly different. I am more interested in taking control back and not being beholden to a box (even a big, shiny, skinny one with lots of pixels). If that costs me the same (and it almost does) as when I was paying for cable, I’m OK with that. Sometimes, freedom is worth the cost.
