Cutting the cord: Yes, I’m getting rid of cable TV.

-By Katherine 

 

After I quit my financially-lucrative but less than soul-satisfying corporate job for a financially unrewarding but more personally-fulfilling lifestyle and career, I’ve been obsessed with sticking it to The Man. Whatever I do next, I don’t want to work for THE MAN, I would tell myself during those dark days after giving up the only career that gave me any hope of paying off the bill for the higher education that landed me the career in the first place. 

Having devoured a dozen self-help books now, I’ve realized that job-wise, anyway, The Man was not some evil, supernatural, corporate goon, but merely my own inner demon and confusion about the meaning of success. I’m past that now. (Not the debt, just the inner turmoil.) 

But still I picture a conniving corporate puppet master in the sky somewhere, conspiring to make us all spend too much money on 60” plasmas, disposable clothes at Old Navy and texting votes to American Idol, all the while laughing all the way to the bank he shares with those Wall Street yahoos at Goldman Sachs. I know The Man’s out there, which is why I’m going to stick it to him and cut my cable. 

After some initial hardware outlays to make our ancient 32”, conventional analog tube TV receive free digital broadcast signals from the major broadcast stations plus PBS over the airwaves, and a few more techy toys to connect our computer to the TV so we can watch downloaded shows from Hulu.com, we’re going to save almost $100 a month.

But this really isn’t about the money. This mostly is tie to my own hands. Even relying on TiVo, which I use to record a few commercial-free PBSKids shows for my daughter and some quality programming on Discovery and the History Channel, (O.K., plus Damages), I already waste too much time on mindless crap and one too many reality shows. It’s really easy to turn off How I Met Your Mother when that’s the only thing on, but, if I’m really tired, it’s really hard to turn off a repeat episode of Project Runway, even when I’ve already seen it twice. My willpower is lacking, but the desire for less tube time is there. And I’m inspired by the guy at www.cancelcable.com. 

Now, this whole cancelling cable business would be a lot easier if we upgraded to a new LCD or plasma that’s already set up to receive digital broadcast signals, but we’ve not shelled out the cash on that for two reasons: 

(1) We’re trying hard to watch less, so purchasing a flashy new TV would be inconsistent; and 

(2) LCDs and plasmas are energy hogs. 

Then there’s the nasty business of safely recycling the old TV so as not to pollute the environment, and I just don’t want that on my conscious (or to-do list) yet. Here’s our plan:

First, we visited www.antennaweb.org to find out the strength of antenna we need to pick up free broadcasts. Here in small town Charlottesville, we’re only two miles away from the stations for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS, so we can get by with a small indoor antenna. We chose this one.

Then, because we stupidly missed the deadline for the $40 coupons the Department of Commerce offered for the purchase of analog-to-digital converter boxes in connection with the analog-to-digital broadcast switchover in 2009, we had to buy a converter box at full price. We found this basic converter box for $40.

You can find higher-end converter boxes that come with DVR-like recording capabilities, but again, we’re aiming for less couch-potato time. 

Phase two of the plan gets more complicated. To play shows downloaded to my MacBook Pro via Hulu.com and other sites through our clunky old TV, we still need to purchase and hook up these things:

(1) a Mini DisplayPort to DVI-D (dual link) Adaptor plus DVI to DVI extension cables for video feed and 

(2) a 3.5mm jack to RCA cable for audio. 

Again though, the motivation is for less tube time overall, so we’re holding off on Phase two for now. (Plus, the technical requirements listed above might not actually work. Anyone out there who’s solved the new-computer-to-old-TV-connection puzzle, give me a shout.) 

 When we’re really desperate, we’ll watch our favorite cable shows on our computer, and otherwise, we’re going to live with the basic broadcast channels and no ability to record. That means we’re going to be turning off the TV a lot more—Just in time for TV Turn Off Week, which runs April 19-25 this year. Let's here it for more board game nights!

Take that, evil corporate Cable Man. Evil corporate long distance, landline phone service carrier—you’re next, buddy .

Comments

[Betty]

Great post! Congratulations. We also cut our cable recently. It's hard to prevent media from creeping back into our home. Thanks for the reminder.