Tag Archives: streaming

Going cable free

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Tonight my wife and I decided that by the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs (roughly a week or so from now), we are going to turn in our Cable TV boxes and go Cable TV free as an experiment this summer.

Why we are doing this:

  • It is the summer, let’s get out and enjoy it instead of sitting in a chair being zombies.
  • Online options (Netflix, iTunes, and similar services) are now very viable options for when we want to watch TV.
  • The only time we watch TV is for local news & sports. Here is the kicker though…we rarely watch the sports, we just listen to it while doing other things. Use the radio for that, much cheaper.
  • We want to do more reading, work on our condo, and hopefully be moving into a house this summer. The last thing we need to do is be distracted by whatever is on the Food Network.
  • Of course the big part, our cable bill will be significantly cheaper. An early estimate is a reduction of half our current bill.

The only thing I will miss is the sports game that I WANT to sit down and completely focus on. Like a Red Sox/Yankees game. But maybe in this rare cases I will go to a family or friend’s house, a local bar, or just listen to it the old fashioned way as well.

Netflix on PS3 a sign of things to come

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Over the weekend my wife and I decided to start our Netflix subscription again. During the spring, summer, and fall we are just too busy to watch movies and much TV, outside of Red Sox games that are on practically every night. We usually just place a hold on our Netflix subscription until winter comes, when the bad weather forces us to stay inside and we have lots of time for movies, TV shows, etc.

Yesterday we received our Netflix streaming disc for my PS3 and a DVD. The DVD remains in its envelope, unopened, thanks to how fantastic the Netflix streaming works on the PS3.

Last night my wife and I watched the first 6 episodes of The Office over the Internet, in HD, on my PS3 for just our $8.99 Netflix subscription. The quality was stunning for internet streaming and it started up within a minute after some quick buffering. In fact, I couldn’t tell the difference between watching a HD episode of the office streaming or on our regular Comcast HD channels. It seriously looked like a HD show, no pauses for buffering, no moments of digital blocks appearing on the screen, nothing.

I am seriously impressed and love the direction Netflix is going with Internet streaming. I hope this means in the near future I can get my live sports in HD via streaming of my local teams. MLB.TV works, but still has blackout restrictions so I can’t watch the Red Sox via streaming. Fix that and I cancel cable TV.