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Cutting the "cord"

I've been listening and catching up with my backlog of 30 Podcasts the past couple of days while here at work.
The title of this post is referencing what I've been listening to on several shows about people getting rid of their cable or satellite TV subscriptions and getting most or all of their TV shows via the Internet only.
Here at work I'll often watch shows missed on HULU or even watch some collections, like season one of The Office, via our Netflix account and the 'instant view' option.
So what would you do?
It is not always a "great" experience trying to watch the shows on the web. The picture is clear, nothing like most You Tube content, although there is good quality video available now on You Tube. But stutters and stops for buffering so the feed can catch up to the signal demand often make it time consuming. Even with the DSL here at work. And we have Hughesnet Satellite Internet at home and it often suffers from buffering issues when we try to watch stuff at home.
Not too long ago Stacy and I watched in segment form, some of the first shows of the Australian TV show McLeod's Daughters while we waited for the season 8 to be available on Amazon. It was decent, watchable video, but as with most I've watched, if I really wanted to watch it I'd get the DVD if possible. I think about how the video looks OK when it's the small 5 X 7 or so box on the computer screen, but looses clarity when I go full screen, so how bad would it look on a 50 inch Plasma?

I know several people that are now hard line 'phoneless' and rely only on their cell phones. Stacy wants to do this too, I'm not so much for it. Yes it is easiest for people to get in contact with us via our cell phones because we almost always have those with us. But in our rural mountainous area, we'll loose cell coverage for no apparent reason for hours or on occasion up to a day. I will admit that the day long outages aren't anywhere as often as they used to be, but if we're at home then we'd have no phone in case of any problems for who knows how long.

I remember back in the 1990's and we'd gotten a big 10 foot dish from Sears (do you remember them selling those?) it was great! We suddenly had clear TV that was just not available on the High Desert 'Translator', and where we lived in Phelan there was no cable possible- too far from town. We liked and got into the habit of being able to see the "Wild Feeds" of many of our favorite TV shows. Most with limited or no commercial breaks, and at usually way different show times then they would normally be shown. We were able to see them as the shows were sent out for the different networks to record and insert their own commercials. We'd watch that weeks Star Trek the Next Generation at 9 AM on Mondays, or Sandy would like to watch the broadcast of the X-Files. That show was on very early on Sunday mornings and would be on Fox that night as examples. We'd often tape that for her to watch when she was awake. It was really nice and we got to where we had our own schedule of programs to watch. We'd flip trough the Satellite weekly guide and straight to the Wild Feeds section and mark all we'd watch from there.
Then things started to go 'digital'! Many of our programing went to the small digital dishes many have now. We ultimately switched also, to DirecTV, and then later we got our Canadian dish to after I was looking on-line after the Canadian channels went digital.
We've been debating stopping the Canadian dish but we really like being able to see the block of 8 PM to 11 PM shows from 5 PM to 8 Pm! And the Canadian channels aren't like the US, it's pretty much the same shows, but the networks there often show mixtures of NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox on the same channels. As far as I know, and at least that's what our Canadian address supplier for our service tells us, we're the only ones he knows that has a Canadian service in the US. Most everyone gets the US satellite service for their homes in Canada!

So with the current Internet TV revolution are these the new glory days of "free" TV? Like the Big Dish before, that we got into almost at the end, the ability to watch any show you want at any time you want. Will that make you think about cutting the cord or cable, of course that is, until "they" start making all that a subscription based kind of service. It's already being looked at too from what I've heard and read!! I guess someones going to get their money someway right?

OTHER STUFF

I called to wish Uncle Dennis happy birthday the other day and this time he wasn't on his way out the door as he often is. He does A LOT! But because he wasn't leaving I got to talk with him for a long time. I really enjoyed it. I tried to talk him into starting his own blog or write a book about all his travels and life experiences, but he said that, paraphrasing now, there aren't enough hours in a day with all he does now to have the time to maintain a blog. Maybe the book idea will work out later!

Before I got my bluetooth headset out of my ear after I hung up from talking with Uncle Dennis, daughter Sandy called and I talked with her for over a half an hour. She was talking about Germany, photography and traveling with me. She also talked about how she might be having to go to India for work again soon and hoping that everything will stabilize soon so she won't have to keep worrying about her job.

Laura is doing OK, working a crazy schedule of 3- 12 hour days, a 10 hour day, an 8 hour day and one 3 hour day, EACH WEEK! Its no wonder she's tired all the time. It seems like her biggest fun lately is her Facebook page.

Well, I've got some stuff to do so till next time, Tad

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