Unplugged - Day 2
(This series started here, "Unplugged - Part 1".)
Prior to going unplugged, my monthly entertainment subscriptions were:
$4 XBox Live Gold
$15 Netflix
$15 World of Warcraft
$12 TiVo
$107 TimeWarner Cable
$153 Total Monthly Subscriptions
All this was before I bought a single DVD, rented a movie, grabbed a track off iTunes or went out to a show.
At no point did I decide to have a $153 per month entertainment budget. It just crept up on me over time. A couple bucks here ... "sure I can afford" this there ... and, Bam! Without ever making a conscious decision I'm spending two grand a year.
In particular, every time the cable bill arrived I'd think to myself, "A hundred bucks? I must fucking love television!"
But I don't love television. There are several shows I enjoy very much. But television as a whole is a wasteland. I almost never surf. Thanks to TiVo I am very targeted with my TV watching. I watch what I want on my schedule.
Other than The Daily Show, I don't watch news. I can't take it. Until the story is something other than our government is corrupt and Iraq is a mess, I'm not watching. Because it's the same story over and over. The details and the names of the criminals and the victims change. But the stories are the same.
Furthermore, I don't watch live sports.
So I realized I don't actually watch TV ... I watch programs ... specific, targeted programs. This makes me the perfect guy to go unplugged.
I have never liked budgets. They feel to me like diets feel to most people, "Can't have that, or that, or that. None of that. Oops, shouldn't have had that. Feel bad. Feel bad. Feel Bad. Splurge! Feel Great! Buyers Remorse. Feel Bad."
I'm OK at managing my money, I just don't like absolutes.
Unfortunately what this has meant, is that most entertainment expenditures above my subscriptions have come with some measure of bad feelings. I haven't bought things I've wanted. And I've felt guilty about things I have bought.
But now, with all the money I've saved going unplugged, I'm going to give myself a monthly entertainment budget. I haven't decided how much, but I'm thinking $80. Maybe I'll just wing it without another of those absolutes.
This idea is incredibly liberating and has me quite excited actually. Now I get to go on a spree every month guilt free. iTunes one-click buying? Sure! Doctor Who DVDs? Yes! The new season of Penn & Teller's Bullshit? Absolutely!
So far I'm not even spending real money yet thanks to some generous gift certificates my thoughtful friends got me for my birthday.
Next on "Unplugged," exploring the quality and experience of getting your shows from the Internet instead of cable TV.
Labels: AppleTV, technology, TiVo, TV, unplugged
posted by Dale Sorenson @ 6:27 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I still say the single greatest way of going "unplugged" is to get an OTA (over-the-air) HDTV tuner and enjoying a wealth of television--all the major networks including PBS whose HD programming is eye-bleedingly gorgeous--for free. You'd be amazed how much reception you can often get with an indoor rabbit-ears style antenna.
For the Mac user, a $100-150 Elgato "EyeTV Hybrid" will do all this for you. It's a USB 2.0 device about the size of a cassette tape. The software integrates with iTunes and will encode recorded programs for the Apple TV and/or iPod/iPhone. And of course if also acts as a TiVo-like device when watching live TV so you can scan past commercials, rewind, etc.
Apart from The Daily Show, South Park, Battlestar Galactica and a few others, OTA HDTV is, in my opinion, as good if not better than cable. And as you've noted, all those shows can be bought individually from the iTunes Music Store.
P.S. If you wanted to borrow my EyeTV briefly to see how the OTA signals are received in your apartment before purchasing, I'd be happy to loan it to you.
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