Watching TV

Rourke put up a good post about  cutting the TV expenses by watching streaming video off the internet or subscribing to companies such as Netflix.  http://modernsurvivalonline.com/ This is great if you have good internet reception.  I don't.  When I watch any video that's from YouTube it has to be watched in 240p.  The 360p or higher stop every five or ten seconds.  I'd go mad if I had to watch something that kept stopping.  Because of the slow speed I can't watch much internet TV.  I can watch some YouTube since many of them have different resolutions. 

When people post clips to their blogs they forget about this and usually have things posted in 360p or higher.  If possible I go back to the YouTube source to watch it in the lower resolution.  If it's not a YouTube video then I am out of luck. 

One of the comments that Rourke made wasn't right.  He said by cutting the cable or satellite you can say goodbye to local channels.  That's not at all correct.  In fact, that's what we now have at home because I did cut the satellite in order to save the $50 each month.  We have a $30 digital antenna.  It picks up all the local stations in HD as well as many stations that I didn't know existed.  We get about 20 stations including ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW, NBC Weather, France 24 (English speaking European News).  This digital antenna is only hooked up to one TV because this antenna is an indoor one that I just haven't bothered to wire to the other two TVs.  I could buy an outdoor digital antenna for about $50 and run it through the same wires that the satellite ran through in order to serve each TV.  I am planning on doing something because I like having the TV in my room (although if it's on it's for about 5 minutes to check if it's a foggy day school schedule).

If we want to watch movies we either get them at Red Box for a dollar to rent, pick them up on sale for $5 or less, or watch one from Army daughter's, oldest daughter's, or son's movie collections.  During the winter we will watch more movies than during summer time.  Maybe one each weekend if the weather is bad. 

The second biggest thing about cutting the cable or satellite is getting used to not having the sports channels, the big ticket movie channels, or the news channels.  And the main reason to not cut the cable or satellite?  You need to have something to focus your entire existence around and you like sitting on the couch.