RIP Cable television

Post Reply New Topic

Do you miss cable TV just a little bit. I liked the familiarity of scheduling shows rather than watching them at my own time. When do you think cable TV will go extinct? Instead of "regular" TV going extinct, why can't it just change?

I only watch movies. The news, and citcoms will really screw your head up. They can have all of that stuff. I buy about 4 a week at the pawn shop 2 for 3 bucks. Some of them are horrible. I watch it anyways.

I have a Hauppaugge PCI Tuner in one PC, and Silicon Dust HD dual TV tuner connected to my router that any PC can view from Windows Media Center both of those connected to a broadcast TV antenna. No cable here what so ever. Then I can hit the library, go various websites to find videos. No need for cable here.

If I ever run out of things to watch, I will sign up for Netflix, but there is so much I want to watch that is free, for now, why?

I still watch stuff on cable. I wasn't aware it's supposedly going to die.

I haven't had cable in a long time, and I don't even use the antenna to watch broadcast TV. I only keep up with one TV show as it's broadcast week to week, and I catch that on my iPad. All the other TV shows I watch are on DVD and Blu-ray.

My family only has basic cable, which equals local antenna channels plus two or three extra. Nothing like Disney or HBO, just the standards: ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Ion, Fox, the CW, TBN, and a few in Spanish. I don't watch much current TV anyway, especially during rerun season. Either way, I avoid most reality shows and sitcoms, plus sports and such. There's far too much garbage airing now, full of crudeness and stupidity. Here's the shows I do usually watch, though...

Agents of SHIELD
Castle
NCIS: Los Angeles
Once Upon A Time
Person of Interest

out in the sticks where I live, there is no "lifeline" cable available due to provider monopoly- it is either premium @$60+ per month [has no actual premium channels, just CNN/ESPN/Disney and a few others] but costs as much as premium, so I stopped it 5 years ago and just use a deep fringe antenna atop a 100' tree out back, with a signal amp for good measure [nearest broadcast antenna tower is over 50 miles away and aimed in the wrong direction to boot], and I get the big 3 networks plus PBS half the time [wouldn't ya know it but the PBS stations here are all low-powered so half the time I don't get enough signal to register on my sony set]. anyways, each of the channels has SD programming on the subchannels, up to 5 of 'em on the religious station.

My cable costs $300 a month and I have all the channels but I don't like it. I only watch weeknight shows during the year and I prefer my Amazon Prime.

Wait, tell me again exactly how you do this, please----and, speak slowly, cuz I'm a little slow!! ! LOL What country do you live in----can I do this in the US? I have a broadcast antenna and a laptop.....

It won't just yet because the media companies would lose their ability to charge you ridiculous amounts of money.

They've poured millions and millions in lawyers to shut down an internet based company from offering local TV channels (yes, the local TV channels you get for FREE through antenna) on the internet...except this company is basically letting you watch any free on-air tv show you want, ad-free and with the ability to just choose the tv show and the episode you want to watch (just like netflix when you watch a tv show series).

... because they dont want, ironically, for their basic cable subscribers (those that pay for the free airwave tv plus a few channels they hardly ever watch) would switch to this service using the same cable company's internet access. They claim they'd suffer from their own programming being offered through their network and they'd get no money out of it.

Now you know why the media giants are fighting tooth and nail against net neutrality and why they won the right to sabotage network traffic that does not profit them.

I can't miss it because I never had one. My parents were strongly against paying for TV more than necessary so I was stuck to just TVP1, TVP2, Polsat and TVN (four canals available on public TV in my area when I was a child). I liked staying in my grandma house however because she had a cable TV and there was the Cartoon Network. English language one - I didn't understand a word but I didn't care. Cartoons all day long!

But even the four canals we had were something I really wanted to use since I really liked some cartoons and quiz shows. I hated watching TV with my parents (they make it too loud and change canals frequently) and they never let me watch what I want so I desperately wanted a TV in my own room. When I was 10 year old I saved some pocket money and brought a TV home all by myself. I connected a room antenna (borrowed from my grandpa) but it it was getting only TVP1 and weak TVP2, I wanted Polsat and TVN. So, when parents were away I cut the home antenna cable, made a working signal switch using just adhesive tape and put one half of the cable to my room while keeping the TV in living room connected to the switch. Both TVs got all 4 canals then. My parents were so surprised when they got home... My homemade switch was working a long time - we changed it to regular switch when we got a 3rd TV, years later.

There was a time when I was younger when cable TV shows really mattered to me. However, today cable today is nowhere near as appealing as it once was. Most channels on TV sadly show reruns of shows that, frankly, weren't really all that good. Cops is one show that I will never understand why many channels want to show reruns of.

The most likely channels I will watch on TV are sports channels, movie channels (like AMC), the CW and the Food Network.

i still have it and i don't miss it.

Right now, I'm watching Tyrant on FX, as well as The Strain on the same channel. I also am addicted to stuff on AMC like Halt And Catch Fire, and eagerly await the next season of The Walking Dead, and the forthcoming Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul, all on cable TV. The fact is, these are outstanding shows I just don't want to live without.

If HBO were made available, commercial free, and not part of a bundle, then i might be tempted to pay for their streaming services.

Last edited by Stannis on 30 Jul 2014, 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Where I live, I don't even think a person can get cable anymore. Satellite has been the dominant thing here pretty much ever since Starchoice (now known as Shaw Direct) and Bell Expressvu (now known as Bell TV) came about in the late 90s, especially since we have a fairly large rural population, in comparison to the number of people who live right in town and could theoretically have cable rather than satellite. It probably also doesn't help that the cable company we have/had was fairly small and slow to adapt to newer technologies, like cable-based broadband internet or HD.

The last time I had cable was just under six years ago, when I was still living in the last house my parents had before they split up. It was actually kinda nice, because even though we had a lot of the typical cable/satellite specialty channels, the selection was leaner and more compact than what you get on satellite here, where you have a lot of channels that essentially broadcast the exact same programs at the exact same time, even though they are technically stations from different parts of Canada. This made channel surfing a LOT easier, and I didn't get the same sense of "500 channels and nothing to watch." I've mainly lived outside of town ever since I moved out of that house, but even the one time I did move back into town for about a year or so, I still had the same satellite service my dad got when I first moved to his place out of town.

My mother lives in a much larger town, and she actually has access to Shaw cable. I don't think it's HD, but the channel selection is pretty awesome, and there's something that just feels "comfy" about using it. It was even more comfy when she still had her old CRT TV, but she eventually got a flatscreen as a Christmas present.

I don't know why, but satellite TV, internet streaming, and flatscreens just feel soulless to me. I want a bigass, old-fashioned tube TV, and I want cable, dammit! Why must I be so nostalgic at such a young age?