Is no TV the new trend?

Or maybe its people tired of MSNBC, FOX and being nickeled and dimed on the cable bills.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/11/17/sen_rockefeller_fcc_should_take_fox_news_msnbc_off_airwaves.html

Young early adopters and the cost conscious are leading this trend of getting their tv programming via the Internet or the free digital broadcast signals. I'm hoping for cable tv a la carte to save money but it will never happen.

Your title is a little misleading, because people still keep their TV's they are just ditching or reducing their cable/satellite package

I personally downgraaded from my 500+ channel plan to just basic cable (10 channels) because I purchased a Media PC which is connected to my 1080p HDTV. This allows me to stream all the shows that are available online as well as watch YouTube and the like on my large TV.

The way people watch TV is changing from 'I need to watch show X when it's on,' to 'I want to watch show X when I want.'

I remember being in college and having my friends rush home to watch Grey's Anatomy, lest they miss it. Whereas now you can easily just get the show from on-demand.

If anything, newer technology has helped me watch my favorite TV shows more efficiently (eg, whole seasons in one go). So while my TV is here to stay, my cable has pretty much gotten the boot.

Perhaps so,.. but I know several people who own no television. They say they have no time for it.

for us is about being time conscious. we don't have cable, and plan never to have. we use netflix streaming a lot.

who has time to sit down on the coach and surf hundreds of channels, what for? we ideally want to know what we want to watch and turn on the TV just for that shows. honestly, i don't feel we are missing too much, maybe comedy central or HBO? not even that really, as the best stuff can be found online a few days later.

does this factor in the fios factor?

oh disregard - I should have read it first...

It's funny and interesting to me. When The Sopranos first aired there was constant cooler talk that I didn't participate in because I wasn't watching it, or much of any TV. Now that I'm enjoying Boardwalk Empire, I can't find a single friend or coworker to discuss it with. I keep hearing "I don't have HBO."

I enjoy Boardwalk Empire, but it's kind of clunky ... not on par with Sopranos or Mad Men. I'm a couple of episodes behind ... maybe it'll get more polished.

I don't think we're quite there yet. I would ditch cable, but that means virtually no sports, which pretty much require live broadcasting (this is all particularly tough when you don't root for any NY teams). I don't expect to renew my FIOS tv whenever they solve that however.

actually bjw, it is much easier if you don't root for NY teams - you can get mlb, nba and nhl games all streamed live for out of market teams. and i would guess that each college has some type of setup for their own games too.

printer, do you mind explaining how? And what's the cost? Could you do it on a Boxee or Google tv?

"but that means virtually no sports"

espn3.com

alanhart, I think it's tightening w/ each episode. They're developing the storylines much quicker than Sopranos did. My gf, a Lost Generation devotee, is very taken with their rendering of the period.

Article in the Times yesterday:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/cord-cutting-cable-subscriptions-drop-again/

For you, bjw:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp?c_id=mlb&affiliateId=networkmenu

bjw,

the most complicated would be to use some sort of Windows HTPC (home theatre PC) setup to connect the computer to the TV. For now I would stay away from google tv - they are still fighting w/the content providers and are pretty limited at this point. I think the simplest solution is Roku - you can stream MLB.TV, Netflix, Hulu+, Amazon VOD, many others. I don't think it has nba though. It is a little bit of a pain to set up at first, but from then on it is easy to use.

roku.com

Thanks tenemental - ESPN3 is decent, but obviously won't show a lot of the prime-time games featured on ESPN(1). I think I would miss that. The mlb.tv package is pretty pricey - $25 for games from last season?

And thanks printer - roku seems pretty good too. But no NFL, no college football/basketball, and no NHL (yep, one of the few fans out there) makes it tough for me to cut the cable cord completely just yet. But I will do some more digging and maybe the stream packages are worth it.

And mlb.tv is $120 for the year.

yes, but you can watch all the games. i think nhl.tv is the same - but as far as i know the only way to view is through a computer. you can also get Directv NFL season ticket online ($350 a year or so) if you can't get DirecTV - and there is a high likelihood your building won't allow it.

yes it all adds up, and it is still a little techie, but it is more possible than I realized to get everything. that said, cable TV is really easy - i don't get the need to do all of this stuff.

Pretty disappointed with Boardwalk, not one of the worst shows on TV but probably one of the worst HBO tv shows, almost as bad as "The Pacific" (Band of Brothers was the best war mini series ever).

And I've liked just about 'em all;

Dream On
Carnivale
Deadwood
Sopranos
Rome
The Wire
Entourage
True Blood
(Was "Dead Like Me" hbo?)

Just to add my 2¢, you can get a digital tuner (for both macs and pcs) which will allow you to grab your local signals over the air (known as an OTA Antenna). The rub? You need to be facing the right direction in order to get some channels, so depending on what you face, you may not be able to get some of the channels. This is legal and free, and in HD I might add.

There are numerous resources out there for this kind of stuff. Just search for "HTPC" or "media center" and then narrow down what you are really looking for.

Additionally, those products like Google TV and Roku, etc, are nice for the novice, but as you get more comfortable with them you will want to lean towards using a full blown computer attached to your TV. I could literally make a whole website dedicated to just using a computer as a media box if I had the time...

Friends in another city use the set-top version of that, but I doubt anything OTA would work in Manhattan. I assume digital signals have the same problems (bouncing repeatedly off buildings; poor transmission through masonry and steel) as analog signals -- but please let me know if I'm wrong.

@truthskr10: Dead Like Me was showtime, and I loved that show too!

Does anyone know how to save a discussion like you could pre-folders? Or is the RSS feed our only (terrible) option?