Nick Brewer

Cutting Cable

There was a Mashable article about an ad agency that asked 5 families to cut cable for TV devices with online streaming. The article includes a video of the families thoughts on the devices. Basically none of them seemed to like the devices over cable. Not even close. While their reasons were genuine, I think there is another side to this that wasn’t explained on the video. I would like to shed some light on it with my experience without cable.

I cut cable a little over 2 years ago, in the early days of online streaming. I am married and I have a 3 year old daughter. But I am also a geek, web designer/developer, and computer nerd. So the switch wasn’t difficult from a technological standpoint. My wife wasn’t 100% sold on the idea but was willing to give it a try. We watch a lot of tv. More than we should.

The shows and devices available today are much greater in number and quality than when we first cut cable. See even when I had cable, I got most of my tv shows through other means *cough*pirated*cough*. But now I pay for Hulu Plus, Netflix, and the occasional itunes tv/movie so there is hardly a situation where I even consider pirating a show.

In the article I mentioned above, the families seemed to expect the same experience as cable. Flipping aimlessly through channels looking for something to peak our interest. From what I remember with cable about 60% of my time was flipping through channels, possibly hundreds of channels. That expectation is one of the larger problems that the “average” consumer will have with cutting cable. It’s the experience we have been trained to. An extremely inefficient one to say the least.

I want to be clear though. Online streaming is not perfect. It has its Pro’s and Con’s. But I believe the Pro’s and Con’s outweigh that of the cable model.

Pro’s and Con’s of Online Streaming

Save lot’s of money. This was what sealed the deal for me. Basic digital cable in my area costs roughly $50 a month. That’s $600 a year minimum. If you have satellite it would cost you $800 or more a year. For Netflix and Hulu that’s about $16 a month or $192 a year. You can subscribe to a whole tv series on Itunes at about $0.99 an episode and rent or buy new releases for less money, trouble, gas, it would take going to a local rental store. You would have to be watching more shows than I care to  mention to reach the costs you are currently spending for cable or satellite.

Spend more time with your family. Depending on your family this could be a pro or con. I’m glad I can’t just plop down on the couch and watch live tv when I get home. Time with my wife and daughter are far to valuable.

Watch what I want when I want. Ok you have a DVR to record your shows, but at the *cost* of cable. And when you forget to record your new fav show? With online streaming I can find the specific shows I like, watch whatever episode from whatever season, when it’s convenient for me.

Con: Buffer time. God forbid you have to wait a few seconds or more to start your show. I’ll still suffer from the impatience our culture trained me up in. Good news, it’s getting better as technology improves. Oh, and you could up your internet downstream speeds.

Con: Not all shows are available. This is the deal breaker with so many people and the one I can’t really counter. With that said, there are so many shows available now. Unless all you watch is TLC, you shouldn’t have too many problems making the switch. There is more though. Television networks are still trying to come to terms with this new era of online streaming and are still finding it difficult to negotiate the deals they want. This leaves many networks and tv shows out of our reach from online streaming. While many are added daily every now and then one or two will fall off or threaten to do so. It’s something to watch.

Tv for children. There are two sides to this. There are a lot of good shows available on Netflix such as Dora the Explorer, The Backyardigans, Dinosaur Train, and much more. All of which my daughter enjoys. However there are some good educational shows and others on tv I wish she could watch. We try to buy her DVD’s for this.

Less or no commercials. You have to admit. This is one big up-side. However it may not always be the case. Enjoy it while you can. I remember watching some Lost on cable, I’m pretty sure every 5 minutes there was a commercial. Yea kind of ruins the experience.

It’s not live. To me this isn’t really an issue but for some it may be. While the availability of tv shows is getting better. Depending on the show it could be next day or 30 days from air date to availability online. I’ve found that most my shows are available within just a few of days of being aired.

Former pirate. I use to bittorrent most if not all of my tv shows and movies. That has decreased dramatically if not entirely, due to the shows being available to stream online. I really want to support some of the great shows I love. With Hulu, Netflix, Itunes, and others, I can!

Conclusion

Making the switch can be a tough choice. But in my humble opinion well worth it. Chances are you don’t need to be watching that much tv anyways. Go outside and play, eat at the table with your family, and play some board games.

Here are some of my fav tv shows I’ve watched/watch online. Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, The Office, SGU, Lie to me, House, Castle, Community, Fringe, Bones, and many others.

Keep in mind that online streaming is getting better with more shows available, quality, and features. The more people cut cable the better online streaming will get. It’s inevitable. So say we all.

Tags: hulu, itunes, netflix, television

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 10:49 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.