Remind me again why I'm paying $70 a month for satellite TV

[Crazy Dave]

It goes out nearly every time it rains and except for watching Keith Olbermann which you can pretty much catch on YouTube now, there's never anything decent on and every holiday weekend there's nothing but marathons of the very same and very few shows that they do have on.

$70 a month is $840 a year which is $8400 in ten years, etc.

[Inchworm]

1. I am two months past wondering the same thing

I am beginning to miss C-Span.

and Cold Case :P

:hi:

[Crazy Dave]

2. If I still drank that would be good beer money

:9

[briv1016]

16. Here you go

C-Span: (under video/audio)
http://www.c-span.org/

Cold Case: (Works best with Firefox)
http://www.sidereel.com/Cold_Case

[sniffa]

3. Try having Comcast

MSNBC is out every other day (a few other stations too), and it's out today. Also, last night when I went to bed, not a single station would come in. x(

[Crazy Dave]

4. In this zip code they charge about $20 more a month for what I pay $70

:shrug:

[DarkTirade]

5. Solution... stop paying 70 dollars a month for it.

:P

[supernova]

6. Same here

I'm thinking of going back to basic service. Then I can use some of the extra cash to order PPV movies a couple of times a month. Some of those I do want to see usually.

[Crazy Dave]

14. Thinking of doing the same (basic) and maybe try Netflix

:hi:

[Taverner]

7. Um....good point

Perhaps I should jettison the Sat TV

99% of the stuff I don't watch anyway. Who wants to see reruns of "Walker Texas Ranger"???

[latebloomer]

8. I agree, it's a waste

I mostly like to watch movies, and even though we have HBO and Cinemax, there's rarely anything on I want to see.

I'd love to get rid of it, but everyone else in the house would scream bloody murder.

[Robb]

9. I balked about two years ago (three?)

Never looked back. I get PBS on the rabbit ears, and I gots the innerwebs.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

10. You can find everything online.

Either by downloading or by going to the shows' websites.

[LeftyMom]

11. Because the Hitler Channel is showing "The History of Dung" in HD.

Sadly, I'm not joking. Two hours of high definition scat.

[Crazy Dave]

15. And then comes the "History of Dung" Thanksgiving Day marathon

Same "scat" over and over....

[Wcross]

12. You have a bad installation.

If you aren't getting better than 95% on your signal you need to have the installer fix it. I have satalite television as well as internet, neither go out unless there is are heavy thunderstorms directly to the south.

[moriah]

13. I don't watch much TV, but....

.... I've lived without it before, and there are times that it's good to have.

For example... we had no TV at all in the house the morning of September 11, 2001. My mother called us and we went to our friend's apartment across the hall, woke him up, and we watched it on his TV. (He only had rabbit-ears, but at least he had a TV.)

Unfortunately my TV viewing tastes are rather eclectic, and if I'm going to have a TV I want to be able to see the channels I want.

I have no PPV channels but DirecTV's largest package without PPVs is the only one that has all the learning channels, Comedy Central, World Link (has international news, including a nightly "Mosaic" of news programs from the Middle East. (It's quite interesting to watch government-run broadcasts, like the one out of Iran, especially when they had a female newscaster. She appeared on TV very covered, spoke with a very crisp British-English accent -- I don't know if she was from the UK, but she learned her English from UKers, and every time the nuclear issue came up it was referred to as "our peaceful nuclear programme".

So I ask this question of myself every month when I pay the bill. I can still afford it right now. But if I start not being able to afford it, well.. I only miss it on occasion.

[Crashe]

17. For the commercials!

:toast: :toast: :toast: :hi:

[triguy46]

18. I've got it too, 250 channels and they ALL have commercials at the same time...

so now, if I buy HDTV, I'll be paying $85 per month. Why am I doing this?

[GOPisEvil]

19. BBC America and Top Gear

OK, so it's not worth $70 alone and you can find their stuff on YouTube. What do I know, I have cable.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. If you're not a Top Gear fan (and I most definitely am not) BBC America is

no longer worth the cables it comes through.

It's being programmed for reality show fans, not for those who appreciate British dramas and comedies.

[east texas lib]

21. But the CEO's compensation packages have to come from somewhere!

x(

[ForrestGump]

22. Good question

Sounds like you may be better off without it. I realized, a while back, that I never watched TV (I'm not averse to all TV programming and I know I've missed some quality shows, but have just not watched it in a long time and, yeah, most of it's junk) and so I canceled that part of my cable service. Didn't miss it at all...well, yeah, like, duhhhhh, given that I literally hadn't watched it in a couple or three years. I do watch my television an awful lot, but only when it's playing the DVDs that I watch by the truckload on my downtime and when I'm working on tedious projects that keep me static for a while.

I bet you won't miss it. And check your local public library for their DVD holdings.

[mwooldri]

23. There are a few ways to cut the costs:

If you have multiple receivers in the house cut it down to just one. DirecTV charges I think $5 for each extra receiver. Dish have a receiver where it can feed output to 2 TVs (two different channels) but they'll charge you just for having the one receiver. My father-in-law switched from DirecTV to Dish and ended up with 2 receiver boxes instead of the 4 he had for DirecTV. He got fed up of the channel choice (more restrictive on Dish) and switched back to DirecTV.

If you have DirecTV, call them and say you're switching to Dish and see what they can do to bring down the cost of the bill. If you have Dish, call them and say you're switching to DirecTV - claim they can offer more channels for less money (DirecTV have got a $29.99 for 12 month deal right now)

If you really don't watch that much TV and have great over-the-air reception then it's safe to cut all satellite/cable connections. If your over-the-air reception isn't great and you have cable, it might be worth your while to switch to their absolute ultra basic cable package - better than coping with some watchable channels and lots of fuzz. The digital transition though would cut out the analog fuzz and replace it with blockiness or just plain no reception of certain channels.

Unfortunately I'm a bad parent. I sometimes use the TV as a babysitter and need to give my son a choice of children's programming viewing. I also like BBC America, and there are shows that we do like on some other channels but are not home to watch them (working funky hours). To me the $70+ I pay for digital cable + DVR is worthwhile for me because I get use out of it. I can go down to OTA and Netflix but the choice offered by digital cable is better and for me it's value for money.

Regards, Mark.

[briv1016]

24. You could always switch to an antenna

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

You should probably be able to get CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, UPN, CW and PBS. If not, then you can go on the channel you want's website and see if they have there shows online. If all else fails, then use this site.

http://www.sidereel.com/_home

[RebelOne]

25. I just ditched my dish and went to cable.

It's cheaper and at least I don't lose my reception every time it rains or gets cloudy.

[NewJeffCT]

26. Drop some of the movie channels then

We actually have far fewer problems with Dish Network in terms of outages than I did when I used to have cable, and it is cheaper than cable.

We get the occasional brief outage during very heavy thunderstorms, but it usually does not last very long - 30 minutes is a very long outage for Dish...

However, the times I've had cable, when it goes out, it can stay out for a day or two.