Tonight my DVR, filled with otherwise unavailable classic movies, kicked the bucket. Who knows when I'll get the chance to see the likes of The Wind or Mission to Moscow or Miss Mend again? And with that, I'm waving goodbye to television altogether. My cable bill was an uncomfortable expense that I couldn't really justify except for the idea of catching up with these films I'd recorded in past months and hadn't watched yet. With that excuse gone, fuck it.If I can figure out a way to get high-speed internet without cable (and Comcast tries their best to make that an impossibility) I will be kicking goddamn television to the curb. I never watched it anyway, except for TCM and football games so the idiot box can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. (Not that the physical TV is going anywhere, as I need it to watch the volumes of DVDs I own, borrow, or rent from Netflix.)
I don't usually blog about this sort of thing, but I'm so annoyed right now I couldn't resist. This is the middle finger to you, television. After 26 years I'm saying goodnight and good riddance.
By the way, activity will probably pick up next week. There are reams of real-world distractions right now but I've got plenty to write about when I do get back. Stay tuned - pardon the inappropriate pun.
7 comments:
Heartbreaking! A similar thing happened to me, except it was a more slow, painful death. I have Verizon fios so they have their much touted multi-room DVR which is wonderfully convenient, except when the box you actually record the movies on is in an area of the house not conducive to film watching, and then the multi-room function suddenly dies. So I lost all kinds of gems when I decided it would be better to start from scratch and actually watch the movies instead of collecting them on a DVR.
So I sympathize, is basically my point here.
Yes, and the plot thickens as Comcast seems to be the only show in town which I kind of suspected. Part of me wants to bite my nose to spite my face by cancelling the whole deal and only using internet at the library. I considered it a while back as a matter of discipline, and not only financial. It would reduce my internet activity to the essential - check e-mail briefly, compose blog posts, check in on other sites without wandering too much, dabble in Netflix a little, hmmm not sure my idea of the essential could meet these constraints...). Ultimately things will not get that drastic but god how nice it would feel just to cut that whole internet/cable chunk out of my monthly budget... I'd probably grow more brain cells too...
It's 1:30 AM here and I am able to watch back-to-back-to-back episodes of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.
Jealous?
Oh, and Comcast sucks. No doubt about it. I refuse to go back to them (I have DirecTV + DSL) out of principle, even if they are the ONLY way I can watch Trailblazer games here in Oregon. They just pissed me off too many times in my life.
Strangely enough, I find that about 50% of my DVR'ed movies almost never get watched for some reason. I obsessively pour through TCM's schedule, record the movies, and then they just seem to sit there all too often. It's like I just enjoy the thrill of the hunt...
I know what you mean, Troy. It's weird: for some reason, I usually want to watch Netflix right away but settling down for a DVR film seems like a chore: even if it's the same film in either case! Maybe I partly resent the pressure of watching before things get too crowded (the Comcast DVRs suck, by the way. I had Time Warner in New York and you can sort the DVR queues whereas Comcast leaves them fixed in the order you recorded them in: the only distinction that can be made is between "save until deleted" or "save until space needed". Also, they chop up recordings into little bits, which is what actually caused my meltdown the other day: thousands and thousands of no-picture "recordings" of Tiger Shark which, by the way, shouldn't have recorded at all if there really wasn't space, given that it was not a first-priority recording.)
Except for the sad loss of those priceless movies, I'd say: GOOD RIDDANCE!. I'm really starting to hate the TV for multiple reasons. Anyway, I think you'll only have more valuable time to spend now!
Yeah, I'm still working out the details - I was thisclose to getting in on someone else's network but the connection ended up being too erratic - but hopefully after the Super Bowl I can move on to just having internet - and paying accordingly (I know, why after the Super Bowl?, but life is full of such moral compromises... ;) ).
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