As I may have mentioned before, I have no television in my new digs in Tucson. I left it in storage in Ephrata when I came south. And guess what, except for football (which is now over) I don’t need it, nor do I miss it. I live in a great city with lots of interesting activities, I read more than I have in quite some time…and I am watching episodes of those few TV shows that I like, whenever I want.
You see, TV shows have come to the Internet. Using two different Web sites and a free downloadable program from Adobe, I watch the shows I want to watch at any time, with very few commercials (far less than if I watched on a TV). Now, of course I live alone so watching on a computer is not a problem. But if I had a family, it might be a little more difficult to not have a TV. Can you picture you and your family gathered around the computer watching your favorite show?
Be that as I may, I am going to tell you how to do this. Yesterday, you might recall I ran an article about cable and satellite companies starting to feel the pinch of our sinking economy. Getting TV from these folks is not cheap, and they keep raising their prices. And, even with all the channels they offer, for some of us discriminating viewers, often there is still nothing on worth watching. Even if you have a DVR, you still must pay these steep tariffs to find the programs you want. That also means that 95% or more of what is available for watching is unseen, meaning the vast amount of your TV dollars are being wasted.
Long before I left Washington, I began renting past episodes of TV shows that I liked from Netflix. For instance, I got hooked on “NCIS.” I rented all the DVD’s for the first five seasons, but would have had to wait a while to get the year 6 episodes. Not now. I’ve watched them all on my computer using Adobe Media Player, a free downloadable software. They also have many other TV shows available for free, including old shows like Perry Mason, The Outer Limits, and the Twilight Zone, to name a few.
But, this one program doesn’t have all the shows I like. For others I turn to Hulu and Fancast, on the Internet. You can watch their shows, also for free and with few interruptions. All three of these TV sources offer decent size screens and quality video output. It’s too bad one can’t get all the TV shows one likes in one place, but that is the way it is in these early days of TV on the Net. The only complaint I have is that even though there is only a 30 second commercial here and there, they often show the same commercial over and over.
Of course, the future is unpredictable right now, but in my situation, I may never buy a new TV and pay outrageous fees to cable and satellite companies for programming that I don’t watch. What I am doing now on the Internet is just fine. I have a feeling that the entire entertainment industry will eventually have to wake up and smell the coffee in this new economy, and start offering a la carte channel programming if they are to survive. That means you pick the channels you want to watch and to heck with the rest.
Not a bad scenario.
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