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  #21  
Old 11/13/08, 07:10 AM
Tana Mc's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Ks
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I get tired of allof the above plus all the dead bodies....... seems like nearly every show has to have graphic scenes from the morgue.

The very instant that the Super Bowl is over, I have the service suspended until my hubby tells me that football is starting back up.

Tana Mc
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  #22  
Old 11/13/08, 07:13 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: AR
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We just turned off the dish and I gave a away a big screen TV.....Since me and OG married I think we had it on three times..mainly when we were due bad weather...It wasn't but 32.00 dokkars monthly...but I needed the extra room in the living room...and we never watched it...What time we have together is spent reading...talking...and enjoying each other..Also the loud noise and the flickering screen can cause my sweetie to experience focal seziures...I hardly ever watched TV before I met OG....We are doing fine without it...kinda feel like one more thing gone that i knew we could survive in this world minus...MissKItty
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  #23  
Old 11/13/08, 07:20 AM
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I'd love to cut ours off too. It is only on at night though or if the kids are sick I'll let them watch pbs during the day. Dh will not go for not having it though. I'd miss some shows but I'd manage. The few times that I have control of the remote I watch NatGeo or the History Channel or Animal Planet. He watches movies...and some of them are just well nasty. The cussing just gets to me. I could read or cross stitch or something but he wants to just veg out in front of the tv at night. The kids have one or two shows that they like but could watch them online.
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  #24  
Old 11/13/08, 07:40 AM
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I haven't had live tv for 3 1/2 years. I don't miss it. I do get movies through Netflix. Cheaper and I control what comes in to the house.
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  #25  
Old 11/13/08, 07:46 AM
mtc mtc is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
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I turned our DirectTV off about 3 years (or was it four?) ago. It started out as a temporary thing - just for the summer and when fall rolled around we were still too busy to start watching. Fall turned to winter, Etc.

Now if there's something I want to watch I buy the dvd. Much better. No ads, no interrupted story arcs from screwy broadcast schedules. You can actually see what the creative team behind the show had in mind.

So, if you're kicking the idea around, you might want to present it as a temporary measure and go from there.
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  #26  
Old 11/13/08, 08:04 AM
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 623
We also turned off cable tv two years ago. Our teenage daughter and one pre-teen were spending way too much time watching MTV etc. Not the MTV I grew up with but shows like the mother dating the daughter's boyfriend to see if he was good type shows.

We do watch regular TV some. But I have found that most nights after homework is done, the girls are content to read or watch a movie. I am not a prude but believe that there is so much real bad stuff going on out in the world that I dont have to bring it in my home every night too.

We were recently watching the show "Heroes" and found it interesting until they started showing all the main characters dying gruesome deaths. I had enough by that point.!
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  #27  
Old 11/13/08, 08:14 AM
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Location: SW Nebraska, NW Kansas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bekab View Post
I would get rid of it but hubby would have a fit over missing Sunday and Monday night football.
That's the same reason I haven't dumped ours, but DH doesn't watch any sports. I've proposed it several times. (We went without TV for a few months one year, right after we'd moved and couldn't afford to turn it back on yet)
But he always pleads and begs not to...

Ours is Discovery Channel, TLC, History Channel, etc.
That, and CNN.

I assume those of you watching TV on internet must live in a more populated part of the world than I and have a faster 'net connection.
I can barely stand watching 5 minute You tube videos! lol
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  #28  
Old 11/13/08, 08:26 AM
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: New Mexico
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No one has mentioned this site yet so I'll throw it out there

http://www.hulu.com/

TV, movies, etc. all free.


We do not have TV and haven't had for years now. We just started a Netflix membership about 2 months ago and watch some things through the Instant movies and others with the disk. It's nice to be able to choose what to watch and when to watch.

Deb.
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  #29  
Old 11/13/08, 08:45 AM
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Arid-zona
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My family had a family meeting. Financially we aren't doing so well because of lost child support. So, we decided to cut out cable.

We haven't missed it. The kids watch movies that we already had occasionally, but they are reading more and playing outside a lot.

It has been about 3 months since I turned it off. We literally get NO stations without cable.
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  #30  
Old 11/13/08, 09:04 AM
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We never did have cable. When we first moved to our place, it wasn't offered in our area, and by the time they brought it in, we didn't want it. We have a roof antenna and get plenty of TV, for free. Now we got the digital converter box, we have even more channels. For free, we get:
ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CW, MyTV, 5 channels of PBS, 2 ION channels, religious channels, QUBO cartoon channel, 2 weather channels, US sports channel, 2 spanish language channels, and a couple more secondary channels that don't have permanent programming yet. That is more than enough TV for us, and we don't have to pay a dime for it!
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  #31  
Old 11/13/08, 09:12 AM
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We never got cable or dish, it was a line I drew before DH died. Why pay for 999 channels of stuff you dont want to watch? He was the tv watcher, I dont really care about it. After he died, I didnt turn the tv on except when DD or DGD were here, and the granddaughter really only wants to watch her Disney "DBD's". Hurricane Ike took out my antenna, so now there is no option for tv, only DVD or VHS, and I have plenty of them. Will be selling most of them anyway, as they were bought for DH's entertainment. Lots of western/war/alien invasion type stuff, but it made him happy.

Do I miss it? Only when I wonder what is happening on Lost this season, lol. Otherwise, I relish the silence.
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  #32  
Old 11/13/08, 09:13 AM
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Location: PA
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no way am I ever going to pay big bucks for a bunch of channels that mean nothing. I'm too cheap. LOL we also enjoy Netflix, and to be honest during nice weather we find we have to make time to watch a movie if we have one. nice for winter, tho, so we watch a movie on Sat. night.
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  #33  
Old 11/13/08, 09:36 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitman View Post
I mean we were watching the news to see the weather and the commercials were all about Levitra,viagra and stuff like that.You cant turn it on anymore without seeing something like that.We have a 10yr old son that does not need to be seeing all the trash that comes on either. .
Not having any 2 legged children, I find myself perplexed by this. I can understand why people would turn off the cable because they can't afford it or don't want to watch the garbage as a family, but what is the point with shielding kids from TV? Won't they be exposed to that in all other aspects of their life such as when they visit friends or just a trip to the pharmacy? I would think that if someone is shielded from something, they are more curious about it in the long run. I know I did some pretty bizarre stuff as a kid and I turned out ok.
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  #34  
Old 11/13/08, 09:54 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: KY
Posts: 366
I signed a two year contract with Direct Tv last year. We are suppose to close before the end of this month on our house selling. I plan on calling Direct Tv to see if I can cancel my contract without a big penalty. I am going to tell them I am moving into a camper and see if they will just let me out. I have three boxes. My DVR and two boxes in bedrooms for when the older kids come to visit. One has been unplugged for months and I will have to call them anyway to make it work again. Depending on how much of a penalty they hit me with will help in my decision. I basically only watch regular network channels anyway. We pay $85 a month and dont even watch those other channels. DH does sometimes. He likes stuff like.... ice road truckers, that crab fishing show (forgot the name of it) sometimes he watches those wierd food shows where they go to other places and eat their food. Ewww. just watching it makes me gag.
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  #35  
Old 11/13/08, 10:47 AM
 
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Location: Wiley, Colorado
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May show that you would watch on tv are now available online. I say shut it off, and you and the wife can watch online after the kids are in bed. Check out huhu.com. there are a couple other places like this. Just a fyi.
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  #36  
Old 11/13/08, 10:55 AM
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Mt.Vernon,IL
Posts: 32
Well I did it.I called and had it turned off.My son can still watch all his shows online anyway.It is not like we are shielding him from anything,we just don't want it forced on him either.Thanks everyone for their advice.I believe this is the way to go.
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  #37  
Old 11/13/08, 11:06 AM
 
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Location: MN
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If it were up to me we would not have dish at all. I am proud of you guys for getting rid of it. If I could only convince my DH to do the same!
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  #38  
Old 11/13/08, 12:24 PM
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: VA
Posts: 284
We gave up TV five years ago. I don't miss it and am glad we no longer have it in our lives. We do get movies from time to time, we watch them on DW's laptop. Teeeny screen but it gets us closer together, which works out well
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  #39  
Old 11/13/08, 01:47 PM
Suburban Homesteader
 
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Location: Phoenix, Arizona
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We canceled cable TV last month and I don't miss it at all. DH does, because he works graveyards and on his days off, there isn't a whole lot to do but watch TV. Right now we don't get any local channels as I've not yet attached an antenna to the TV, so the only time the TV is on is when we play a DVD.

However, we have a high speed Internet connection which won't go anywhere as I need it for work. We can still watch a lot of our favorite TV programs so it's not like we really gave anything up except for the better picture quality on the TV. When we first canceled the cable TV I was sure I'd be watching my favorite programs on the computer, but with the exception of South Park (my guilty pleasure) I haven't seen any of those shows since last month. We HAVE been watching movies we've had for years but never played because there was always something on cable TV, but I would say our TV time dropped from several hours a day to several hours a week and that includes watching programs on the Internet.
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  #40  
Old 11/13/08, 01:59 PM
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Middle of nowhere along the Rim, Arizona
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If you have high speed internet, within the next few years, you won't need cable. You can watch numerous network shows (free! legally!) now on veoh.com, hulu.com, network sites, and others. Crunchyroll also has a ton of free anime and subbed asian films of varying degrees of legality. I often find so many shows I want to watch online that I don't have time for them all ... compare that to cable, where I often click through 400 channels and don't find a thing worth watching.

If you have a good connection, veoh.com has very good video quality. I'm kicking myself that my new laptop doesn't have svideo out (I forgot to check for that) -- if you have a computer with svideo and a cable it's very simple to hook up your computer to a tv. Basically, plug and play.

iTunes and Amazon has for-pay downloads for shows that you can't watch for free, and for $2-4 per show, that sure beats the cost of cable. Particularly since if you download it, it's yours, and you can watch it whenever you want.

High speed 'net is coming to the boondocks, too. We just got it here -- there's a microwave tower fifteen miles from me with a transmitter on it. Everyone in line of site of it can get fantastic high speed internet and phone service for around $30 a month. I am thrilled.
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