a big leap

well maybe for a lot of people it’s just a matter of embracing technology or cutting costs; but for me it feels like a leap of faith.  this weekend I bought a roku box with the intention of phasing out cable tv.  my favorite HBO shows have ended and in truth I really don’t watch very much television, so this didn’t feel like so much of a big deal until I realized that it was time to make the call to comcast and say adieu to cable, for the record the call center was closed today but now that I’ve done it once I won’t have a problem doing it again tomorrow.  the process was sped up by the fact that I also rearranged the furniture and would need to purchase a 12′ piece of cable to reach the tv . . . kinda doesn’t make sense if you’re looking to let it go anyway so um yeah.  time to say goodbye.

and that brings me to the exciting part, new electronic toys (I’m a Daddy’s girl, don’t know what else to say).  as it turns out I have extremely fast internet, fast enough that streaming really is an option, so I’m up for it!  roku makes a number of channels available and streaming tv is like having nothing but on demand.  netflix’s is a given and it’s $8/month price tag is far more budget friendly than cable; we are also looking into hulu+ but I just don’t know if it is right for us, the trail period is a week which may or may not be enough time to decide but it too have an $8/month fee if we decide to keep it.  since I’m not a big tv person this will affect the girls more than it will me and if you know me well at all you know that I’d love to cut back on their tv time as it is since I just feel like it’s a huge distraction.

I have to tell you that I’m pretty psyched that my old school tv works with this much newer box.  eventually I will upgrade to a digital television but for now I have a 12?? year old crt and it is getting along just well with roku.  so as far as I’m concerned roku rocks!  I did give some thought to apple tv since it is likely that I’m slowly becoming an apple enthusiast (budget restraints keep it at a logical pace).  what I was looking for in a streaming device is something that would work with my old tv (an above mentioned necessity) and that would allow the most channel flexibility.  my biggest surprise is that roku cannot stream youtube which I guess just happened this year.  I’m a little disappointed about that but there is a good chance that my future tv will be able to and there is always the computer.  that was something else that I gave thought to, my future tv and blue-ray devices will most likely be able to do some streaming of their own so did I really need to get roku?  well, from what I can tell many devices can stream but the user interface for these various devices is not always that easy.  I have only seen the screen shots of the others; but roku’s UI is pretty user-friendly, I’ve pretty much let the 10 & 12 year old’s handle it with little supervision and we are all good.  for a brief moment I also gave some thought to boxee but for the extra cost I really didn’t see extra service that I would be getting so roku was the winner.

yes, it’s working with all the old tech that I currently have but I will most likely be purchasing a wireless router to keep things running smoothly and eventually I will also be buying my own modem instead of renting.  that last act will save me $84/year, currently I could buy my modem for $60.  I’m not going to get upset about how much I have spent renting this same modem for the last 6 years . . . I’m just going to buy my own and reduce my comcast bill even further.  so what started all this?

well, I’ve been complaining about my comcast bill for a while but doing nothing, and then in one month I got hit with an ordered pay-per-view and for the first time in two years I am being charged for HBO, so my cable bill is about the same as the cell phone bill that I am going after next.  I just can’t stay calm at the thought of having two bills that are almost $200/month, it feels like a huge waste of money and to put it mildly it makes me rather irritated, almost angry.  clearly not that angry because I have been complaining about it for a long time and doing nothing.  I know that I am going to miss the convenience of cable, and when “game of thrones” comes back on I am going to really miss it.  BUT  I’ll be $aving more than a hundred dollars a month, not about but more than.  that’s enough to make me okay with getting used to not having cable and it’s not like I don’t have tv, I/we will just be finding new things to watch.