Kill your old TV... unplug the cable!

I'm not much of a consumer. My lifestyle is comparable to what the Quakers call voluntary simplicity. After expenses I have very little disposable income, I live alone, and it doesn't make sense to pay for a membership to the discount store Costco. When I need an appliance, software or commodity item I check to see if the product I need is on sale at Fry's, a giant California based tech emporium. Fry's TVs are in a back corner -- I never look at them because I'm doing just fine with my antenna on the roof, converter box and old JVC CRT TV -- so when a friend recently took me to Costco, I was immediately captured by the big screens displayed first thing when you walk in.

Not a Luddite, I enjoy high-def TV, but what caught my eye was all the labels touting WiFi, YouTube, Facebook, Pandora , Netflix  and Cinema Now. One of my friends recently bought a new DVD player with all these capabilities, and we've been so happy running Pandora that we haven't even explored the other options. But now I've been shocked out of my lethargy, and I'm wondering if a new TV hooked to a faster Internet connection might serve my interests better than the hodge podge of antenna TV, computer Internet, FM radio and DVD recorder I've been running.

I spend a lot of time practicing saxophone and piano -- a retired professional keeping my chops up. And I spend a lot of time writing -- getting older, there are things I want to say before I go. So my viewing habits are not typical. I don't kick back and watch for hours with the remote in my hand, I cherry-pick. I like PBS and NPR, and I get the great jazz station KCSM (91.1 FM, KCSM.org on the web) on channel 60-3 with my antenna and digital converter. I get the major networks, but I enjoy older syndicated shows on 4-3, 11-2, 20-2, plus the Classic Arts Showcase on 32-5 here in the San Francisco area. Looking forward to baseball season starting soon, but I have to go to a sports bar for most of the games, or better yet visit a friend with Tivo, pause near the start, then compress the time span to half with fast forward.

So maybe we're still not quite to the point where everything is available over the Web -- we still need cable for sports. But PBS streams complete shows, Netflix has movies, Internet radio can replace my FM receiver and give me access to the whole planet, and there's plenty of news on the Web, too. Depending on how much one wants to spend on new hardware, it's definitely about time to forget about cable! Of course this is easy for me to say, because I've never had cable -- initially because my local provider didn't have MTV -- later because of habit and expense. And I'm not the only one to say that out of the great number of channels on a typical cable setup there are times when nothing good is on!

The pending merger of Comcast and Time Warner means less competition and higher prices. LA Dodger fans are freaking because the only way to see the Bums this year is on Time Warner -- in the past their games were on broadcast TV. But if people start pulling their cable subscriptions, then MLB will have to move their programming -- maybe to an Internet streaming service. That could create an international audience, might even be better for business! Your viewing habits are no doubt different than mine -- but check out the new TV offerings for yourself. WiFi and the Internet may be good for you, and less costly than paying Uverse, Comcast, Dish TV or your local programming source for a bunch of stuff you'll never watch just to get a couple of good channels.

-- Don Baraka