A new TV solution

I am seriously considering cancelling my satellite service, forever. There, lemme just get that out of the way. Dish Network, if you have retention reading my blogs you better call me with the quickness, because every single day I find just sexier alternatives. Am I talking about cable? Hell no. I am an elitist when it comes to price/quality and most cable providers give crap for service. I mean, they say it’s 720 HD quality, but it’s in analog as opposed to digital, so it looks like trash on a properly hooked up HDTV.

Let me lay out the skinny, I pay exactly $51.85 every single month for the most basic HD package on Dish Network. I work over 45 hours a week, go to school full-time, and of course have to work out and maintain a clean home. My wife is in the exact same boat, so we talked the other day and realized how little we actually turn the TV on, little alone watch specific programs. So we started an experiment to see how long we can go without turning the Dish box on. So far, it’s been two weeks. I feel we have proven that we don’t need you Dish. Now, we do turn on the TV to view other content, we play games, we watch Netflix, and we use RedBox (Blu-Rays, only $1.50 a night…best deal ever).

The point of this ramble is kind of an addendum to Doug’s recent post about Netflix. Netflix’s instant streaming service is something that’s so beautiful, it literally KILLED Blockbuster (they filed Chapter 11 not too long ago). RedBox is cheap, it’s and easy, Doug covered quite a bit. The main point is that I pay $624 a year for something I rarely use, but if I went with Netflix (9 bucks a month), RedBox ($1 to $1.50 whenever I get an itch for a movie) and maybe even Play-On ($80 for the LIFETIME of the service…let me say that again, THE LIFETIME! $80), I would save myself literally hundreds of dollars a year for content I would actually use.

Here’s the funny part: cable and satellite companies KNOW that the age of major subscription content are numbered, and they have doing target advertising and cutting deals with movie companies to get movies and TV series available on their On-Demand services about a month before Netflix or RedBox gets it. The theater industry knows that Internet content is taking a large piece of their financial pie, thus why I only go to the theaters for a good movie, and not crap. I 2008, when I took my then fiancée to a movie, it was $8 a ticket. Now, when my and my wife wants to see a movie, it’s $12 a ticket. This is a freakin’ 50% price increase in only a span of 2 years? Yeah, the movie industry doesn’t like Netflix, which is why not every movie made is available for streaming, only the the mediocre ones are and sometimes you will find a gem or two in there, but the quality will be just terrible. I, of course, am not saying it’s Netflix’s fault for streaming movies in bad quality, they actually stream the content provided to them and a lot of times that content is purposely in bad quality so you either have to get the DVD from Netflix or buy said DVD or Blu-Ray.

Well, thanks to Netflix, I haven’t set foot into a movie rental store in over 2 years, and don’t plan to ever again really. Thanks to Netflix I haven’t bought a DVD or Blu-ray in over 2 years either. I mean, Netflix and Redbox are like the perfect solutions against pirating movie on the internet (Oh, Doug, how could you). It really does say to consumers,” Here, if you pay less than $10 per month, we will give you all the movies, TV shows, anime, and documentaries you can possible ever want! All you need is a Netflix ready device or TV (example: Any video game system of this gen or 90% of Blu-Ray players or 99% of home theater systems), and a broadband Internet connection. Honestly, that’s it!”

To make this short and sweet, Cable and Satellite, I don’t watch sports, so I really don’t think I need you anymore…..