Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Works for me Wednesday---Ditching CABLE for good

We just bought a new 32 inch flat screen TV. Our old TV is on it's last leg & we've really been wanting a flat screen for a while. We considered bigger versions, but the whole mounting it on our rented walls thing was just WAY more than we wanted to deal with.

I shut the cable off a few months ago, much to my family's unhappiness. It was a money saving strategy at the time. We were spending $60 a month to have our preteens learn about teen attitude and to DVR the shows that Hubby & I would eventually get around to watching. When we turned it off, we not only saved money, but the lack of teen angst in our house was almost instant too. Hubby found that we could watch most of the shows we had been putting on the DVR, online and the preteens rediscovered their video games & their bicycles. Our local news is available online, my favorite shows are available online & we own tons of kid appropriate movies.

While looking at the TV displays in the store I started to have an idea. What if we hooked the new screen up to one of our computers? What if we just continued watching our favorite shows from the internet, but on a bigger screen? We already have a high speed connection, why not? Now, I have to tell you that I got Hubby onboard with this idea by suggesting that HE could have the TV and his regular screen attached to his computer....he is a computer gamer & was instantly sold on having a 32 inch computer monitor. We bought the TV, we bought a new HD DVD player to also attach (don't want to stress his computer out playing kid DVD's) and we bought a digital antenna. Moving from one screen to the other was initially challenging, but 2 weeks later it's going GREAT. The digital antenna picks up our local channels very clearly, including several digital versions of PBS. I never thought we watched enough TV to be paying an extra $60 a month for it. This Works for Me in a big way....check out the new host of Works for Me Wednesday over at We are THAT family.com to see what's working for everyone else this week.

3 comments:

Jenny said...

Great idea! We have Dish Network and I'd love to ditch it. Only problem is, my husband and 4 year old daughter would not be too happy! LOL!

Kristin - The Goat said...

I think that would be a great idea. I don't see us doing it because it is just my husband and I, but if I had kids it would be excellent.

The Prudent Homemaker said...

We got rid of it almost two years ago and I haven't minded at all.

Not watching television at night gives me 14 more hours a week to get things done!