Life without cable TV

It's been over a month now since we've axed cable TV from our lives. I can't remember if I ever mentioned what we did to replace it so I will fill you in quickly. We bought Apple TV and we took our monthly bill from $80 a month to $8 by just having Netflix.

Here is what I've noticed.

The TV isn't on nearly as much as it use to be. I confess, I was the one most likely to turn on the TV and watch random things. And with our Apple TV I can now easily stream things like Ellen, Dr. Phil or for the most part whatever else is available on cable. But I just haven't bothered. If I do watch something during the day when I am home with Noah, it is usually an episode of Little House on the Prairie - which I am really enjoying!

Also, Matt and I watch more things together. We have a couple of older series on Netflix that we are enjoying and we will pick one each evening to watch together. Previously with cable, he had his shows and I had mine. One of us would end up going somewhere else in the house while the other watched their show. It's nice to be together!

I feel out of the loop! People talk about things they saw on the news, a commercial or a sporting event and I have no idea what they are talking about. The words, "Oh, we don't have cable" feel silly even leaving my mouth. Granted, we do occasionally stream national news with the Apple TV but I find it awfully depressing and don't really like to watch it.

We go to bed earlier. We don't stay up super late to begin with, but after our episode we usually head upstairs and read. Nothing like a good night sleep!

So the big question, do I miss it? Sure, a bit; mainly TLC. But then I think about how stupid half the stuff I was watching was anyhow and how much time I've wasted and I get over it pretty quickly.

Ultimately I think it was a good choice for our family.

Saying Goodbye to cable

After my last post my hubby and I got to talking about our current TV situation and have decided to cut our cable. There are several factors that went into this decision.

1. Cable is expensive. We really only watch about 5 stations but are paying for way more thanks to the wonderful bundle systems that all the cable companies do now. If we could pick and pay for exactly what we want only, then we would probably keep it.

2. Were paying for alot of junk! There are some really inappropriate and just plain stupid things on TV these days.

3. Having cable makes it really easy to just turn on the TV and watch things that I ordinarily wouldn't bother with. How many times have you said, "There is nothing on TV..." and yet it stays on and you watch something that totally bores you anyway.

I know that I am going to go through a major adjustment period with this. I have always had cable and I am pretty use to just flicking it on our of habit. It'll be much easier for my husband, who grew up without it.

Before you think we are being all crazy drastic... I will tell you what our new plan is.
After much research and suggestions from other friends we have decided to buy the Apple TV this weekend. This way, our absolute favourite shows can still be watched via Itunes (there is only 3 shows we regularly watch and they are all availible this way.) Thanks to my ipad we would have the option of also streaming anything onto our TV through station apps such as CBC and Global. We are also planning to subscribe to NetFlix mostly because of the large amount of family content that is available on it.

Going this route will be saving us almost $60 a month... pretty substantial in our books!