It was the ultimate challenge for any lifelong TV watcher. Wired News asked me to cut the coax cable snaking into my HD-ready television, and for 30 days rely solely on legally available internet content to satisfy the video entertainment needs of my family of five.
We posed the question: Is the internet finally ready to kill old-school television?
The rules were simple: Anything I could download was fair game, but there’d be no TV signal via cable, satellite or the airwaves. We decided that watching television that had been cached on the family’s TiVo box was also cheating, so that went into the closet. At my editor’s insistence, I physically severed the cable between the wall and my television with wire clippers. And on a blustery November day, my cable company came and took my set-top box away.
The first step was obvious — get an iTunes subscription and start downloading our regular shows.
I really enjoy all the streaming stuff though – my DVR is always half full so sometimes I miss things and it’s good to know that if I did miss Studio 60 or something I could watch it on the website. I wish they’d show old episodes of stuff so new viewers could catch up (I am willing to do anything to get Veronica Mars another season.)
Watch TV over my Internet is the only choice I have since I can’t afford cable or satellite TV. It’s nice to be able to see what I want when I want.