i pay for hundreds of channels but they all have the same thing now. 10 years ago, I relied on specialized channels to escape reality and actually see real programming. Now, its everywhere.

animal planet, national geographic- shit about people that do crazy things with animals or search for big foot

discovery, tlc- couponers, hoarders, honeybobo and all that bullshit about silly meaningless people

science- chunking pumpkins

history- PAWNSTARSPWANSTARSPAWNSTARS 24/7

HGTV- love it or list it/ house hunters

mtv/bet- dead horse

food- cook contest




Where can i watch an informative show that is not about how someone lives or what decision they will make?

11/24/2012 4:24:19 AM

its 2013 and you still have cable?

I'm Krallum and I approved this message.

11/24/2012 4:25:44 AM

direct tv, bro (sports fan)

11/24/2012 4:27:34 AM

people still watch tv?

I'm Krallum and I approved this message.

11/24/2012 4:28:22 AM

My roommate's favorite show is pawn stars. It's kind of annoying to have that on all the time, but I can watch it.

When that isn't on he watches TERRIBLE stuff like South Beach Tow which I CAN'T STAND.

It honestly numbs my mind when I watch shit like that.

11/24/2012 5:35:37 AM

It's capitalism. You can only make money catering to the center.

11/24/2012 6:02:37 AM

^First off, the mouthbreathers that watch all these crap shows aren't "the center".

Because of the inherent good in capitalism, I've been without cable TV/dish for over 2 years now. And it's a good thing. I prefer Hulu Plus/Netflix streaming now. Thank you capitalism.

11/24/2012 7:26:07 AM

11/24/2012 7:48:23 AM

Turn off your tv. Problem solved. Why is this so hard for you people to understand?

11/24/2012 8:51:23 AM

You sit and bitch while Police Academy is on Comedy Central.

11/24/2012 12:21:27 PM

The answer is

11/24/2012 1:09:43 PM

Quote :

"It's capitalism. You can only make money catering to the center."

Capitalism also recommends that you should stop paying for cable and start buying movies or developing a love for independent films with the money you save if cable does not make you happy.

11/24/2012 2:16:11 PM

ever heard of the fucking internet...there is plenty of pretty good content if you know where to look


(not shit from tv either...good, original content)

11/24/2012 2:25:32 PM

you can't watch hd sports on the internet and you can't only buy sports on tv so sports fans are forced to buy all this crap. I don't see how movies have anything to do with this anyway. A movie and a good 30 minute tv show are completely different things.

11/24/2012 2:33:11 PM

What is a "good" tv show to you? I know you don't believe it, but there are many people with many different opinions on what "good" is.

Stop complaining and waiting for good to come to you, you need to get off your ass and find the good.

11/24/2012 2:42:54 PM

Quote :

"First off, the mouthbreathers that watch all these crap shows aren't "the center"."

Oh yes they are. The average person is a whole lot dumber than you seem to realize.


_____________

I made a thread or a post on this very subject a few months ago. Idiot TV is inescapable now; you can't even find solace Discovery/Nat Geo/Speed/Animal Planet/TLC/History. Hell, 2/3 cable news channels are mostly moronic commentary, not news. I basically don't watch TV anymore--I usually have CNN HD playing in the background on my 60" 3D plasma while I'm doing other stuff around the house. Very occasionally, I'll watch some Comedy Central (once every week or two) or find something worthwhile to watch on another channel (once every month or two).

I'm just waiting for my cable contract to expire so I can go streaming only without penalty. Of course, since I don't really watch sitcoms and series shows much, I don't know how much good that'll do, but at least I won't have to keep paying for stupid bullshit that I'm not watching anyway.

[Edited on November 24, 2012 at 3:07 PM. Reason : ]

11/24/2012 3:06:50 PM

Even CSPAN has mostly morons talking.

11/24/2012 3:22:32 PM

Quote :

"Where can i watch an informative show that is not about how someone lives or what decision they will make?"

You can do what the rest of us with intelligence have done. You can cancel your rip-off cable service and start using the internet to find specialized programming. More importantly, you can start reading.

11/24/2012 4:31:44 PM

You can't read live sports. How do you use your intelligence to watch hdsports without a subscription.

[Edited on November 24, 2012 at 4:35 PM. Reason : smartasses]

11/24/2012 4:34:23 PM

There are thousands of websites you can find free sports on. It's only a matter of time before you'll be able to subscribe to fully legal sports-only feeds such as an NFL or NHL package for, say, $150 a year.

You can go to a bar.

You can read more instead of watching sports. It's not like sports are even good anymore. Every NFL game is 50 to 10. Every hockey game is 7 to 4. The NBA is an embarrassment to the sport of basketball. Soccer is okay but they don't have that here to begin with really. You're being tricked into "choosing" which piece of garbage to watch. There are no actual good options.

11/24/2012 4:38:04 PM

Use the money you give to the cable companies to go watch sports in public and get Netflix to watch documentaries on any topic you could ever hope to see.

11/24/2012 4:42:27 PM

Quote :

" A movie and a good 30 minute tv show are completely different things."

Quote :

"You can't read live sports. How do you use your intelligence to watch hdsports without a subscription."

What the fuck. Sports isn't a 30 minute tv show.

11/24/2012 4:53:42 PM

$8/month for netflix instant and canceling pay tv is the way to go.

11/24/2012 5:49:54 PM

Like I mentioned, I want to cut the cable cord...I have 2 questions (aside from sports--already discussed):

1. Being a news/current events/political junkie, is there anything available in terms of news programming?

2. Non-bundled Internet is barely any cheaper than cable+Internet. What do you guys do? If cutting out cable only saves me $15-20/month, it's prob not worth it.

11/24/2012 6:54:22 PM

They are holding big time sports fans hostage by not offering sports only service.

Quote :

"There are thousands of websites you can find free sports on. It's only a matter of time before you'll be able to subscribe to fully legal sports-only feeds such as an NFL or NHL package for, say, $150 a yea"

Obviously not a sports fan. Not going to degrade my experience to pirating some laggy feed over the computer. HD sports is what I'm after.

Quote :

"You can go to a bar."

bars only show local teams or big games. You cannot get a bar in chicago to show a random ncstate game.

Quote :

"You can read more instead of watching sports. It's not like sports are even good anymore. Every NFL game is 50 to 10. Every hockey game is 7 to 4. The NBA is an embarrassment to the sport of basketball. Soccer is okay but they don't have that here to begin with really. You're being tricked into "choosing" which piece of garbage to watch. There are no actual good options."

College is the main thing i'm after. mainly ncstate and miami games. I do like watching premiere and champions league soccer and thats a benefit of direct tv.

Quote :

"Use the money you give to the cable companies to go watch sports in public and get Netflix to watch documentaries on any topic you could ever hope to see."

This is ideal. Only problem is that it would cost at least 10,000 dollars to travel and watch every televised state game in public.

Quote :

"What the fuck. Sports isn't a 30 minute tv show."

who said that?

11/24/2012 7:59:14 PM

Honey Boo Boo Badger don't give a shit!

11/24/2012 8:14:15 PM

Quote :

"It's not like sports are even good anymore. Every NFL game is 50 to 10. Every hockey game is 7 to 4. The NBA is an embarrassment to the sport of basketball. Soccer is okay but they don't have that here to begin with really. You're being tricked into "choosing" which piece of garbage to watch. There are no actual good options."

What is this I dont even

11/24/2012 8:24:39 PM

Quote :

"Like I mentioned, I want to cut the cable cord...I have 2 questions (aside from sports--already discussed): 1. Being a news/current events/political junkie, is there anything available in terms of news programming? 2. Non-bundled Internet is barely any cheaper than cable+Internet. What do you guys do? If cutting out cable only saves me $15-20/month, it's prob not worth it."

1. I was in the same situation. I use my old Xbox. Currently it has CNN and MSNBC streaming for free. It also has a browser I never use. I deal with it, but I read most of my news anyway at washingtonpost.com/newsobserver.com/localnews.com. There is also an ESPN app but I really don't watch a lot of sports (no homo).

2. Our internet is $40.00 a month. Hulu plus is $8.00 a month. Netflix is $8.00 a month. One plus is my wife watches movies and TV on the iPad on long roadtrips with the same account. You could also watch it on your iPhone.

Quote :

"Oh yes they are. The average person is a whole lot dumber than you seem to realize."

That's a shame. I won't get into a debate though about how dumb the general public really is.

11/24/2012 8:42:54 PM

^There's nothing to debate.

11/24/2012 8:51:10 PM

I've thought about cutting the cord, but I couldn't give up the sports. Especially since I'm a fan of my hometown baseball team (shocking I know), leaving me no options to watch them other than cable.

11/24/2012 8:54:10 PM

Quote :

"Like I mentioned, I want to cut the cable cord...I have 2 questions (aside from sports--already discussed): 1. Being a news/current events/political junkie, is there anything available in terms of news programming? 2. Non-bundled Internet is barely any cheaper than cable+Internet. What do you guys do? If cutting out cable only saves me $15-20/month, it's prob not worth it."

1. You already said that you mostly just keep it on for background noise while you do other things. You could either play music, stream some random thing on Netflix, or XBox has some news service programs if you really, really need it. Personally, I get most of my news from WaPo, NYT, or links off of Reddit, which are all better sources than the talking heads on 99% of the networks. Plus, pretty much anything you need to see from any news source is going to be online within hours anyway. You just have to do a little more work and look for it a bit.

2. My roommate and I pay less than $60/mo for internet/Netflix/Hulu. I don't know exactly what kind of cable deal you're getting but I'm pretty sure your bill is well over $100/mo. You'd be saving a significant amount of money.

I don't miss cable at all and I watch a fair amount of sports, which is the only downside. I pretty much stream anything I want to watch. It's not perfect, but I don't pay for it. However, you can get ESPN360 without paying for cable as long as you don't have TimeWarner I'm pretty sure and that will provide lots of programming. Once you get off of cable, you'll probably find you have a lot more free time and you'll also realize how absolutely ridiculous packaging a bajillion worthless channels together is instead of offering a la carte. The more customers that the cable companies lose, the more likely they are to change their business model to something that doesn't fuck over the consumer. Like I said, I don't miss cable.

11/25/2012 2:06:57 AM

If you can manage to get a hold of owned (not leased, off lease, discounted) directv equipment, you can get very favorable deals. I have no contract with directv and pay $40/month for everything besides the movie channels, including sunday ticket. When football season ends, I'll pay $30/month or cancel. Since there's no penalty for me starting or stopping my service, they really have no leverage and give me bare minimum pricing. I got this equipment by cancelling my service and then paying the $115 fee rather than giving the box back.

For internet I pay 43/month for 30/5 from cox (NoVA) but I believe TWC offers the exact same thing and this came with completely free espn3 access, which ATT dsl/uverse does as well. I would have gone without any tv because in the DC metro area, I get over 60 hd channels with my antenna. I reupped with directv because I simply couldn't stand watching the redskins and ravens every week and because I love speed as they're the only source for american racing.

If you're in the region with your favorite sports team(s) and don't care about motorcycle, rally or sports car racing, a newer tivo with a good hd antenna + hulu and netflix should satisfy your needs on the order of $15/month. I did this in corportate housing before I had a house up here and was impressed with the video quality and the content offering.

Another tactic is place shifting. My parents love tv and won't ever give it up. I dropped my slingbox at their house and connected it to a rarely used cable box. I tuned in to their feed for races via my phone and laptop when I was moving/in corporate housing. I picked up a google tv over black friday and plan to use it as a slingcatcher for the tv I don't have a directv box for now.

[Edited on November 25, 2012 at 8:51 AM. Reason : I don't really care for movies and this thread is making me re-think my 75" tv..]

11/25/2012 8:48:59 AM

^ /thread

11/25/2012 11:17:20 AM

^^ I play it not for really ambient noise, but to listen to the news while I do other stuff. if something interesting comes on, i'll walk over and watch. it's more of a function of nothing else being on than anything else.

i play music lots of times too, obviously.

I'm not going to buy an XBOX just for a couple of streaming news channels, though, haha.

11/25/2012 11:21:31 AM

^^^ Since you're in NoVa, can you get MASN and MASN2 over the air with the antenna?

11/25/2012 11:55:35 AM

Quote :

"Oh yes they are. The average person is a whole lot dumber than you seem to realize."

THIS. Oh god, this.

11/25/2012 7:51:09 PM

Everyone says that


Yet refuse to believe that they themselves are part of that "average person" demographic they abhor so much.

11/25/2012 8:33:16 PM

Why should I believe myself to be anywhere near average?

11/25/2012 8:42:12 PM

Yeah, I don't see what he's getting at, the average person isn't college educated. Most people on this message board probably qualify as above average in terms of intelligence, education level achieved, and income.

Now, there are plenty of smart people with shit taste who get sucked in by pop culture shit, but I'd say in terms of taste this place is still populated by above average people.

11/25/2012 8:46:26 PM

well, you can always watch the new show "Amish Mafia"...coming to discovery channel in mid-december...

11/25/2012 9:16:34 PM