TV - Love & Hate

[Catmando]

Perhaps I was inspired by Nicole?

When my fiancee Korey, her son, and I moved into our house, we decided as a family not to renew our cable TV. We don't have an antenna/rabbit ears, so really the only time we watch the "TV" is if we rent a movie, which we'll do on some weekends.

We just keep busy doing other things like reading, listening to music, playing cards or board games, shooting some hoops, going out for walks (we want to get a Pug soon to join our 3 s), etc.

We'll see how it goes.

[jamiebk]

Most of TV is positively junk, but cable has a lot to offer. My wife Bonnie LOVES food channel. I really enjoy National Geographic, Discovery, PBS and some of the movie channels. Comcast has movies on demand for free. So, I think for us, cable works but we are selective about what we watch. Unfortunately we have not reached a point with the cable providers where we can pick and choose exact stations to watch. Rather, we are forced to pick a package that has many. However, it is very easy to program the TV to simply skip the channels in which there are no interest. When using the remote it will simply surf through to the selected ones you do want

[Catmando]

Most of TV is positively junk, but cable has a lot to offer. My wife Bonnie LOVES food channel.

We also love the Food channel, and will miss "Iron Chef"

Actually, what we'll miss the most are the radio stations we would get with our cable, including 4 classical music stations which introduced me to many works.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to listen to my CD's more and Beethoven Radio

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Jamie - are you sure you're not that Chiarello guy, in disguise? He's from your neck of the woods.

My usual channels are about the same as youse guys - including the radio stations but not PBS. Also, there are a few watchable broadcast shows. "Boston Legal" and "Bones" and "House" come to mind, and I frequently argue with or coach people on Jeopardy and Wheel.

In general, most of the good stuff is on cable.

I can get along without TV, but then what would I do when I'm knitting or sewing?

[jamiebk]

Jamie - are you sure you're not that Chiarello guy, in disguise? He's from your neck of the woods.

My usual channels are about the same as youse guys - including the radio stations but not PBS. Also, there are a few watchable broadcast shows. "Boston Legal" and "Bones" and "House" come to mind, and I frequently argue with or coach people on Jeopardy and Wheel.

In general, most of the good stuff is on cable.

I can get along without TV, but then what would I do when I'm knitting or sewing?

Selma, funny you should say that about Chiarello. I have met Michael and actually went boar hunting with him one weekend at our friend's ranch some years ago. We spent the evening up there and he cooked-up an excellent dinner for us. I have never seen anyone quite so talented at making a delicious meal out of very sparse and ordinary makings.

Also in attendance that weekend was Larry Turley of Turley vineyards: http://www.turleywinecellars.com/ Larry is/was a good frind of Michael's at the time. Not sure if they still hang around together.

I have eaten several times at Tra Vigne, which is Chiarello's signature restaurant in Napa Valley. It has always been excellent and just packed. http://www.travignerestaurant.com/

PS...we bagged 2 wild pigs and Michael took the hind legs to make his own homemade prosciutto which I am sure was excellent.

[barfle]

I'm a video engineer, and I have a reasonable selection of toys in the audio and video field. You may have seen the picture of my record collection.

I have cable (well, fiber), and there is occasionally something I want to watch. Being a fan of auto racing, I like the coverage from speed channel, but there's a bunch of crap on there, too.

The most useful channel is probably the local all news channel, because it has weather reports about every five minutes, which can be important here (yeah, it would get really booooooring in Sandy Eggo). That channel is not available over the air.

Planet Earth was a good series, although a bit gruesome at times. It's available on DVD though. But 17½ hours of coverage of LeMans was a real eye opener. I just gotta go! We like So You Think You Can Dance, especially this year since the bar has been raised quite high.

We've watched a couple of movies on demand, but the selection is pretty meager, and the list is difficult to navigate. We dropped HBO when The Sopranos ended, because we hadn't found anything else worth watching on there for a couple of years.

I still have probably 300 hours of media I've purchased that I haven't had a chance to watch yet, though. The bargain bins occasionally hold treasures.