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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Leaving My Cable Channels Behind

So I got the three in one cable deal a year or two back and I ended up paying about 100 dollars a month initially. Then when the reductions and rebates wore off that ballooned to about $150. So I got rid of most of my cable channels (I pay nine bucks a month for local channels, plus BET and the Golf channel, pretty much two of the most useless channels ever.) I kept my Internet service and my phone. It was actually cheaper to keep some cable channels as opposed to getting rid of it completely, although it looks like I may have been given some incorrect info from my helpful Comcast service provider.( An aside: I was originally told that if I got rid of all my remaining cable channels I would be paying about 110 a month for my two remaining services where if I kept some channels it would be 55 dollars a month for all three services. So I chose option two naively enough. I later found out that my bill would be closer to 80 bucks a month. Like I said: helpful, if you define "helpful" as a lack of accuracy or candor. Looking into Vonage as I type this...)

I have to admit I don't miss cable at all. I'm actually physically angry over what happened to BET on Jazz ( And Goddamn you Reginald Hudlin.) where they turned one of the most interesting music stations ever into the usual mediocre BET nonsense. I guess the white corporate owners just couldn't stand all those articulate black men who weren't in jail playing their instruments at a high level. We wouldn't want that, especially since for some reason they're not in jail as outlined in The Plan. Another reason, aside from bitterness, I don't miss cable at all is that I can pretty much watch all the television I want online. Here are some of the services I found and this is by no means a complete list.

Choose and Watch
(Not the usual cable fare but over several hundred channels. Plus free porn. You shouldn't watch it because it repeats too often.)

Online TV attempts VEOH and MIRO.
I haven't even attempted to check out their vast libraries yet.

Hulu
New attempt by Fox and NBC to put most of their television content online. There are shows here that I haven't seen in years and are especially cool to watch at night. Watching the Night Gallery right now.

Surf the Channel
Doesn't seem entirely legal. Should I be able to watch Jumper or American Gangster online... I'm just not sure.

Smashing Telly
A place to find online documentaries.

Better Humans TV
A great place to find bleeding edge science documentaries.

List of Online TV Stations from Zeropaid
Again, not totally legal I'm sure but it's hard to regulate those Asian Youtube stations.

The Acid Jazz Channel
The best music channel that I've ever made. I play mostly music at my music channel. Crazy huh?

And that's not even a complete list. I even found Farscape. This week, two of the shows that I would have missed, Smallville and South Park (which puts all their shows online anyway.) I found online. Notice I haven't even had to use Bittorrent yet. Besides, that would be wrong.
I guess this is the future.

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