The Summer of Netflix
I declare this summer "The Summer of Netflix". After taking advantage of their free trial, we decided to keep the streaming service for the $8 monthly fee. It's totally been worth it. We've been watching a lot of episodes of our favorite classic tv shows (Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, etc) and even watching a few shows that are "new" to us. Throw in thousands of great movies and, well, we're hooked. While the networks are showing reruns of current shows this summer, we'll be doing our own tv programming.
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
I totally agree - ditching cable and going for Netflix was a great move in our family. I've been finding and watching a lot of shows that I'd nearly forgotten about! Lately my go-to show has been Emergency! I loved it as a kid, and didn't even know it was out there until recently. I've become an addict.
Some of my favorite tv shows still aren't available for streaming yet and I'm hoping they will be soon, but they have so many other great shows we're discovering. It is soooo worth it.
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
Hulu has some great shows too!
Yeah, they do. I had Hulu Plus for a while, but I don't think it was as good a value as Netflix.
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
I tried the free subscription for HuluPlus, it was okay, but I discontinued it. I watch the free stuff sometimes. There are some shows that Netflix doesn't have all episodes of and the ones that aren't available on Netflix are sometimes on Hulu (like The A-Team).
I wish we could get Hulu via our Wii so we could watch it on the tv. I've been thinking about maybe getting a Roku box. You can get Hulu, Netflix, and lots of other streaming services through your wireless network. No monthly fee for the box. Kinda cool.
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
We considered getting some type of box for that, ended up just doing it through the computer, pretty easy to hook up to the main TV if we all want to watch something, but also 'portable' and able to be watched with headphones if one person wants to watch something when another is doing something else.
I might have to look into that. Do you just need some cables?
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
Yes. If your computer and TV both have HDMI cables, it's the easiest set up. If not, and your tv allows, you can use your TV as a second monitor and do audio out from your computer. I am not sure how the audio would sound on that set up, since we have the ability to do HDMI.
I don't think my computer has a HDMI port, but I think I found an adapter I can use. I will definitely have to try this out.
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
There is an adapter, yes. Personally I'll never go back to cable TV. Haven't missed it at all. Between Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, I watch more "TV" now than I ever did...without cable!
And if there's a show I really can't live without that's not available on any of the above venues, there's always the DVD set. For 1 month of what I was paying for cable, I can buy the DVD series of a couple entire shows.
Ironically, a cable company salesman stopped by yesterday. He tried to get me to sign up for a package deal with all these great channels for $44.95 (on top of what we pay for internet through them).
It felt good to say 'No Thanks. Not interested. Love the cable internet that we have but we're not interested in cable TV at the moment.'
Tomorrow is our cable company's last chance. I'm going to call and see if they can cut us a good enough deal to entice us to keep it. If they don't, we move on to the cable-less experiment.
"Oh, the pain, the pain!"
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