Life Without Television

I saw the post Bible Money Matters: Why I Love Life Without Television and had to smile. I’ve just started life without television. Or to be more accurate, life without a cable television bill.

No, I’m not stealing cable TV. (Although I was tempted to in the first few days after we requested the cutoff.) For the last several years, the mantra repeated at my house is, “There’s nothing on TV.” But we kept watching anyway. That’s not to say that there really was nothing on – I could almost always find something interesting on the History Channel, Discovery, or A&E. But there wasn’t much that was compelling enough to justify $600 a year in cash and hundreds of hours of lost productivity/family time. What really sealed the deal was when we learned that most of the things we were interested in were available online for free. Between that and Netflix – streaming and DVDs – we have more entertainment on tap than we will ever consume.

Not long after Hurricane Katrina, I bought a projector for work for about $600. I ended up not really needing it for work, so we spent about $100 at an art store and bought a full roll of canvas to make a 10′ screen. (The bare canvas is adequate, but a purchase of some reflective screen paint greatly improves picture and color quality for about another $100.) Our stereo speakers were already connected to our entertainment system, so we were all set. Then for Mother’s Day my husband bought me 6.1 surround sound, so we had a real home theater setup.

Finally, when the decision was made to demolish our church which had about 10′ of floodwaters from the 17th St. Canal break after Katrina, we received permission to salvage the screen. It meant swinging from the rafters on ladders placed in the baptistry (see the first pic in this post), but it was worth it because the screen was retractable. So we have a pretty nice setup for a minimal cost. Our original setup (with the canvas screen) cost less than $1000, and the costs of projectors has come down in the last three years. All we had to do was add a junky old computer (5 years old) that could access the internet, and run a network cable to the living room. At some point we’ll get a real media computer set up in there, but this works fine for now.

We have 8 zillion or so television shows and movies that are free and legally available via Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS and Netflix, plus a large supply of movies available at the public library.  (Including that episode of KVille that we were in!) And we still can have “real” TV with the rabbit ears – see them on the right next to the television? – on TV or on the big screen in HD.

If you’re paying for basic cable with even one pay channel, you will almost certainly save enough in the first year to make a home theater like this a worthwhile investment, and after that, it’s gravy with the exception of having to buy a projector lamp from time to time. This can be a couple hundred dollars, and how often you need it varies, obviously, on how much you use your projector. Our has lasted over two years, and the warning that it’s reaching the end of its life has just started to be displayed.

I may have struggled a bit in the beginning since I was a news junkie who switched between CNN, Fox, MSNBC and CSPAN all day long, but I get enough news from the internet. I find I don’t miss having the “missing white woman of the day” stories and having the latest on Par-Brit-sey blared at me every hour on the hour. Bottom line – we’re watching less television. What we are watching tends to be things we enjoy more because we selected them deliberately instead of channel surfing and sticking with the least annoying option. Life without cable TV is pretty good. Try it for a few months and I think you’ll agree.