Poll on Television watching - dish/cable vs. no dish/cable...

[KIN]

I'm kind of, sort of contemplating getting a dish for more channel options. Right now we just have NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and FOX. We don't watch much TV. There isn't much besides PBS kids that I let my kids watch. I'm now wondering about the options of Nat'l Geographic channel, Discovery, HG TV, etc. But, I'm afraid we'll just watch more TV and I really don't want to do that. So, I'm wondering does having a dish/cable result in more time spent watching TV?

[sdWTMer]

Rats. You didn't give online viewing as one of the options. We don't have a tv, just a computer monitor! But we still get to watch our favorite shows and keep current thanks to online viewing.

[jail warden]

He loves NASA, NASCAR, and Link TV. He watches these in the eve after kids go to bed and before he goes sleep. My kids vary in what they watch. But so do I!

[Pencil Pusher]

We watch Lost online on Fridays. That's it. Before that, we had bunny ears, but we can't find the contraption that plugs them into the TV since our move in Aug. I guess we're ok w/out them...since Lost is online. :D

[Tutor]

I selected 5-10 hours with dish/cable, but by July, when our dish contract expires, we are canceling our service and probably ordering Netflix instead. We watch a lot of movies, but our screen time has greatly increased since having the dish since there always seems to be something on. We'd have to pay a penalty to cancel it now, so we are just waiting until our year is up then saying bye-bye dish and not looking back.

FWIW, we never had cable/ dish until we moved this past summer and only ordered it because it was cheaper to order satellite internet through the satellite tv provider and have both than to order just the satellite internet. After a year, the rates go up all around, so we'll cancel the TV and just keep the internet service. This year has been quite an experience in choosing to participate in something just because it's there.

[readwithem]

I'm kind of, sort of contemplating getting a dish for more channel options. Right now we just have NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and FOX. We don't watch much TV. There isn't much besides PBS kids that I let my kids watch. I'm now wondering about the options of Nat'l Geographic channel, Discovery, HG TV, etc. But, I'm afraid we'll just watch more TV and I really don't want to do that. So, I'm wondering does having a dish/cable result in more time spent watching TV?

We've never had cable, but we've stayed many nights in hotels with it :) What I've found is there's never anything good on when it's convenient to watch it!! I would spend the money on buying DVD's of shows you actually want to watch and then they're ready for you, when it's convenient for you.

Or check your library. Between what our library has (I live in a huge city) and what we can get from ILL, I've found 99.9% of what I want to either watch or read :)

[KIN]

Or check your library. Between what our library has (I live in a huge city) and what we can get from ILL, I've found 99.9% of what I want to either watch or read

Ah, I can't imgaine being able to find 99% of what I want to watch or read! :) I live in a town of 500 people and our library (which has only been open a few years) is literally in an old 1 room school house. It is very cute, but very, very small. And, b/c the vast majority of the people using the library are Amish, we have very, very few movies (read very few as 2 shelves 12" long). We don't have any books on tape. I love living in the country, but it does have a few draw backs!! :)

[Plaid Dad]

No TV at all here.

[KAR120C]

I'm kind of, sort of contemplating getting a dish for more channel options. Right now we just have NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and FOX. We don't watch much TV. There isn't much besides PBS kids that I let my kids watch. I'm now wondering about the options of Nat'l Geographic channel, Discovery, HG TV, etc. But, I'm afraid we'll just watch more TV and I really don't want to do that. So, I'm wondering does having a dish/cable result in more time spent watching TV?
I don't watch a ton, but DS and DH do... only they'll watch as much as they can with or without cable. We have a huge DVD collection (two bookcases nearly full) but I swear if we only had one DVD they would both watch it over and over. :p

Getting cable didn't increase our viewing time, but it did increase the "good" options, in my opinion.

[Jean in IN]

I'm kind of, sort of contemplating getting a dish for more channel options. Right now we just have NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and FOX. We don't watch much TV. There isn't much besides PBS kids that I let my kids watch. I'm now wondering about the options of Nat'l Geographic channel, Discovery, HG TV, etc. But, I'm afraid we'll just watch more TV and I really don't want to do that. So, I'm wondering does having a dish/cable result in more time spent watching TV?

Here's another option. www.skyangel.com You get it through you're broadband/wireless connection if you have enough speed. 1.5 Mbps or higher. They have two packages to choose from. we are talking about getting the family package. It has all the fun/educational channels. Animal planet, 3 discovery channels, NASA, okay, and NFLnetwork:), Hallmark, foxnews, etc.

Right now we have their DishNetwork package but they are discontinuing this option at the end of the month. So we need to decide what to do.
I'm going to call tomorrow to try to get more info. You know me, I gotta figure it all out before I jump in :D

Jean

[Daisy]

We are a no tv house. We have a 13in that will play DVD's. That's it. :D

[OceanBreeze]

No TV at all here.

Same here. We disconnected the cable 2 years ago for financial reasons and even if I had tons of money I would not reconnect it. I've been given the rare privilege of seeing the change in my children without it. They play. They amuse themselves. They go outside. They no longer whine, "Mom, can we pleeease watch TV?" It's been great!

Jenelle

[Beth in Central TX]

No TV at all here.

but we haven't been able to actually get rid of the TVs. We did go from 3 TVs in the house to only 2 this year. I guess it will be one small baby step at a time.

[freethinkermom]

Another online only family. We have 10Mb cable internet, but no tv service. We also watch a couple shows that we buy on Xbox live (Lost, Numb3rs) so we can watch them on the big tv in HD.

[Eliana]

We don't have a television at all... our computer can play DVDs - which is how we watch the little that we do, and our library system has a wide selection of DVDs available. (We some as well - Jane Austen adaptations, Swallows and Amazons... things we know we'll come back to over the years.)

[Ananda]

We have a decent sized TV that has a media center PC attached to it, so we can watch internet TV on the big screen. We also have netflicks, so we are kept reasonably busy without any "real" TV. We don't have kids but I would say my husband and I watch 10 hours or so per week, mostly movies.

[Tracy in Ky]

Oops--I clicked the wrong option. We have only an antenna and get only PBS clearly, plus a fuzzy big network but I am not sure which one. I watch TV maybe a couple hours a year--usually just to watch storm coverage, but not always even then.

I really dislike watching television.

Occasionally we rent videos for the kids, but that is infrequent.

[kaylk in tx]

my dh hates the cable company here (with good reason) and would go into serious withdrawal if he couldn't watch sports! the kids watch a few shows every so often, but only after school is done and they've had some outside playtime. with swimming and baseball, that doesn't leave much time for TV! so the vast majority of our tv viewing time is baseball, football, golf, basketball, soccer, bowling..... :) with a little bit of news thrown in.

[Holly IN]

We do not have antenna so we have dish only. We have to have a huge antenna to get any local channels so we opted out of that and went with Direct tv. We watch the food network, History channel, military channel, discovery channel (mythbusters are my kids favorite show and it really does show how they do a hypothesis), Tv Land (this is where all the old shows are on), and a few cartoon networks as well as the movie classics on one channel. We do not like the regular tv shows. We do have a very small tv (6 in I think ) that we can get one channel on locally. We use that to watch storms in the event of a tornado.


Holly

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

My kids get plenty of screen time. They watch maybe 5 hours of movies at week. My kids love Popular Mechanics for Kids. They pick out 3-4 dvds a week. Watch maybe half of them. They watch movies on my computer via Instawatch now and then.

We haven't had cable/dish in 4 years and don't miss it (especially, the commercials!). I have problems watching tv programs that include commercials. I get bored. I get all my news on the net. I spend an hour or so everymorning surfing the web for news and stuff.

k

[Pencil Pusher]

Ah, I can't imgaine being able to find 99% of what I want to watch or read! :) I live in a town of 500 people and our library (which has only been open a few years) is literally in an old 1 room school house. It is very cute, but very, very small. And, b/c the vast majority of the people using the library are Amish, we have very, very few movies (read very few as 2 shelves 12" long). We don't have any books on tape. I love living in the country, but it does have a few draw backs!! :)

I live in a big city, & via the internet, I have access to the libraries for the entire system.

What's the nicest way to say it stinks? The VERY FEW things I can find (that we want) are in such. awful. condition, you barely get to watch the first half. Then, at the climax, PAZAM! nothing. (Yep, I think I just made that word up. I think it's supposed to be SHAZAM!)

Anyway, we came from a much smaller city (still way bigger than 500, though), & their library--just the one branch I was close to --had almost everything I could want. I don't know about 99%, but enough that I was very happy.

This is completely unrelated to this thread, but I needed to get it out somewhere. Sorry, girls. Please continue!

[nestof3]

The only time the TV comes on without it being a movie around here is the World Series and about 5 Reading Rainbow shows a year.

Videos are watched often -- usually something beneficial.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

We have rabbit ears that have no reception. We've talked about hooking up cable for the Olympics and the election cycle. We probably watch <10 hours a week, almost all from Netflix.

[Patty Joanna]

I can't think of a show we have watched in the past 10 years on any of the stations you named. We have cable, and we watch the History Channel, the channel that has that ridiculous motorcycle manufacturer show ("We" being NOT ME!), the UW channel (university) because they have NASA feeds, and the Weather channel. And DVDs. Without the DVDs, we watch about 2 hours a week. With the DVDs, it depends...sometimes we go for weeks without watching anything and then sometimes it is a DVD PigOut for a week or so. But even on pigout weeks, it is NEVER more than 6 hours in a week. Oh yeah, we watch a football game from time to time, but usually we go to someone's house so we can eat their food.

Just turn it off. If money were an issue we would ditch cable.

[nmoira]

Five to ten hours per week, DVD only.

[FlockOfSillies]

:D

[Renee in FL]

It does in my house - dh watches TV from the time he gets home until the time he leaves. He spends 95% of his time at home in his recliner with his remotes. I hate it! I wish the TV would break and we couldn't buy a new one.

[Mom2boys]

When we got our Dish, we also got Tivo, and I love it. My kids don't watch live TV, just the shows I have recorded for them, so there is always something educational for them to watch at my convenience. Most of what I watch is also recorded, so I can fast forward through commercials. I can watch an hour long show in only 40 minutes while I am cooking dinner.

[K&Rs Mom]

We've considered cable a few times, but always conclude that we'd end up wasting a lot more time. ;) I did finally sign up for Netflix about 6 weeks ago, so we're getting some stuff for the kids and for us, and some school stuff, through that. Cable internet is worth the cost, especially now that dh is working from home, but cable TV isn't for us.

[Melissa in CA]

No TV at all here.

No Television here either. We do own TV's, but only for DVD watching. We chose to eliminate TV about 7+ years ago and really haven't missed it. The only time I wish we had TV is when there is a major news story going on...like the 9-11 tradgedy. It was frustrating trying to find out info online! Ack! It wasn't frustrating enough to get cable or an antenna again though. :D Thanks, but no thanks.

[Sandy in Indy]

We watch way more TV than we probably should... We record a lot of stuff on the DVR, though, and skip the commercials. (Especially good in the evenings when Victoria Secret commercials are on every other minute...not what I want my 17 yr old ds concentrating on!) DD watches a lot of Turner Classic Movies and BBC stuff. My boys love Mythbusters and Survivor Man (or whatever that show is). Little ds still loves PBS kids shows and learns a lot from them. (Word World is fun!)

[Karin]

I watch no TV, so I put <5 hours. In order to get antenna, we pay a really low cable rate (well, compared with the steep price of "cable." Dh watches, but I don't know how much as I go to bed. Not every night. We don't buy more cable because we'd either watch more or else figure it was a waste of money to pay more and not watch more. If I had some good stations, I might start watching again, but then I'd have to use this forum less as it's the bulk of my screen time. Since this is more interactive than TV and I actually learn things here, I choose this. Not to mention few commercial breaks.

[nrg]

we don't subscribe to either cable or satellite and don't receive any channels at all.

[OneRoomSchoolHouse]

We watch satellite. My dc watch TV a max of 2 hours/day (usually less or not at all) They can only watch educational shows like Discovery channel, History channel, Animal Planet, we try to DVR Little House on the Prarrie or Magic School Bus. My littlest ones will watch Wonder Pets or Micky Mouse Playhouse every now and then.

We have satellite mostly for my dh. I argued that I didn't want that temptation, but I fight it as best we can. My dh "has to have" TV every evening after the kids go to bed for several hours.

[Ishki]

During football season we have satellite so dh can get NFL Sunday Ticket - then we probably watch TV about 10+ hours a week. The rest of the year we watch maybe 5 to 10 hrs. Most of it is PBS on Saturday starting with Are You Being Served and ending with Dr. Who. Oh, and Nature and Masterpiece on Sunday. If it wasn't for PBS, wouldn't watch TV at all when there's no satellite.

Janet

[Orthodox6]

We have Verizon FIOS, with "basic channels." That provides a lot of channels, but no "premium" (HBO, Starz, etc.)

The children sometimes watch "Hogan's Heroes" reruns. I watch a lot of BBC World News. Husband watches Mavs basketball. College ds watches history programs.

Hardly anything else ever watched at our house. -- television, that is. We have an extensive collection of DVDs and videocassettes.

No DVR owned or anticipated.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I'm not sure what dish costs, but I'd pass.

I had been planning on getting cable when we move here. Previously we'd done no tv (we only had rabbit ears and had no reception). But then I looked at the price of cable. Basic service was more than $50 a month. That is over $600 a year. I'm sorry, but there isn't that much on that is worth $600 a year.

That is quite a book allowance, or big Netflix subscription (which carries many of the shows that I'd want to watch anyway), or train tickets for me and the kids to some great spot we want to visit.

Sorry, but there isn't much on tv worth putting out that sort of money (and then getting advertised at to boot). I am convinced that we save a ton of money and agitation because our kids aren't advertised to on a near constant basis. It is much easier to be frugal when it doesn't mean resisting the lures of Madison Avenue's best attempts to make a want into a need.

[Starr]

We don't have TV reception at home but do watch some at my sister's. The dc like the very old reruns.

[iwka]

TV only for DVDs and VHS, online viewing
75% educational use

[Paintedlady]

DH & I are recovering satellite junkies. He loves all the sports channels and I love Discovery, History, & Food channels.
The problem is we definitely found ourselves zoning out in front of the tv way too much and we hated that. We went cold turkey a month ago and have nothing now, not even local channels. My eye still hasn't stopped twitching! ;) We're going to get a NetFlix subscription so we can watch a few movies at least.

[ConnieB]

We moved into a rental and had friends helping us set up furniture, etc....well, friend was setting up the TV set, saw the cable tv cord sticking out of the wall and plugged our TV in it (he didn't know we don't do cable). Days later when we finally turned on the TV it was showing cable channels....what???? We figured since it wasn't the end of the month the previous renters must have not shut it off just left it til their payment ran out. Well, the new month comes, still got cable......ok, maybe their bill is due mid month....next month comes, still got cable....lol....woah. So, we keep watching....and watching...and watching. Uggg. Love being able to watch Little House on the Prairie 5 times a day, but ummm, that's 5 HOURS. Uggg.

Finally a cable truck pulls up to the house while we're outside......turns out that the previous renters never shut it off and of course their bills and shut off threats were forwarded, lol. So....we had about 2 months free cable, and we watched it constantly! Made my resolve to NOT get cable that much stronger.

Yes, I would love if we could select which channels we want....I'd love to get some of the ones that have truly worthwhile shows, but I also fear that we'll fall back into watching Little House (or something similiar) for hours on end. I feel like we never have enough time in the day now, I can't imagine how much worse it would be if we watched hours of TV every day! (That's not a flame to those that do, I just know my family can become vegetative in front of the TV, it's scary a little how easily we can/do when we're in a hotel with cable!)

Your family may be different, may be able to restrain themselves and watch just the good stuff. You probably won't know until you try. A few years after the rental cable, we decided the kids were older now, those educational channels would be totally cool to have...ok, and the sci-fi channel, lol.......so we went ahead and got cable....and immediately fell into those bad habits again....my heavens they had ER from the beginning....they had a channel that played nothing but old sitcoms from the 80's.......they had the Disney channel........and that other kids one....and more cartoons.....and some really icky channels too......but suddenly we were watching TV for hours a day again....and late late into the night. And our life was suffering for it. So we pulled the plug. And have never looked back. So, maybe your family could just give it a test run.....maybe agree that you'll all look at your habits this fall and see if you really should be keeping it. Of course, consider whether you're the kind that could pull the plug if the answer is it's not been a good thing for your family...it was really hard for me to do it....and none of were happy for a week or two afterwards (sheesh, we could be watching blah blah was a constant refrain). Then we slowly got back to doing other things....family game night came back, etc.

Anyway....our cable company didn't require a committment/contract, it was all month to month....and we got in with free installation, so thankfully pulling the plug didn't cost us anything.

For those times that something super spectacular is on, about 90% of the time we've found it comes out on DVD shortly after it finishes airing. Our library is great about getting them, though they can be slow, so we don't get to see it for a few months. But we're patient. I've also found that lots of things are available to view online, often free, months later. I've yet to feel that our life has been shortchanged because we missed something that didn't come out on DVD or that our library didn't get.....but I did feel that having cable in the house was shortchanging our quality time together as a family, and eating into our life. It is an easy decision to resist those weekly sales flyers now.

So....have fun with your trial! :tongue_smilie:

[priscilla]

We just cancelled the satellite and going off the antenna. It is much easier to curb my ds's tv watching without it.:tongue_smilie:

[Loupelou]

We got rid of our cable in January, no antenna either. We check out old classics at the library and rent kids movies from the redbox. The freedom has been wonderful. We do a lot more reading and evening family time now.

[Liza Q]

We just got cable in December. We watched a LOT of TV in January! Since then, I am back to watching my usual ABC/NBC/etc shows. Every now and then I will catch an old episode of Star Trek TNG and we did watch Battlestar Galactica on Fridays for 8 weeks or so.

So, no - I don't watch more. My children, though.....went from watching 2 or so hours a week to about 2 a DAY. The Disney Channel has been a great temptation. I am waiting for my husband to join me in putting our collective foot down.

At this point I am hoping that we get rid of it when our 1-yr contract is up.

[Pamela H in Texas]

My answer is no longer true. We got tv service since this was originally posted.

[Melissa B]

I voted 5-10 but that is almost all my dh. :D Our only TV is in the master bedroom. We have dish because we can't get any channels without it. My dh watches about four or five channels - a couple of sports channels, a couple of nature program channels and HBO. The kids watch very little unless dh invites them to come in and watch a nature show with him. Everyone has to pile on the bed. I have a weakness for football games and usually watch 1 or 2 a week during football season. (I will also watch the NBA playoffs this afternoon with dh. :tongue_smilie:)