Blog author and GeekDad Russ Neumeier explains in his article “An Adventure in Cable Cutting – Day One” how he and his family finally came to the decision to cut their cable television subscription. What may be different for them, than most people, is that there reasons for cutting were not anti-TV or anti-cable but rather a simple analysis of their TV viewing habits and coming to the realization that cable just was not worth the money.
Reasons for cutting cable included:
- Family members complaining there was nothing on TV to watch, with over 100 channels of cable available
- Nearly 80 percent of their viewing was spent watching on-demand content rather than the standard television program lineup
- With younger kids in the house they made use of parental controls for filtering the shows their kids could watch, but commercials themselves were not so clean and had no function for filtering these
- Cable channels and traditional network channels have blended in the content they provide.
What they have decided to do instead of cable is to stream TV content from the internet instead. This required keeping their high-speed internet connection. They’re also testing the Boxee set-top box and using Redbox for their movie rentals. If they run out of entertainment content to watch, they’re also keeping an eye on what Amazon is doing with their service offering, including Amazon Prime. Another option is installing a digital antenna for local television stations.
What we think at NextGen Digital Home:
This kind of scenario with homes cutting their TV cable is going to be happening more and more frequently in the future. Costs of cable subscriptions, along with other sources of TV, are getting too costly for what they provide. People want to choose their TV content and pay for only what they watch.
Unfortunately, the cable companies still control many of the internet connections into your home. At some point they will begin charging more for the internet connection. This has already started happening with many cable companies setting caps on your internet bandwidth. They didn’t run that cable into your house so you could watch free TV.
Many communities, especially in larger more populated areas, have multiple internet broadband options. This will help to keep competition in the internet industry.
