12 October 2013

"Pay" TV

That's what they used to call it "way back then"...
Pay TV.
We lived in a rural community. We had FOUR channels-
CBS, ABC, NBC, and an independent channel that showed some locally produced stuff, old movies, old TV series, and on Saturdays... WRASSLIN' !
What more could we ask?
What more could we possibly need?!
What on earth could anyone offer on TV(!) that would entice someone to actually PAY for it when we had four channels, for FREE?!


Well, here we are.
At home we have "Dish Network". We've subscribed to their basic programming and have added one upgrade to get some programming we HAD to have:
The Velocity Channel for me. The Hallmark Channel for Sara Jean. I'm ashamed to say I can't even tell you what I pay monthly for the service, but I think it approaches $90 per month.
But, amazingly, we frequently find ourselves bored by the 150+ channels offered to us there, and resort to watching something we have recorded on the DVR provided by Dish Network.
As a matter of fact, we sometimes find we have filled the hard drive on the DVR and have to erase some programming we recorded (but don't really want to watch) in order to record some of our "Must see's"... the latest episode of "Deadliest Catch" or "Sons of Anarchy".

Now we find ourselves in our Southern Digs. "Cox Cable" is what we get in this condo complex.
What's offered is pretty basic stuff... local TV stations, and a few of the most popular cable offerings, (including SJ's beloved QVC!)
We missed our Dish Network. We missed our option of recording stuff to watch later.

Someone suggested Cox Cable might be able to help. "You should call them and ask!"
So we did.
The nice lady at Cox said, "Sure... we offer a DVR, and with it you get additional programming AND many channels in HD, all for a minimal charge!"

Hmmm.
"How minimal?"

"Just $28 per month."

Ouch.
"But what about "Sons?" asked my beautiful wife, in a voice bordering on whine.
I went and picked up the machine.
We are now wearing it out, and find ourselves fast-forwarding through programming so we're sure it will have disk space to record stuff we ABSOLUTELY have to watch. Sound familiar?

$90/mo. back North. $28/mo. in Destin.
Ouch again.

"PAY TV?"

Indeed
.

3 comments:

Rita said...

That independent station. Had some of the best programming. Who didn't grow up with Sammy Terry scaring us in Friday nights?

Not sure if they were the ones that carried Ruth Lyons and the 50/50 club. And Paul Dixon's rubber chicken wedding.

Now that was TV worth DVRing.

Scotty said...

You'll only be able to get my DVR by prying it outta my cold dead hands!!

Back in the day, Dad installed a boom and an antenna rotor on our house. We were able to watch all the Canadian stations out of the Ontario Provence of Canada. I think that was were I got my addiction to English humor.

That antenna system was twenty feet higher than the roof of the house.

Old NFO said...

You're lucky, lots of folks are seeing bills north of $150 a month...