11.21.2011

The Bandwidth Wars Heat Up!

A couple of months back our household cut the cable. We decided to save more than a hundred dollars a month that we were spending on cable TV. 570 stations and nothing on... We bought a couple of Roku's (you'd know what I'm talking about if you weren't addicted to your TV set...) to stream video and indoor antennas for the local stations. We tried it a month before jettisoning the cable. It works for us and saves a lot of time and money. It's a bit more effort to watch TV but that is a good thing since we watch a lot less of it.

Quest, unfortunately is our DSL provider. I hate Quest. I hate what ever company they changed their name to in a Philip-Morris-to-Altrea-like move they hoped would distance them from the stench of their crappy history of service. (Shakespeare said it -"A steaming pile by any other name...") They still suck. They also still charge us for DSL service that is about as reliable as pony express service after Little Big Horn. It's S-L-O-W on a good day. Few days are good.

And if that weren't bad enough, last night eldest daughter was hogging all the bandwidth! I went in to the guest room and she was there with the TV on streaming Gossip Girls, talking on her cell to a friend, while fussing with facebook on a laptop with her online school document folders open and iTunes at the ready.

My how times change but fathers stay the same. My dad used to complain, "Hey, stop hogging the bathroom so someone else has a chance."

Now I say, "Hey, stop hogging all the bandwidth so someone else has a chance - to watch TV...

9 comments:

GearHedEd said...

yeah...

Big Mark 243 said...

I am looking forward to cutting the cable too... Roku, here I come..!

This was a funny post by the way...

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

We've had great luck with the Roku. I also like that it's not a product of one of the big giant corporations.

There are some strange free channels on the thing though - the all Mormon channel for example.

pboyfloyd said...

We had Telus phone and internet and Shaw Cable TV and switched to all Shaw Cable, for $100 a month(haven't had our first bill from them though).

Is this good?

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

Hard to know. Some of the bundled plans give you an initial break then jack up the price.

Saint Brian the Godless said...

Love that Young Frankenstein clip.

Well, I have a twenty-one year old computer geek/gamer living in the house, so my cable bill's about 250 a month. Cox cable. Insane.
He just got an I-Phone 4. With Siri. The helpful assistant voice-recognition thingy. Pretty amazing, have to say, but I keep on seeing dollar signs. Guess I really am fifty after all. Next it's 'hey you damn kids, get off my lawn!'

Roku? Never heard of that. I'll have to google it now.

Saint Brian the Godless said...

Ahh Roku!

I see...


Looks interesting. My my, how times change.

Saint Brian the Godless said...

I couldn't cut the cable though... I'm addicted to cable news, and HBO, especially Bill Maher, which I'm guessing won't be available on Roku in new episodes, and what good are old ones? Same with Jon Stewart for that matter, on Comedy Central.

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

With Cable losing 1.7 million subscribers last year, rumors of are circulating that HBO may soon offer a streaming service independent of a cable subscription.