Cable & TV

I'm ditching my cable TV. For a while now, I've noticed that I end up spending far too much time in front of it, and it's not something that I want to do. There's a couple of reasons for dropping this: 1 - I can't stand Comcast. Their customer service has been piss-poor, from their phone banks, internet chat help and the actual door to door service. I've been booted from phone banks, given wrong and conflicting information from service reps and have wasted entire days waiting for the cable guy to come. It's incredibly frustrating.

2 - Pushy service. A couple months ago, I upgraded to a bigger cable package, and the digital service package was almost forced upon me by the person that I was talking to. I don't have a digital TV, and essentially only wanted SciFi, Discovery, History, USA, Comedy and Cartoon Network. I honestly don't want or need 300 + channels. I don't care that it's only three dollars more.

3 - Channels moving to digital. Okay, I realize that they're trying to move everything over to their digital lineup, but half of the channels that I did have are now no longer availiable for what I purchased, which seems incredibly unfair to the consumer.

4 - They don't offer a basic cable option any more - which cost around $19.00 or so a month. Now, I'm paying something like $60.00, which is the only option for standard cable. I was looking to downgrade to something cheaper.

5 - Internet. I think that as much as I dislike Comcast, I'm going to go with their internet, which is something like $20 a month. With the way things are going, if I want to see something on TV, chances are, it'll be up online on the network's website early or the day of, so I will be able to see the various shows that I'd watch. Plus, it'll make doing my homework easier and things like that. My home computer, unfortunately, is getting pretty old, and I've been thinking that I'll be needing to get an external hard drive to back things up on, and then reformat everything and start again.

6 - With the prices of electronics, I can just go pick up a DVD player and plug that into my TV and just buy the TV shows that I like, which is essentially what I do anyway. Maybe subscribe to Netflix.