The is a followup to my last article Turned off my Cable TV. It’s been 3 days and I’m not missing anything. In fact – it’s better. It reminds me of 2000 when I moved to California and decided, why do I need a land line when I have a cell phone? And it reminds me of when I switched from Windows to Linux, although that transition had pain involved.

So far everything I watch can be watched on the internet. And I don’t have to be there when it comes on TV. I can watch it when I want. And I can pause it if the phone rings. Sometimes I need to hunt a little to figure out where to get it. but …

The concept of watching channels goes away.

The concept of when something comes on goes away.

The quality of what I’m watching has increased.

I have subscribed to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, although Amazon is neither ChromeCast nor Linux friendly so I’m likely to drop it after the free trial. And there’s an infinite amount of stuff on YouTube.

With my ChromeCast dongle that plugs into an HDMI port on my TV (I’ve had it for some time) I can use my cell phone, android tablet, and my computer (running Chrome browser) as a remote. And I can watch stuff on those devices as well. The TV is basically a remote screen if I want to sit in the living room and watch something on the big screen.

I have a 4 year old Google TV (Sony) that is rather obsolete but I’m just using it as a dumb screen. I doubt I would replace it with a newer TV because the newer sets are too creepy. I want to watch TV. I don’t want TV watching me. Although Skype from my TV would be cool.

So – on YouTube I like watching anything Elon Musk. It seems like every day there’s something new and significant in his world. Learning a lot of Physics and Cosmology. Can still watch South Park and Big Bang Theory, about the only shows I’m interested in.

What I’m not watching anymore is the culture wars. FOX, CNN, MSNBC, will lower your IQ. (Except Rachel Maddow, I like her sometimes) Culture wars makes you stupid. I also don’t need to see only bad news without covering the good news in the world that far exceeds the bad. You would think it’s the end of the world when in reality things have never been better. The news media are basically drug pushers who are just playing with your emotions to get more eyeballs to sell to advertisers. So they twist things just to keep you emotionally excited so that can sell you auto insurance or erectile drugs. It’s all such a scam.



  1. IM72 says:

    More and more people are learning how to cut the cord thanks to articles like yours, Marc. Good work.

  2. McCullough says:

    I’ve been using Roku for at least 5 years and love it. Not having to deal with endless commercials is liberating.

    However, I have noticed that many movies and some TV content, that were readily available for free, years ago, are now getting harder and harder to find (for free).

    Even old classics that you could find on Netflix, are no longer there, but can be found on other services and viewed for a small fee.

    It will be inevitable, I fear, that services like Hulu will become increasingly more expensive on a monthly basis, or you will see more commercial interruption than what is experienced at the moment.

    I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.

  3. MikeN says:

    What will you do when Elon Musk starts his own cable network?

    • Marc Perkel says:

      You do know the Elon is going to become the world’s largest internet provider when he launches his 4000 satellites?

      • Ah_Yea says:

        Seen Gravity? 4000 little billiard balls bouncing all over the place. Just get one out of orbit… No more space for you!!

        • Marc Perkel says:

          Yeah – well space is big in the real world. Not like in Gravity.

          • MikeN says:

            With all that space, maybe Elon will build a prison to house the prisoners to build his solar cells, all in a solar powered prison paid for by the taxpayers. They can arrest Marc at his next protest of Pelosi and Hillary, and he can blog about it in person.

      • MikeN says:

        I’ve heard such things for decades. Motorola Iridium with its 66 satellites, 700 satellites for Telstar, now 4000 for Musk.

  4. P. Farnsworth says:

    You have discovered what everyone with a decent DVR has. Network television is dying a slow death. In fact there is more good programming on TV than ever. Only old farts and dvorak blog trolls waste their lives with Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, and the other fearmongers.
    Netflix, HBO, a bit of SHO, even PBS have excellent programming available. A couple of good network shows remain (neither of which are Big Bang or South Park). I hear Hulu is good but it is redundant for me.
    TV is far from dead – as they price themselves out of the mass market, Hollywood movies could be dead-er – but prime time, big 4 network TV is on the way to titsup unless they adapt to our world instead of forcing us into theirs.

    • Hmeyers says:

      One problem with television is the absurd number of channels.

      You can’t casually browse through a few channels.

      So you have to use a “find” function.

      Which means you already know what you want.

      Which is the opposite of finding something.

      One upon a time, the idea of 500 channels would be great.

      But with 450 of them being garbage …

      • bona fide says:

        I was on the road some 350 miles from home, once. We procurred a motel at our destination as it was very late (early). Upon inquiring about television access, the inkeeper informed us that all they had was ‘300 channels of shit a nigger would not watch.’

  5. Benjamin says:

    I have free cable as part of rent for my apartment, but guess what. I’ve never watched a show on cable since I moved in. I have Netflix and I wait until Game of Thrones or Big Bang Theory comes on DVD. I live in a college town so I watch spirts in a sports bar with fans of my school. I don’t miss broadcast TV With commercials.

  6. WeirdHongKong says:

    I have not owned a TV for 10+ years but have used laptops connected via vga/hdmi/chromecast for the last few years.
    I dislike smart tv’s as there is far to much crap running on them
    to make me happy. Using the Computer screen or I use a benq projector 300 usd get 8 foot signal hooked to nice sound system. Im in heaven. zatoo here in europe, bbc, and netflicks and my day is done..

    Thanks Big D. you have the right IDEA.. cable is DEAD…

  7. Boob Tube says:

    Even paying the online content providers (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.) is a bit unnecessary. Enter the realm of XBMC, now calling itself Kodi and you can pretty much watch everything — even those premium offerings (assuming you don’t mind waiting a week or so) — FOR FREE!

    So as long as they’re going to spam us and spy on our Internet habits (well, hello there GOOGLE!), I figure I’ve already paid quite enough!

    DON’T BE A (TV) LEMMING!!!

  8. John E. Quantum says:

    If you don’t watch mainstream media, how will you know what you want, how to act, or what to think?

    • Ah_Yea says:

      Phydeau could tell you, if he were still on the site.

      But he’s not (sad face, wiping away tear)

  9. Dave Koss says:

    I did this 5 years ago.

  10. randominternetguy says:

    I did this 9 years ago, even though I live in a country with a crappy internet connection.

    Marc makes a blog post for every little fart that he manages to produce.

  11. krystina says:

    Oh well, I won’t miss it. I have my Columbo DVD box sets seasons one through 6 to keep me entertained, Not to mention Jeremiah Johnson on Blu Ray. I’m as happy as a fucking lark. Who is Brian Williams?

  12. bobbo, in point of fact says:

    Everyone is still watching tv.

    The alternative to tv is any other activity that isn’t actually watching tv.

    I fell across one advantage of Broadcast/Cable tv==when you are too brain dead to pick what you want to see…… you can channel surf. First time I came across Shark Tank. Fun show. I have it set to record a few more until it, like everything else in life, becomes routine.

    Books.

  13. Woe is me says:

    Where IS the source of TRUTH?

    If it’s not on TV, and not on THIS BLOG, where, oh where, shall we go??

    Bobbo, help me!

    • bobbo, in point of fact says:

      Woe…. you have me off my nome de engagement, but I do love to pontificate.

      The truth.

      Interesting concept.

      “The truth is what hits you in the nose when you think nothing is there.”

      …………………….you see it all the time.

  14. Mr Diesel says:

    You guys convinced me to take a baby step, I just ordered a Roku 3 to play with. If it works out well enough we can dump Time Warner in 12 months when they raise the rates through the roof.

    • bobbo, in point of fact says:

      I’ve never understood what those internet boxes do that a computer can’t do alone.

      I sense that with a one time fee of the purchase of the hardware you get access to some service you have to pay for otherwise?

      Anyway…I bought my Roku type device to just play with and as an alternative to buying a video card with an hdmi connectiion to the tv.

      OF NOTE: On first start up of my DISH equipment, it had a drop down menu to connect your computer through the modem to the tv. Then on restart, the ability to do that was absent.

      DISH disabled computer connection….. I assume to force the use/purchase of Roku or Smart Tv’s????

      Anyway…………I also am being encouraged to try internet tv once again. Have to wait 2 years to get off my 1MB/sec dsl internet service of $20/month.

      I’m patient.

      • Treadmill says:

        Tonight on Burglars: Man They Stole My DISH!

        There was something dead on it so that makes it murder.

  15. Marc Perkel: That is some “about time!” adoption, but enjoy your new freedom and congratulations anyway. Here’s a rare and relevant short article I wrote in January 2010, and that was late: http://wilblake.com/cable_satellite.htm

  16. mojo says:

    Basic minimum cable (hey, the internet is cable, why not?) that I rarely watch. Streaming is the future.

  17. NikElectric says:

    I went the other way recently. I hadn’t had any cable/satellite connection for 10 years. When Bell FibreOp came to my town they had a package that gave me unlimited Internet….still unlimited in this part of Canada, home phone, and basic cable package with 2X PVRs for $100 a month…pretty much the same price as for just the Internet. I almost never use the phone or watch live TV. I PVR a few shows, but never seem to get around to watching them. When the deal runs out in a few years, I’ll see what deals the cable company is offering, and see saw back and forth on their sign up deals.

  18. Treadmill says:

    AN ARGUMENT WHICH WOULD DEFEND ANY CRIME

    “The Achilles heel of vivisection, however, is not to be found in the
    pain it causes, but in the line of argument by which it is justified.
    The medical code regarding it is simply criminal anarchism at its very
    worst. Indeed no criminal has yet had the impudence to argue as
    every vivisector argues. No burglar contends that as it is admittedly
    important to have money to spend, and as the object of burglary is to
    provide the burglar with money to spend, and as in many instances it has
    achieved this object, therefore the burglar is a public benefactor
    and the police are ignorant sentimentalists.”

    Instead of Cops we can have Burglars live! Only on Pay-Per-View. They stole a TV! It was dead!

    • bobbo, in point of fact says:

      No vivisectionalist has ever argued that it is important to have money to spend.

      No burglar has ever argued that burglary advances human knowledge with which millions are saved from illness.

      The analogy escapes me.

      • Treadmill says:

        Fast food. Dead!
        Shaw satire. Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese to the rescue!

  19. Treadmill says:

    Useful search. Dead!

    Phi Beta Iota: The Information Industry generally, but especially so in the USA, is dishonest and ignorant. Financial metrics have displaced intelligence (decision-support) metrics. As long as stupid individual and corporate investors can be a dumping ground for false mediocre and even dangerously misleading information industry products and services, we will continue to destroy the intelligence of the US noosphere. http://www.phibetaiota.net/2015/04/stephen-e-arnold-the-death-of-useful-search/#more-110853

    Solutions: Why was the Dymaxion map so revolutionary in the first place? Because cartographers spent centuries working towards a single, universal world map, striving to set up a standard that every country would go by. Fuller, on the other hand, did something radical: He imagined a map that could be rejiggered depending on what the user might want to visualize. For example, you can rearrange the pieces to show political affiliations. Or the flow of air over the Earth. Or nearly any other piece of geospatial information. It was an entirely new way to see how nations and landmasses are related.

    And it’s still relevant, if the eleven finalists in the Dymax Redux contest are any evidence.
    http://gizmodo.com/7-brilliant-reinventions-of-buckminster-fullers-dymaxio-867929593

    Search is no longer relevant

  20. bobbo, in point of fact says:

    I don’t think this is what “the singularity” is supposed to be about.

    Netflix has a list of recommended tvs. Darn! My brand new Vizio didn’t make the list….yet it works just fine. No kick backs???

    https://devices.netflix.com/recommendedtv/

  21. MikeN says:

    >will lower your IQ. (Except Rachel Maddow, I like her sometimes)

    Marc Perkel, wake up. You know if this were a Republican President, you would probably be appearing on Rachel’s show to talk about e-mail security. Instead, the story gets ignored, with the media largely covering for Hillary(It only got covered because Obama and Valerie are trying to sink her campaign). Indeed, there is a story out now on CNN about how the White House was hacked. They conveniently ignored it to avoid making Obama look incompetent before the election. This article mentions that the hack spread from the State Department. No mention of Hillary. Maybe you should do a followup and see if it’s plausible she is the source.

  22. Mr Diesel says:

    I got the Roku 3 last night and hooked it up.

    Takes a while to get the updates and the free channels load and setup an account and billing.

    Then it was off to watch something, ANYTHING. I was a little disappointed. The first thing I went to watch had a commercial and it stopped quite a few times buffering. Only the commercial but still it is irritating as hell.

    Second thing that disappointed me was almost all the stuff that interested me was pay or not even available.

    Third thing that go me was there is just too much stuff on there. I tried going through the main headings that interested me and then drilling down to individual channels and after all that I only selected FoxNews, Electronic Music, Popular Science and the MIT Lecture channel.

    FoxNews only has live radio, not TV.
    Music was just to test to see if it would skip or buffer (it worked fine).
    PopSci is basically a bunch of two minute ads.
    MIT Lectures looked promising but nothing blew me away.

    While it is still early I am not impressed with the box.

    What am I doing wrong (with Roku, nothing else)?

    • MikeN says:

      MIT Lecture Channel would have been good, except they removed Walter Lewin’s lectures, who is the best physics teacher of all time. He got into a brouhaha and was accused of online sexual harassment, so he reportedly has been fired as professor emeritus, which is not really possible.

    • Sheesh says:

      Yes you pay for a Netflix account (8 bucks), a Hulu account (about 8 bucks), and if you already use Amazon Prime, than you just use that app, and login with your acct, no extra charge.

      Hulu has one commercial (3o seconds per half hour.) Netflix and Amazon have zero commercials. That is worth the price of admission right there.

      So you get access to thousands of commercial free movies, docs, television shows, etc.

      I like Pandora, Weather Channels like Wunderground, WSJ, and other news channels, also no commercials. Then there are classic movie channels, some you pay for (3 bucks per year) some you dont.

      Yes, it is sticking it to cable companies because its much cheaper and relatively commercial free, and on demand. You can pause a show, close a show and pick up where you left off with no further expense of a TIVO or other device.

  23. Kent says:

    Haven’t had TV since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched. So, are the Iraqi’s free now?

  24. Yawn says:

    Television is Dead.

    So is this blog.

  25. bobbo, in point of fact says:

    One of my hobbies is seeing how cheaply I can live. Practice for the hyper inflation somewhere over the horizon…so…cutting cable/satellite is the right thing to do and I’ve half tried 2-3 times.

    I do watch 2 channels at a time….big screen with sound, smaller screen with captions….so I watch A LOT of tv. Mostly, news and science.

    Seems to me cable/satellite makes it easy to pick what I want to watch in that I am given a “menu” whereas off cable I have to decide what I want to watch first? I can see spending a lot of time looking rather than watching?

    Yes….I watch too much tv. But given thats what I do, seems to me cable does save time and makes the process easier and does surprise me from time to time by channel surfing onto something new. Shark Tank most recently and 4 shows in…still interesting. I admire entrepreneurs.

    In the theme of this thread…..its also fair to say I never watch “tv.” Everything I watch is thru the dvr so that I can skip commercials. I’m getting better at zipping thru the brain rot stuff too……as in whenever a politician moves his lips, or defense counsel, or a movie star…..although I did just watch the interesting segment on Rand Pauls mistreatment of female news anchors. Brain rot? Only if you are “wanting to believe what you are told” in what you watch. Different outcome if you “look for the truth”===>meaning recognizing the lie/bias in much of what is presented and glimpsing the truth in the wheat that remains. Active watching….if you will.

    So…………pros and cons to all we do………choices to be made.

    • Wonder Years says:

      “Everything I watch is thru the dvr so that I can skip commercials.”

      So you missed this?

      https://www.invinceable.com/?mid=5687482

      Some of the funniest things on TV are the commercials.

      • Mr Diesel says:

        Vince’s new commercial is funny as hell.

        “Accidents, how do you think the kids got here?”

        I didn’t even look at the Roku last night. If all I get is Netflix and Prime then I can do Netflix on my Wii which is about the only thing I use it for anyway.

        I wanted Hulu because it was free, now it isn’t, along with a lot of other stuff on the box.

        Oh well, I’ve pissed away more money on drinking in my youth than a Roku and have about the same to show for it.

        • bobbo, in point of fact says:

          Vince is the man since that other pitchman died. I think I bought a new mop based on his shamu technology (any microfiber will do?).

          A few ads are clever…but not worth looking at all those that aren’t.

          ((Yes, I’m going along………………..))

    • MikeN says:

      If you like Shark Tank, CNBC shows about 10 a week.

  26. Jeremiah's Johnson says:

    You should spend some time watching what everyone else is watching simply so you don’t lose an understanding of how stupid everyone around you is.

    It’s easy to underestimate how vapid our culture is if you don’t try to keep a connection to it.

  27. What??? says:

    I don’t watch TV so this might be a naive question. If everyone’s so proud of how they skip the commercials watching TV on the internet, how are the TV show creators going to get the money to create their shows? If they don’t have the revenue from TV commercials, I mean. As far as I know advertising is what pays for TV shows. Without advertising, how will they pay for the shows?

    • Free Lunch? says:

      As a science and technology guy, the economics and effectiveness of advertising has always mystified me.

      Like a religion, advertisers preach the benefits of THEIR product over another, in hopes of gaining believers (buyers).

      Meanwhile, the entitlement crowd wants everything for free, while the snake oil salesmen overcharge and under-deliver.

      Fair value is what I want, but it’s hard to calculate. I guess if you’re happy for what you paid for a product, don’t look back. Just enjoy it.

  28. noname says:

    k, it’s 4/12/2015 and the last new DU blog posting is “this one”, dated Friday April 3, 2015.

    Me thinks, befitting the title of this blog”
    Television is Dead”, “Dvorak Uncensored” is barely hanging in the blog sphere geriatric intensive care life support if not already dead.

    Grandpa Dvorak, it’s not like there hasn’t been any news!

    Just saying!

  29. Greg Allen says:

    Here in Portland, Oregon, TV is great. I had to buy a new antenna but the digital signal is beautiful.

    I’ve heard that here in Portland, Oregon we have one of the highest percentage of over-the-air TV viewership.

    We also have one of the highest library userships in the country.

    I don’t think the two are coincidental.

    I binge watch the HBO/BBC/etc series on borrowed DVDs.

    With that and TV, I have more than enough to watch.

  30. jpfitz says:

    TV is dead…really…that is the topic to be had?

    Bye bye Mr. Dvorak.

    You had me with your cranky geeks.

    Then cranky geeks died.

    Bye bye Mr. Dvorak.

    You pulled me back in with Dvorak Uncensored.

    Now Dvorak Uncensored withers away.

    Bye bye…are there new posts out there for discussion?

    Wishing you joy and happiness.


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