Are you willing to give up TV?

[TrekkieMonster]

If I weren't married to a TV-a-holic, I'd give it up in a heartbeat.

I'd miss certain things -- especially sports and scifi -- but I could easily go without about 99% of what's currently on "the boob tube."

Especially if I could still watch my Star Trek DVDs.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

Why settle for a $1000 plasma when you can get a secret volcano lair for $100000? Plus it comes with a $100 converter box.

Actually I hear even the Bat Cave isn't wired for cable. Bruce was still using the rabbit ears and a 56K.

 

[Mike Farley]

Watching TV shows online is not giving up TV. Watching shows on DVD isn't really "not" watching TV either.

If you mean give up watching LIVE TV, then sure. I've already mostly done that. The Big Bang Theory is the only show I currently watch as it airs, and that's only because it's not available via cable "On Demand" or on Hulu or CBS.com.

As for quality, TV now is not any worse than it was in the past. There's always been been a ton of crap on TV. But there's also a lot of GOOD stuff out there, stuff like Dexter, Mad Men, Glee, FlashForward, and HBO's original programming. There's a whole channel dedicated to Science Fiction (with occasional wrestling). There are multiple channels that show cartoons--both new and old--24 hours a day.

At any given moment there are several dozen episodes of some form of Law and Order playing on cable.

 

[Warp Coil]

I think that, at this point, I could give up watching "live" broadcast TV. I'm watching fewer and fewer programs that way. At the moment the only shows I'm really paying attention to are "Grey's Anatomy" and "Dollhouse", and even the latter gets watched on Hulu sometimes. I'm also watching "Dexter" but with friends at someone else's house, because I don't pay for Showtime.

So long as I have the internet and DVDs/netflix, I could be perfectly happy.

 

[Colonel Green]

I'll get back to you after it becomes 100% certain that the Canucks aren't gonna make the playoffs.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I don't own a TV. I watch House and Heroes on Hulu. And Caprica, once it starts airing.

That said, I could probably give up TV shows altogether. It's just a couple more hours of free time a week to me.

 

[RoJoHen]

Got rid of it when I moved into my new apartment. I still have a nice TV, but I only watch DVDs. Netflix is my friend.

 

[B.J.]

I wouldn't give it up. Just flipping around the channels, I usually come across something interesting to watch that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I've given up TV before. Began in University, relied solely on radio (music and talk). Managed to go without any form of entertainment TV (not even videos or, once mainstream, DVDs) for months on end.

These periods would be interrupted of course by the times I went to stay with my parents (which was very seldom while at Uni - usually during the major vacation periods). Going back to TV during those times, I would be caught out a lot by the various trendy TV shows at the time, and even be confused by the new channel idents.

Yet, going back to University for the next semester, I would not miss TV at all. When I moved into a flat for my second year, my flatmate had a TV but I chose not to watch it. There were moments of course when the TV would be on and something fleeting (like Futurama or The Simpsons) would be on, and even then I caught the first season of Enterprise when it was on both Sky One (as it was called back then) and Channel 4. Once I got a decent internet connection, the Internet took up much of my entertainment time, more so than games.

I survived without TV, but of course I did miss out on various shows the first time like 24, The Office, The League of Gentlemen, Spaced, etc. - only revisiting them on DVD once I started working. Then, in my second year of working, my mother reminded me that I ought to get myself a TV, and I started watching again. Thanks to the likes of the revamped Doctor Who and LOST, now I feel there is some TV worth watching. Although I can definitely give up any time I wanted - I mean, I watch neither Strictly Come Dancing nor The X Factor.

I haven't given up on my radio.

 

[Kelthaz]

I got rid of "TV" over a year ago and don't miss it. DVDs and Hulu meet my needs quite well.

Add torrents to that and I'll agree with you. It's about your only choice when 90% of the shows you watch are foreign.

 

[Theodore Jay Miller]

Giving up broadcast TV, and just watching DVDs and the like, I could do; I pretty much had that situation this past spring, and re-watched most of the Buffy and new Doctor Who DVDs. But giving up TV shows entirely, broadcast and DVD and anime shows and all, would be too much; that would be a major chunk of my recreational life.

 

[Vance]

Let me think... I don't even HAVE cable anymore. I actually gave up broadcast/cable television a couple of years ago, and I don't regret it. That said, however, I do still get some shows like Better off Ted through iTunes - with previews on YouTube, etc, and I'm very glad for that arrangement.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

No.

TV has Law & Order and baseball. Why would I want to give that up?

I was almost going to say "yes" because I watch so much on Hulu instead of TV, but then I remembered Law and Order. So no, I wouldn't give up TV. Plus the ones we have are just so pretty.

iTunes Store carries all three L&O shows, so I actually would give up TV if I only liked that. But iTunes doesn't have a 'season pass' for baseball teams, so I have to have cable for that. MLB.TV is too unreliable for my liking...

 

[Mallory]

I only keep the TV around for sports and the news myself. My wife uses it a lot more than I do.

 

[Daneel]

Nope, I can't see myself giving up TV anytime soon. For me, it's almost an addiction. Besides, a lot of the websites that have full episodes of television shows seem to only be available in America, so watching online isn't always an option for me.

 

[Garrett]

In the sense that I no longer watch live tv, I already have. I took out satellite a few months back and bought a Mac Mini to use for Hulu viewing. I watch a lot of other stuff through Netflix on my 360.

That's not a huge change in my viewing habits, though. I've pretty much quit watching shows first run. Most of my Hulu viewing is done at work on slow days. Other than that, I pick up the shows that are highly recommended on DVD/Blu-Ray when the season is over if I forget to check them out sooner.

 

[Commander Rabbit]

Haven't watched or owned a TV in years. I watch Netflix and my own DVD's (a few movies plus the complete set of TNG) on the computer.

 

[Ward Fowler]

I'm coming up on 3 years without satellite or cable. I stopped watching network tv as well. I'm not claiming to be particularly intelligent but IMO the majority of programming on both cable and the networks has become incredibly inane.
I could count the numbers of shows I liked on 1 hand, yet my wife and I found our selves staring at the damn tv all the time rather than living our lives. It made no sense.
Like others here I catch the very few shows I like online. I'm a bit of a movie junkie with a pretty decent home theater in the basement, so I watch around 3 or 4 movies a week. As far as cable and network tv, I don't even kind of miss them.

 

[Holdfast]

I like having the TV on the background whether I'm watching or not, and in any case prefer watching TV on a TV than on my laptop (and I'm too lazy and cheap to figure out how to wirelessly stream from the laptop to the TV), so no I wouldn't give up my TV.

 

[nevermore]

Eh, I haven't had cable for almost 10 years and all three shows I currently watch are on Hulu, and I usually watch them there anyway, so sure, I could give up live TV entirely from February-August. Then football season starts.