Television can get pretty expensive when used in the traditional way the Big Media companies want you to use it. Julie and I are departing from the hegemony to use our television the way we want to use it.
Our Roku HD-XR arrived yesterday. The time from cracking the box open to watching Netflix was about 10 minutes. TiVo and cable are becoming more and more irrelevant. The truth is I’m about to call and cancel TiVo right now, which will save us about $23 a month. After we cancel cable, that’s another $76 a month.
Our one-time $100 investment in Roku is going to save us about $100 a month. That’s something I can get behind.
So here’s what it looks like on our entertainment center:
I set the lens cap beside the Roku box to give you a sense of scale. This thing is tiny to do as much as it does.
We’re planning to offset some of our TV savings by investing in bandwidth. Our Internet service provider, Ringgold Telephone Company, offers fiber in our neighborhood now. Our DSL is sold at 12Mbps. The fiber ratchets up to 50Mbps.
That’s right.
50Mbps!
Oh yeah.
We won’t be waiting for those HD movies to buffer for very long at all with that kind of speed. In fact, I should be making phone calls for cancellations and new installations right now.
Fun times!