So
much for the college football bowl games for this season; they aren't being
televised locally by the big three: CBS, NBC, or ABC. I need cable
or satellite service to watch the major bowl games or I get to watch
Mash reruns instead. I really had my heart set on wrapping up the
college football season this New Year's weekend, but, alas, big-bucks
subscription marketing has taken over the public airwaves for the
traditional climax to the college football season. If I want to watch
the traditional football bowl games on television, I have to pay.
I
canceled my Direct TV service earlier this year as creeping costs
continually eroded our entertainment budget, and installed an High Definition, HD, antenna in the attic to receive broadcast HD signals that are
actually sharper than what we received by satellite. But I really did
it to replace the insidious money-sucking billing system that just
wouldn't quit.
We
reduced our monthly costs late last year by threatening to shut off
the Direct TV service, and they immediately reduced our bill by over
twenty dollars a month! Amazing how they do that. But, true to
form, each passing month slowly added a dollar or two until we were
pushing ninety dollars a month for almost basic service. So this year
we pulled the plug, and to get even, they won't let me see the Rose
Bowl.
We use
the Internet as well as the HD antenna to see just about all the
shows and specials we want. Often we get to watch live-streaming of
events and shows, and have found many TV shows available for
download. I use a desktop PC upgraded with two big hard drives, a
USB-connected television antenna, an HD video driver card plugged
into our wide-screen TV, and a wireless Internet adapter, running
Windows 7 which includes Microsoft Media Player. Windows Media
Player has a recording feature exactly like a digital recorder, so we
get to “tape” shows captured from the antenna we might otherwise
miss.
We
watch German television via the Internet as well as Netflix – which
we pay less than ten bucks a month for – and have access to quite
a bit of television that would not normally see. We get no less than
four local PBS stations, three of which are not on satellite
television, in addition to two stations for every local network
station. We get just about anything we want, except ESPN. Guess who carries the football bowl games. ESPN will
only stream via the Internet if the broadband Internet service
provider I use is on their approved list. My Internet DSL service
provider is CenturyLink, and of course they are not on the list.
So, I hope Hawkeye and Radar have something up their sleeves I
haven't seen before. I was getting tired of football anyway.
