I thought I would start a new thread. It took me a while to find a topic, but then I realized that the aspect of NOT owning a television set in today's world might be an interesting venture.

So, here goes...

First off, I posted this here in the General discussion section rather than the "Movies/TV" section because the other section's subsection description said it was to "Discuss your favorite TV shows and Movies" or something to that effect. This isn't that, so I posted it here.

It goes like this...

Over 6 years ago my father's television went on the blink. I owned a really good Sharp 26" TV at the time, so I sold dad my TV. It worked good for me at the time because I needed the money. It worked good for dad, because he has been addicted to TV since they first came out in the 1950s... LOL.

I just never bought another TV. That's it.

And you know what? I don't miss it, even a little bit. I have been over to people's houses in the past few years and I have noticed folks glassy-eyed staring at CNN as the news channel's broadcast some event over and over and over again. Yikes.

Then at different times I have been somewhere and noticed how damn annoying the commercials are when they come on. If the station is on TBS or TNN or any network channel, there is almost more commercials than movie. And they pump up the volume on the commercials at the network so they are well and above the regular broadcast volume of the feature.

I don't miss commercials one bit. When I visit my parents, I have often asked them to PLEASE HIT THE MUTE BUTTON on the remote control when the commercials come on. After not being subjected to commercials for many years, they are truly some of the most annoying damned things on the planet.

Picture this... that I listen to ZERO commercials... (well, I still don't have a satellite radio in my truck... so if I listen to the radio... there they are... blah...)

I have no intention of ever buying another TV.

The funny thing is, I get my high-speed Internet service from Comcast... a cableTV company... but I don't have any cableTV functions attached to my bill. (Much better and faster service in my area than telephone company DSL service)

I get Comcast folks knocking on my door every so often trying to sell me a movie package of some sorts... at which time I tell them I haven't had a TV in 6 years... haha

I do watch lot's of movies though...

My computer is my entertainment system... I have two DVD drives in my computer, one is a regular DVD drive, one is s DVD burner. I have an account at the movie rental places, and can pop a regular DVD movie into the DVD drive on my computer and watch any movie you can rent in the store.

I can also download movies galore off the Internet. Just about any movie you can name is out there.

I have a huge screen for my computer, a cushy couch, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. The modern-day replacement for a TV remote control. My computer system has completely replaced any need for a television.

If I want to listen to an Internet radio station from Australia or South Africa or anywhere else in the world, I connect to the Internet, dial in and I'm on.

I have ZERO need for a television.

I get my news by subscribing to The Wall Street Journal... they send me a paper copy everyday, and send me e-mail headline news.

I also monitor the Reuters web page, and (nearly) every news service that you can find on cable TV or on an antennae at your house, I can find on the web.

The best thing about this is that I read the news at a time when I choose to read the news, and it is not piped into my home 24 hours a day.

I watched the entire events of 9-11 transpire by watching it on the Internet... not over and over and over again on CNN, etc.

When the kids were massacred at Virginia Tech... I read about it and found live videos about it on the Internet. Even videos that had audio reflecting the gun shots being fired.

I saw the entire Saddam Hussein execution on the net. The whole thing, including when the rope snapped around his neck. They didn't show that on CNN. I downloaded the video off the net.

Remember when they beheaded Nick Berg? I saw the entire unedited video. I downloaded it from the net. I didn't have to hear CNN's on and on and on and on coverage about it. I watched what I wanted to of it, then moved on.

The space shuttle disaster? Saw it on the net. Didn't have to hear about it over and over and over again on CNN.

Just the ability to step outside of the media control on a life is an outstanding feat. I can view a world event, then gather my own thoughts about it... instead of being told what to think by the repeated media exposure of CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX...etc, etc, etc... think about that....

On the Internet, you always find something "on"... with a cableTV set up, you are limited to only the choices that the cableTV company can feed down the coaxial cable to your television set. There was a song years ago... "57 Channels and Nothin' On"... That never happens on the Internet.

I don't think there is anything I can't find on the Internet... really.

You can go shopping at 3am if you want. Buy gifts, buy guitars, buy stuff on eBay... buy just about any retail item you could find in a store. And you can comparison shop. Most of the time you save lot's of money (especially on expensive items) because you (most times) don't pay any sales tax. Sometimes there is a trade off in shipping costs, but more and more retailers are offering free shipping to their products for sale. Sometimes (if you comparison shop) they are actually adding in the shipping costs and "saying" it is free shipping... but sometimes free shipping can really be a bargain.

And....

Now I'm going to find a good woman over the Internet... haha .. using the JustSayHi site, (and others like it) means that I might even be able to contact a decent human being of the opposite sex who would like to become a significant other in my life.

Who needs a TV... ??

And you might have guessed I could care less about any type of sports. What team is playing or beating what team isn't in my vocabulary and I could really care less. Sports is only entertainment, and I have (for a long time) said that Americans have "Entertainment-itis" meaning Americans entertain themselves to the point were tonsils would be extracted if it were tonsillitis... or the appendix would be removed if it were appendicitis. The surgery needed in most cases is to remove the TV from the home... LOL... my opinion. (Or the X-Box... LOL)

Imagine a Saturday and Sunday of peace and quiet, with no noisy ball game in the background... that's my house every weekend... LOL...

NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, college sports...? Who cares... none of that affects my life whatsoever. Not even a drip.

If I want to know a score, there are web pages I can go to and monitor any game out there... but I don't waste my time with it. I'm just not interested in sports. I mention this, because lot's of folks watch sports on their television sets... and I haven't had a TV in 6 years.

Means I have pretty much not watched even one sporting event in over 6 years. And I don't miss it.

Well, there's my thread.

It's the first one I have started here, and maybe one of the more unique and individual topics. Not something you hear about everyday... so I don't think I'm going to get any of the... "hey, this topic has already been covered" posts some threads get... LOL...

Go ahead and chime in if you like... since most everybody probably has a TV... this might make for some interesting conversation.

Take care,



TelephoneMan

i have a tv, but i dont have cable, I don't really miss it too much. everyonce in a while i think of a show i use to watch, but not very often!

I can't read all of that or my head will explode but, I have tv and I like it. Could I live without it? Yup I could but why in the hell would I want to? lol

Oh well, I find a good mixture between tv and no tv does me just fine.

wow, you mean to tell me there is another guy who actually doesn't care about watching football? Well I get all my news on the internet these days. No need to read a paper or watch the local news on TV. I still have a TV but mostly I only use it as background noise while I am online.

I haven't had a tv for nearly 2 years. I haven't missed it so I have not replaced it.

Now I can barely sit still long enough to watch a half hour program when I am at my brother's... it always feels like I should be doing something else.

Of course cuddled up in a blanket to watch Madagascar AGAIN!!!!! with my 4 year old nephew ... that is something I can do over and over.

But I'd miss the reruns of Punky Brewster.


Face the Nation for me.. That's where I'm square!

J

I have access to a tv and Sat. but I don't really watch alot of tv. I have maybe 2 shows at most I watch on a reg basis and that's Heroes and Journeyman but other then that I go by a long period without watching.
mainly because I try to write my novel more then watch tv. and it can get destracting, not from watching the show but because of the noise factor...lol
I too put the tv. on mute on commertials because they are so loud, I get that from my father.
plus it's hard to talk to anyone over a car dealer commertial. oy vay is it hard!
only thing I use my tv for is for dvd's and even then its been off for more then 2 months or something like that so if my tv. stopped working I would gladly never buy another one because I would always have a computer to watch it on.

i'm loving not having one...i download all my shows, and i watch them commercial-free.

i miss being able to watch something different than the kids...and i miss my soaps, but that's it.

So basically what you folks are saying is that you watch "computer" instead of watching TV. I went 3 years without either, didn't miss them, but my friends bought me both of them, so they could use them when they came over. Now, I'm hooked in on both. I will admit, it was a pain in the butt to go to the bar and watch football games. Mainly because I don't really drink, and for some reason drunks seem to take offense at that.

But saying that you've given up TV is only a partially accurate statement. You haven't given up in home entertainment. You've got a computer to download movies (and in some cases shows without commercials), you read the news on there (same stuff they give on the news stations, but without the repetitiveness), so you haven't really given up anything. When your only in home entertainment comes from the written word on paper, then you've given it up. Actually, we'd all probably better off if we did that.

Well Hi Jim, how goes it bro?
I have two televisions, i rarely use them, If i'm not on the net, i'm playing guitar. I fell out of love with tv when the reality shows started. Fear factor, survivor, who wants to watch ppl eat worms?

A couple years ago i had a roomate with a porn addiction that ran our cable bill up to 700 dollars that i refused to pay any of so we lived without cable for two years i really didn't miss it much.

I do't care much for tv, either! I have no cable and the world's alright with me! My entertainment comes from my computer, news, music, games and of course the forums.

I dont have cable, other than the hi-speed net connection.
Free or Air TV. Watch a fair amount of movies, as does my boy.
Other than that, I do miss some of the things I hear about- history chanel, this or that, but not enough to deal with the a aforementioned 300 channels and nothing on for 100.00 a month. Been there, done that..pfffft, no more

yur not missin much ,other then an over priced bill.!!! lol

I have a tv. But I never watch it much, cos I'm on here most of the time.

we have switched from a tv addiction to an internet addiction. I find now that I have to use eye drops because I look at the pc screen too much and not blink as much....

take away all and I think we would read more, exercize more, see people more, play with our kids more, bake more, do alot of living more.

I love my internet but sometimes I think it takes away from alot of outside living!

hey Mark, what's up?

I agree, watching people eat worms is NOT my idea of entertainment.

I lost interest when the trash-TV shows started hitting the air waves... I could care less about some dysfunctional freak that has two wives, sleeps with his brother's children, and has a purple haired son that is gay that wants to have a sex change... that's not entertainment at all...

Roaming... you mistake what I am saying for some kind of puritanical obsession with anti-entertainment properties... I didn't say at all that I had forsaken any viable entertainment facet...

But... there is a HUGE and noticeable difference in my quality of life since I have "ditched the TV"...

I personally think this is going to be the wave of the future... people are going to become less and less interested in television broadcasts that contain commercials, and there will be, in the future, more and more people doing exactly as I have done for their home entertainment.

The biggest... the HUGEST difference is that I can control what I want to listen to, when I want to listen to it... and basically... no, the news is NOT the same on the Internet... because you can get news from an Australian point of view, or news from South Africa... or news from the Communist Chinese viewpoint... you're NOT going to get that on CNN...

5% of the world's population lives in America... we Americans are extreme minorities, regardless of how out culture impacts the rest of the world... 95% of the world's population DOESN'T live in America... so there is going to be a lot more viewpoints than the skinny few we hear coming from the American media.

I think what I have noticed and experienced most about stepping away from the media broadcasts... is that these news stories have very little meaning in my life... really... I notice a marked concern and a decline in interest over most of what these news shows talk about

I could care less if somebody's house burns... it doesn't effect my life

If some little girl or boy comes up missing... sorry, but I could care less... it doesn't effect my life.. it makes news headlines, but it doesn't effect my life in the least to hear about it

Most of what we see in the media is silly gossip coverage and sensational BS just to fill copy and make headlines...

Besides, I rarely read the news... I have very little use for anything they report on period... I'd rather watch a movie... LOL

In this society we are beyond the written word... so to revert to caveman style medias is not anything I am interested in... what I am doing is completely editing out the control factor the media centers have on the typical brainwashed sheelpes of the Earth... by reapeating stories over and over again during prime time, they can effectively brainwash a major part of the population to believe in anything they propose to issue into the masses...

Like agreeing to go to war in Afghanistan by showing the World Trade Center explode over and over again. You show that to people for long enough and they will believe whatever they tell you... including that Osama bin Laden is now the enemy (even though years before he was on the CIA payrol...)... we can't find him because he was working for us when all of this happened... but people are typically afraid to think outside of the box, and eagerly go "moo moo" and "baa baa" like good sheeples who are coralled and brainwashed to believe whatever the American media tells them...

On the morning of September 11th, I was listening to the first reports of the event on the radio... and the news broadcaster that broke the news said (and I quote...) "A plane was shot down over Pennsylvania."

That story quickly got shelved for a story that it now "crashed" over Pennsylvania... and in the next week to ten days, the propaganda machine added details to the story until typically, in the excepted American media viewpoint passed down to the sheeples... they had become "brave souls who had fought back and drove the plane into the ground."

I still think an F-15 blew flight 93 out of the sky... but we'll never here that on the news... how could they convince us to wage a blitzkrieg style war across Afghanistan by telling us that? And for what... their was virgin, unexplored oil in the north where the Northern Alliance held the land, so we joined them there... and Afghanistan now produces 90% of the world's opium (used to make heroin and morphine)... when at the time of the Taliban rule, they only produced 45% of the world's opium... I'm so glad the US went in and helped them to double their opium production... if that is not so, are we saying that the Taliban was a better deterent the the entire effort of the United States of America in deterring the opium trade...?

But do we believe even one story we hear?

When I wake up in the morning, guess what... none of it matters even one bit to my life.

I live with a world view like this... it is one planet, with a bunch of stupid imaginary geographical boundaries that rich people have used since the beginning of time to enslave the populations within. Typically, the poor and middle class fight the wars, while the rich and the politically powerful call the shots and do none of the fighting themselves... over vain imaginary geographical lines they draw on the ground with their compass...

I didn't think so openly when I used to watch network TV... I can think on my own now, and I'm not quoting some conspiracy theorist... these are my opriginal thoughts... I might echo the same thinking of others, but these thoughts are mine...

I don't think the powers that be are going to allow any kind of news broadcast to completely tell the truth.

The last time they did that, we had camermen in Vietnam showing dead bodies and the true hell of war. They made it clear during Desert Storm that there was going to be extreme censorship. They had it perfected so well, that we got to ride along with the troop with planted anchor-people that filmed the advance across Iraq... it was all a Hollywood effect... there was a lot we will never see...

and it will be like that until there is no more America... which one day will come as history repeats itself... and this empire of states comes crashing down like every single other world government... the Egyptians are gone... the Persians extinguished... Alexander the Great and the Greeks had their day... the Romans saw their power... in our day, the Sovier Union had its beginning and end... America will die to, just give it a few more decades...

China is the oldest civilization on Earth... but that does not mean the Communist regime there will always be in power...

Meanwhile people are glued to the box every night, and believe whatever the box tells them...

What I am saying is that I am NOT one of those people... and will never be again...

There is a certain amount of true freedom in what I am saying...

It is different, very different than what most people do in this country, and I am telling you that more people will be deciding to do as I have done in the future... I may be the first, but many more will come after me who make up their minds on their own just like I did...

There is no way to escape the civilization completely... but there is a freedom of thought outside of the typically American media propaganda machine...

I choose to think for myself... many folks do not.

commercials = bathroom breaks!! We need commercials so we dont have to bring the bucket or urinal into the living room!!!

ok that was bad

I watch very little tv...I think it is going to be a dinosaur in the next 20 years or so. The advent of the internet might make tv obsolete.

TV writers in the US are on strike....might be one of the best things ever to happen to Americans!!

I don't watch tv very often...

I know people who killed their tv's...

This day and age we spend way too much time in front of screens.