Or at least it just did today in our household.
Anne & I had been comtemplating cancelling our cable TV for a few months now. We don’t watch a whole lot of TV as is (mostly a time issue) and with most of our favorite shows available online, it was getting harder and harder to justify. I actually tried to make the call a few months ago, and the Time Warner rep on the phone offered to knock our bill down $15/mo to keep us around, and that was good enough for me since there were a few shows on Bravo and HGTV that we couldn’t view online.
But after discovering over the weekend that both of those stations now offering free online viewings, we decided that it was time to axe the cable and DVR. I’ve got my old mac mini hooked up to our living room TV, and we can use either of our laptops as remote controls for the TV from anywhere in the house, so we’re still able to watch our shows exactly how we did before.
Hulu provides access to The Office, 30 Rock, 30 Days, SNL, The Simpsons, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and plenty of others. ABC.com gives us our weekly dose of LOST (as well as having all episodes archived for online viewing). And as mentioned before, HGTV and Bravo both have online offerings now too.
Really the only problem now is to figure out a way to spend that extra $840 per year we’ll be saving.
Excellent Walker! I’ve always said that commercials pay for television. I don’t. Well done.
Quick question.
Do you use the Mac Mini as a media center? Do you use it for Hulu and other web video?
Yes, I do. The Mac Mini doesn’t have any special software installed. Just connected to the TV via S-Video for now because our TV is old and has no digital input.
We use our laptops and OSX 10.5’s Screen Sharing app to control the mini wirelessly through our home network to make web browsing and Hulu watching easier. The mac mini remote control is great just for music/movies though.