Wednesday
Sep012010
Apple TV: Should you ditch your cable / satellite?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 10:31AM 
So...the question is should i cancel my TV service? What's the tradeoff?
Downsides (some temporary):
1. No more CNN, FOX, MSNBC, Live sports or anything live for that matter. Maybe losing cable news is a good thing anyways.
2. The only networks participating at launch are Fox & ABC (surely the others will follow though). No HBO, Showtime, NBC etc - YET.
3. Presumably you will have to wait a day or 2 after the episode airs before you can watch it. Spoiler alert!
4. Lifestyle networks that my wife loves (i.e HGTV, Food Network etc - are they ever going to get on board with this stuff?)
5. Is the remote bluetooth? If not you won't be able to hide it. If it is, it won't work with your universal remote. (update - it's an IR remote)
6. Download caps with your ISP. Be aware of them and keep in mind a feature length movie in 720p HD will probably be 3-4GB.
At $0.99/episode that's about $4/mo per show. For the price of my existing cable bill i could watch about 20 shows a month, every episode.
So it seems like for people who have larger cable bills (like me), and watch less than 20 shows this becomes pretty attractive. Really attractive.


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