Last time I subscribed to cable TV service, the bill for basic service and cable internet was nearly $100 per month. Even with the short-term bundle pricing, all the taxes and fees the cable companies tack on make it an expensive service. I decided it's not worth it. I don't subscribe to cable TV. But what are my alternatives?
Apple just announced the addition of movie rentals to iTunes for $3.99 a day. I don't know why anyone would pay that. With a Netflix subscription at just $8.99 a month, you get physical DVDs in the mail, plus unlimited movie streaming on your PC. There are over 6,000 movies available to stream so far, far more than iTunes has available to rent, and you can watch them whenever and as many times as you'd like.
Especially with the major networks starting to cancel prime time TV series due to the writer's strike, dropping a huge bill in favor of streaming video makes a lot more sense to me. I watched a movie between classes on my laptop today, streamed in very high quality from Netflix, and have a new DVD coming tomorrow. Not a bad deal.
My cable internet has been up and down (99% down) for more than a day now. I've been using my email client refreshing every minute to tell when the connection is up for the few minutes each hour to submit assignments and download final exam study guides. Comcast has nothing to say about the service being virtually out except "we're aware of an outage and will fix it as soon as possible", which is better than the two times I had no internet for an entire week when they put filters on lines leading to my building that cut off all internet access.
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