How to live without cable or satellite and still get your TV fix

Is paying $30 to over $100 dollars a month worth it? Not only does it waste you time, but it takes away from the quality time you can spend with you family. Before we moved, we had satellite tv, we had movie channels, all of the specialty channels, sports channels and even HD channels. We decided when we moved that we didn't want to have it back. We didn't want to through away $1,200 a year in television shows. The amazing part is the change that came over our children. They are pleasant to be with, we can actually talk to them again with out the attitude of I'm watching a show, what do you want. My children were scheduling their life around television. If a show was coming on that they wanted to see, they felt they couldn't do anything because they might miss it. Now my son is actually reading, something he has never liked to do. My daughter has started drawing again and is really good at it. The strengths that are showing up in my children more than makes up for not having scifi or the movie channels.

Now I am not saying that we don't have television, because we do. We have a couple of shows that we watch each week, but the television isn't on all of the time. At first we weren't able to get any channels in even with an antenna, but we hooked up our HD Receiver and we get quite a few channels now, even a channel that shows music videos. The best part for all of this is that it is free!

My husband realized a few weeks ago that the television had been taking over his life. If he was watching a television show then he would ignore the children or even tell them to be quiet because he was watching something. Now he actually enjoys spending time with them again and have started to do things together as a family.

I am not saying that getting rid of cable or satellite tv will improve your home life, but it won't hurt it either. If you really need to watch certain television shows then there are ways to do that now. Quite a few of the network stations offer there last week of episodes online for you to watch, after the show has aired. What is great about this is that if you have to answer the phone or the door, or something comes up, you can always go back to it and not miss anything. Another thing you can do is wait for the episodes to come out on DVD. We had started watching 24 this year for the first time because my son liked it and are now hooked. But because we had missed the first 5 seasons we went out and bought them and can watch them at our leisure. And another thing that 24 did was offer the first 4 episodes on DVD already. Another way that you can get your tv fix without cable or satellite tv is you can download episodes for different television shows online for a fee, normally it is around $1.99. This way you don't have to wait for the whole season to come out on DVD but can download it as it becomes available.

So you can still get your television fix in a multiple of ways, but I still think the best benefit of not having cable and satellite television is that you aren't wasting your time in front of the television, you can actually spend time together.