Life Without TV: Day 19

Day 19 and still without TV. I do not miss it that much, to tell the truth. However, we did have our family in for the weekend so I wasn't going to watch too much TV anyway. Some new developments...

I watched the Golden State Warriors beat the Utah Jazz in Game 3 on live satellite feed when I was flying home from JFK to SFO. The 4 inch screen gave me a headache and I missed most of the 4th quarter when we lost the feed over Colorado :-(

Amazon Unbox is pretty cool. The quality is really quite good (just as good as DVD, but not quite HD) and the download is pretty fast (I use Comcast Cable Internet and only needed to wait 3-5 minutes to start watching). I'm not sure $1.99 is the right price per episode, but even still I'm a big, big fan of Unbox. If they could get more content besides just movies and fox channels (for example, no HBO shows), I think this would be the format of the future- pay per view for anything direct from the content provider - not through a cable intermediary. I imagine digitally delivered content breaking down into four different buckets:

• LIVE: Sports, News, Events, Etc. could command the highest price because they have timely content people want right now. The would probably be priced higher and have commercials (best of both worlds) because of the time factor of the show (it's hard to fast forward live TV).
• Premium / No Commercials: Pre-recorded shows that can be bought pay per view at a higher price point to compensate for no commercials. High production quality is important here. (aka Unbox)
• Premium / With Commercials: The same pre-recorded shows but priced more cheaply because they are commercially supported. No fast forwarding allowed.
• Free/Amateur: The long tail of video content will be user generated content, smaller production companies making a splash, etc. This will most likely be free, but the best will rise to the top and join the ranks of premium.

So, Good Guys (now owned by Compusa) sold our warranty contract to GE. And GE won't honor the contract because they say it is our fault that the TV is broken (it isn't). So now, we're going back to Sony direct... it will be interesting to see if they will help.

Lastly, I have to confess. We went over the Holiday Inn last night to watch the season finale of 24. My in-laws are staying there this week and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to watch it Live. So, if Unbox had a LIVE TV version for $4.99, I probably would have paid and then we could have been the comfort of my house. Maybe just being at the Holiday Inn Express for the evening made me smarter...