[Nerd Rant] Technology - argh!

[Warning: the following post has high nerd content. Don't say I didn't warn you]

Well, technology is passing us by. We used to be so tech savvy and up to date on our gizmos and gadgets, but not any more. We still have an old analog style TV (a giant 29" glass behemoth that weighs close to 100 lbs that we have moved up and down way too many steps to count during our time in college). But it still works fine - it gets maybe 4 hours of use per week, so by my calculation, this TV will still be phosphorescing when Connor heads off to Mars university. We also have a much smaller analog TV that sits in the bedroom. Its use too is only a few hours a week, mainly the local news while we brush our teeth before bed.

We have ultra basic cable - only local channels, CSpan, and a few really weird public access stations - which mainly facilitates our cable internet connection. Do we want a giant 98" plasma LCD TV with Blu-ray high definition goodness? NO. We don't watch that much TV and buying something like that I would feel like I would be obligated to watch it, plus all HD TV I have watched makes most things look like they have the production values of a bad TV soap opera (bad lighting, etc..).

The good old days of the flat earth

So we are seriously reconsidering our relationship and think we are going to finally cut the cable cord. Comcast (oohh, I hate you - I consider it as proof the free market doesn't work as well as some people think) has switched over to all digital programming which necessitates a digital converter box now for every TV in the house. It is slow and does not allow me program out annoying channels like QVC. But my biggest pet peeve is it is obnoxiously on all the time drawing a continuous 4W (measured using my trusty Killawatt). This is a ridiculous 35 KW/hr a year! While only costing $2.80 to operate a year, supposing that all of Comcasts 16 million customers use at least 1 of these products, this is 560 million KW/hrs or about half the entire solar power produced in 2009 in the US! So wasteful!

Our primary (and meager) entertainment hours are provided by our Netflix DVDs or our Roku box streaming Netflix watch instantly. But going strictly to the web for programming means we won't get the local news or sports (but we don't watch sports so no loss there). This would also save us $120 a year, which we could use for something more useful.

So what to do? Kill the cable and not watch the nightly news? Kill the cable but figure out a way to get free over the air TV? (We could get an antenna for the analog TV, but we would need a kludgy digital to analog converter which has the same annoying power problems detailed above? Buy a new/used tiny LCD TV for the bedroom paired with an antenna for local channels?)

But honestly, I enjoy the local news. We already do not get the local paper, and giving up the nightly news (even on in the background) would mean I am even less informed about local things. So, civic duty or become a Luddite? Choices, choices.