Category: Entertainment

Trials of Cord Cutting

As you can see from my previous post, I’m fed up with Dish Network raising prices without providing any better features. For an account with local channels and a DVR, the base price is apparently over $100. Sure, you might get a “Starter Discount” but I’ve had my service for more than a Decade. $1200 per year is too much. Time to be a Cord Cutter.

So, let’s naively try to Cut the Cord and see what happens. But first, as all good engineers know, we develop a list of requirements:

Requirements

In no particular order:

News – Keep up with this crazy world, and find out, within an hour or two whether POTUS has been tossed out, or an earthquake or volcanic eruption has started nearby.

Entertainment – I get most of my entertainment from Netflix and DVD.com [Yeah I know it used to be called Netflix too, but they really want you to forget that they ever shipped you a DVD or BluRay.] for the movies that I can’t stream. But if I’m going to cut the cord I’ll need to get at least one more entertainment streaming service.

Use my new fancy Sony TV. A couple of years ago I got a Vizio P65, and it failed and then after they fixed the power supply, it decided to reboot itself a couple of times a day for no reason. Anyway, I now have a new Sony XBR-65X950H Bravia TV, and I love it. It works just fine and it supports “Android Apps” of course.

So how do we “Cut the Cord” and satisfy these requirements?

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DishNetwork – When do I stop?

When do I cry Uncle and stop this creeping greed?

What has Dish done for me lately? No new channels. More and more channels are leaving the base package.

So I only have the baseline HD service with DVR. Just keeps going up and up with fewer channels and no additional features. They even want to charge for a “Gallery” of still pictures as a TV Screensaver.

I’m close to just turning this off and signing up for Hulu or some other streaming service in addition to Netflix. At least when Netflix charges more money, I get more Netflix Originals. No such thing as Dish Originals. I think satellites are just too expensive a way to deliver content. Too little choice and too costly.

:ww

Amazon LOTR Second Age

Here it comes! Amazon is starting a TV series based on the Lord of the Rings. But it’s not a ReDo, but a “Prequel”. Stories based on the “Second Age”. The stories, and movie collection, we are familiar with are based on the Third Age. Apparently novels were never written by JRR [Tolkien not Martin] based on the First or Second Ages, but he left a trove of source material describing these ages and much more besides. The Simarilion, published by his son after his death, is probably the source for much of the material describing these ages.

For a excruciatingly complete coverage of the second age, you might try this 35 minute video. As I watched it, I was not necessarily paying attention to the details as the broad sweep of the history and detail that this world building provides.

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