We don’t run our “TV" like other families. We've basically hacked our TV technology.
Most people don’t know this about us just by looking at us, but if you are friend to one of our teens you know this…
We don’t have cable (in fact, years ago, we literally cut the cable cord the runs underground to our house from the box — sorry next people who might buy our home someday). We’ve had DirecTV satellite service forever and forever, even before we moved into this house of 17 years.
However, we haven’t upgraded our equipment in over 5 years and slowly we are going from having 5 receiver boxes to just 2 which need to be reset all the time. We are on the brink of shutting this service down. We are on the lowest channel package and have only left it because I wanted to make sure I could still watch live sports. (Go Badgers!)
We’ve discovered the joy of watching some of that through online services so…. see ya Satellite!
We’ve never really been a normal tv watching family. This isn't to say that the TV isn't on, or that we don't have one. The TV seems to be almost always on in the evenings. The kids used to watch the Disney Channel and other kids channels when they were younger and I have always been a ESPN person. Jeffrey records his reality tv shows on the network channels.
Otherwise….if you'd ask us if we watched the latest sitcom, we'd have to tell you No. And again, if you asked us if we watch the latest [insert police/crime/medical/drama] series, we'd also say No.
We watch almost everything on Hulu and Netflix. Or we watch the network shows on the network apps. And usually, we are incredibly late to the party. We didn't watch the Big Bang Theory until it was 7 seasons in. (and then we discovered the geeks in this show were remarkably like people in our own home). We didn't watch the Blacklist until it was on season 3. We didn't watch Lost until this last summer, and that is how many years after it was on regular TV? We just don't keep up with that kind of stuff I guess.
Now. If you asked us if we watched the latest Survivor, we'd say Yes. And Amazing Race and probably even the Bachelor, because Jeffrey has always loved the first two shows, and Halle has picked up on that love and became the Bachelor watcher.
Almost all of our TV watching is done through our AppleTV, on apps and services like Hulu, Netflix and the network apps (CBS, NBC, etc)
We use our AppleTV for virtually all of our entertainment.
We access our movie server through it, and from reading the other posts about Our Tech Life you’ll know that the movie server is our life.
But we can also get all of our apps on this little device. This is where we Hulu, Netflix, and all of the network apps that we want to access.
I know there are Smart Tvs now that have the apps built into them. We don’t have one of those.
Years and years ago we bought these super duper Sony TVs that we loved, but were super expensive. They still work and have amazing quality. So far, we’ve seen no reason to go out and buy new Tvs. Yet.
If you've read the other This is how we Tech posts, you'll know that we hack our way through all of our tech, doing things our own way. and having new technology on our somewhat older but super duper nice TVs is great for us. We like it and at this point, are not going to go out and buy new TVs for their new smart app technology when we've already had it figured out for years and pretty much like what we are doing.
We do have rules around TV and screen time. We are not a free for all TV household, but we are also not an incredibly restrictive household. Like we didn't ban Spongebob, or limit our kids to PBS or read up on each new age appropriate TV rating, but we did limit things as they were growing, in our own way.
Most importantly, we didn't and still don't allow TV in the morning before school. You get up, get ready and eat breakfast in the kitchen. We've never allowed TVs in the kids' bedrooms. We only have them in the family areas. (I'll talk more about this one in a separate post.) We don't allow TV when they are doing their homework, unless they can actually focus and get their work done. (depends on the kids, on the day and the homework). I am weird and ask them not to watch scary things late at night or right before they go to bed. I am a very firm believer that we need time to absorb and process what we've seen and if you go to bed/try to sleep right after watching something incredibly scary, dramatic, intense, or otherwise shocking, you will only end up having trouble. Give your brain some space. Your head needs space. Give it some before you try to lay it down to sleep at night.
The last thing I will say about How we TV is this: 90% of the time we are all watching TV together. We almost always agree on what we are going to watch, and we are ALL in the living room together. Not even in the basement family room. The living room, on our main floor, all together. Sometimes not everyone is watching the TV, sometimes one or more is listening to something else on their computer, doing homework or reading, but everyone is all there together. We almost all like the same things, or get involved in watching the same things. We are all on a major Chopped run right now, streaming old episodes on Hulu and every single one of us watches.
