Living without a TV

We are thinking about stopping having a TV in our house. Well it’s actually been decided we are going to get rid of the TV, playstation, xbox, video and portable TV. Why? Basically, the time sucked up by watching TV we want back. The game machines aren’t a sucker up so much reason to get rid of though. With those I rarely play them as the games I play are on the mac, since working in the gaming industry it’s just not been the same for me with games – sad but true. I do like a good rpg romp though or puzzle so the mac games suit me for that. Simon wants to get rid of them as he’s also moving over to non-console games. In short we just don’t use them enough to justify the space and when we do it’s wasting hours we could be doing more things.

I don’t know if it’s something anyone else has done, I’d love to hear from you if you have and what it was like – did it work? have you gone back to it? I actually grew up having my TV watching time rationed – some would say that is wrong to do to a child, however I feel I benefited from it. I don’t think I’d have the love for a lot of the things I do now if I had been allowed to watch as much TV as I wanted. I fully admit though (mainly since being with Simon) that my TV watching has increased to a worrying zombie almost constantly on at times. Don’t get me wrong though, I am not against TV programs. There are a lot we both will be getting on DVD as series or viewing online. That is sort of the point though. If we want to watch it we will get it, it’s about not watching for the sake of it.

Our grand(ish) plan is to have a mac in the lounge (until we get enough money for a mac mini and flat screen, Simon’s is the nominated machine) and this will link to the network. This way we can then watch DVDs should we want or play in the lounge. It’s a plan I am really looking forward to implementing. Simon has plans for linking up a USB turn table to his other one and a mixing system so he can finally get back into his music. In part to fund this anything we get from selling it all (there are a lot of rarer games we are going to sell, along with a lot of not so rare but still worth enough games) will go to the fund to achieve the set up we want.

I often regret ever getting into TV as much as I have. Simon grew up with it a bit like a constant on thing. This rubbed off onto me somewhere along the years and I find myself frequently wandering why on earth I am watching what I am. We’ve never got satellite possibly for the reason of as Simon so exactly puts it ‘channels full of pointless c**p – he does have a point though. One of the worst things I have done of late with regards to wasting time was to get a portable TV. Over the holidays I’ve been weaning myself off it and it’s been on at most for a few hours this entire week or so and I’ve not even missed it.

I will state again though this isn’t an anti-TV rant. There is some TV I will as said be getting on DVD, I love some series like Lost, Smallville (someone has to), Simpsons, Futurama, insert here most cartoons. However, now I can get them all on DVD and watch when I like. I can find out about them and get the box set when it comes out. We both prefer watching series like that anyways. I did a rough calculation of how many hours I would get back not having a TV and it was actually pretty amazing, I think we all watch more than we actually realise. Before as we wanted to keep the consoles we were limited in the being able to get rid of the TV completely, but now we’ve decided to take the jump away from them this will be easy and we have the added bonus of not having to then pay a TV license. We worked out what we will save on that we can rent a movie a week and go back to weekend movie nights which we stopped mainly due to the TV.

I’m now looking forward to moving even more than before as this plan will come into play once we move. We would do before but we being not overly forward thinking for once, brought a TV to replace our broken one only a few months ago. We are now going to either hopefully find someone that wants the entire setup (good luck to us finding anyone after Christmas) or when we move just getting the most we can from it. As the move will be more than likely a few months down the line it will at least not hurt so much having spent the money on the TV only to get rid of it. I know we probably should have the will power to do it right now, but well it’s just so easy to turn on the TV isn’t it. I am afraid to say I think we both need the push that not having one in the house will give. I’ve done it before not having a TV and loved it so look forward to loosing the habit again.