you can order the Good Eats dvds from the Food Network site. (someone on the last page was asking)
Let me know if you find such a service!
I think the fair way would be if there was some meter that could tell how long you had a channel on - if you left it on the same channel for five minutes, then you would be charged for a half an hour of that channel. That way you could click through all 70+ channels, but if you didn’t stay on one for more than five minutes you wouldn’t be charged. Maybe a basic charge of, say, $10 a month to have access to the cable would be fair, then $2 or $3 an hour for each channel you watch. The people who leave the TV on 24/7 would be charged a lot, and the people who only watch one or two shows a night would save money.
The “bundle” thing is one reason Avanutria and I are getting rid of cable TV (which I’ve had for 12 years) in another 3 days.
When cable first came to my area, you just picked the channels you wanted from list with prices for each channel (which at the time were £1 or £1.50 for most channels), and you could switch them on and off every month.
Then they realised that some channels were such dross that nobody was watching them, so they invented this bundle idea to sell you one good channel and three crap ones to increase consumer choice…
I’ve lived with the 5 channels I watch and 25 I flick through for some years, but problems with the cable and telephone supply decided us to get rid of the lot.
We’ll still have the regular terrestrial TV (5 channels in the UK), plus a Freeview box giving a number more which we can’t currently watch as the cable interferes with the signal, such as BBC3 and BBC4.
I’ve got a huge DVD collection already, and we plan to spend more time doing non goggle-box related stuff - walks, music, boardgames, crafts etc.
Sorry it’s not much help Brian, but you’re not alone in being pissed off by the “bundle” sell. Oh, my parents also got rid of cable some time ago for the same reason.
A good book can replace cable TV. I know it isn’t of much help, but frankly, TV has long been unentertaining for me.