Take this Cable and Shove It.

[captainsblog]

In the beginning, there was Cerrache.

That was the name of the company that provided  cable before we called it cable- it was known then as CATV (community antenna television) in Ithaca, New York when I got there in the late 1970s.  Ithaca was a place where such workarounds were almost a necessity; the city had no local television stations, and the closest ones, in Binghamton and Syracuse (and one in Elmira, I think) were too far away or blocked by the hills surrounding our area. So to watch any kind of television, you had to hook up your set to that funny looking black wire that someone, eventually, would show up and bring inside your home. Cerrache even sold cable radio in the 70s, since reception beyond the only two local FM stations was equally sucky.  They also even provided their own entertainment- a public access channel which, late at night, would feature a guy named Rod Ice banging on disco in a show called "Punk Out."

When I first got here, I did without cable, because we had real stations in town I could actually pick up. I could even get Canadian stations using primitive rabbit ears on my black and white set (with a beer bottle opener for a channel changer and a HIT HERE sign to improve reception). We even resisted for years after I moved to Rochester and met Eleanor, but we lived too close to an antenna farm in our first condo to get any kind of reception, so eventually the cord came back.

When we moved back here, we signed up again, because Emily had to have All The Channels. It stayed with us over the years, even as it cost more and we watched less.  In these past 40 years, Cerrache begat International, which begat GRC, which begat (well, more of a brotherly thing, hence it being named)  Adelphia, which would ultimately go BK and be bought by a regional behemoth known as Time Warner, swallowed up last year by the even bigger national behemoth known, to us at least, as Speculum.

As our technology got smarter and the cost of the 200 channels with nothing on got bigger, it became harder and harder to justify the expense. Which is why, earlier this week, I headed on over and cut the cord on everything coming into our house through that same funny looking black wire except our Internet access. Today I returned the cable box, along with the remote which I finally found.  The place was nearly deserted, and everyone I did see was coming out with less stuff than they came in with.  This is not an effective long-term business model unless you're running a funeral home, which in a sense, I guess, they are.

So now a limited number of stations come in over the Interwebs, and our cable bill for April is less than half what it was for March. (It will go up a little bit in May, because you pay ahead, but our electric bill for April was just over 20 bucks thanks to the solar panels.)  And the assemblage I photographed a few weeks ago is now considerably cut down. Then:



And now:



(A) has moved down the hall to be used as an occasional backup, although at the moment nothing's connected to it.  Replacing it is the new set, a smart TV despite advice to the contrary, but it didn't cost much more than the dumb one did a decade ago and its resolution of picture is incredible.

(B), The RACK!, has been moved to the floor, where the cat still perches atop it when it doesn't have the bluetooth speaker on top of it, but which does not have inputs to interface with the new stuff. So it just plays CDs and radio like it always did until we can upgrade the audio.

(C) and (D) have been replaced by the Blu-ray player. The DVR may make a comeback into the menagerie if we ever want to record anything off anything we're streaming (which is pretty much everything other than Blu-rays now) and if the system will allow such shenanigans.

The frog's still there. It's easier being green with all the extra room.

And (F), along with four now unneeded remotes, just went bye-bye.  The speakers below it are still there, and may work their way into the new setup, but that's beyond my ken at the moment. (Barbie don't know nuthin, either.)  (G), the VCR, will also go once I get around to it.

We've watched Shape of Water and Call Me By Your Name and begun Last Jedi from disks- and I've tried out Hulu for Jesus Christ Superstar and Netflix for Peaky Blinders- all bigger and better than I've ever seen them before.  I have had to sacrifice my sportsings, at least in terms of seeing them, but the radio voices of the Mets and Sabres have made up for it, and the way the Mets have played the first week, they're gonna be on FOX and ESPN a lot in the coming weeks, which I can watch.

Right. Off to eat and then watch one thing or another.  Maybe Punk Out is on Blu-ray by now;)