View from the Mountain

Three Channels Were Plenty

I was six or seven years old when televisions made it to our neighborhood in Lewisville, NC.  It was too late for the television to own my soul.  I had already given it to the fields and especially the deep dark woods that stretched all the way to Conrad’s Pond perched above the bottomland by the Yadkin River.

The picture is one of my mother by our first television in our Lewisville house at the corner of Styers Street and Shallowford Road.  In those days Lewisville was a simple place. The school when I first went in 1955 still housed grades one through twelve and was within easy walking distance of our home.  My first grade teacher, Ms. Conrad, was a cousin to my mother so I followed the rules and colored within the lines.

In fact we were surrounded with cousins and other relatives.  My great grandmother, Millie Styers lived in a little house next door to us. Abe, her husband ran Styers Ferry across the Yadkin River.  Millie's house was just behind the big house of one-armed uncle Joe Styers who had lost one arm in an accident at the Styers-Shore water-powered mill in Yadkin County.  Just across Styers St. on the other corner of Shallowford road was uncle Joe’s daughter Jet  Fix and her two sons, Tommy and Stevie.  

There always seemed to be lots of kids to play with after school.  We played tackle football in the Fix’s yard and baseball in our yard before the cedar, cherry, and plum trees got too big.

Lewisville was a safe place.  We rode our bikes everywhere and sometimes even to school. It was a different time, parents believed teachers explicitly, Fund raising involved making potholders with loops and other crafts. There were no air conditioners in houses or schools. You ate what they put on your place at the cafeteria. The only pizza I had before college was Chef Boyardee pizza kit. There wasn’t much homework and the only audio visual aids we had were tiny film strip ls that seem to be so securely locked away that watching them made you think you were involved in a jail break.  They copied things using mimeograph machines.  The purple copies smelled of alcohol and felt a little funny.  You could also have it out with a bully at the bike rack and not get suspended.

Into that world came black and white television.  The first show that I remember watching was the Howdy Doody show.  When invited, I would go over to the Fix’s house and watch it with Tommy and Stevie.  The show that I enjoyed the most was Davy Crockett.  It launched in the mid-fifties. Then in 1959 came Bonanza with the Cartwrights. There were other shows, the Ed Sullivan Show and  Walt Disney Presents.  The one thing on television that seemed to matter was Major League Baseball on Saturday afternoon.  I can even remember the  teachers bringing televisions into the classroom during important World Series games.  There were other TV classics like the Lone Ranger, Sky King,  Gunsmoke, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Cannonball, and Route 66. We got NBC from Winston-Salem, CBS from Greensboro, and ABC from Charlotte if the antenna was just right.

To me one of the most important shows became the  Nightly News with David Brinkley and Chet Huntley.  My mother often took a few minutes off work from her beauty shop to watch it with me. That along with reading both the Winston-Salem Journal and the evening Sentinel kept me well informed for a kid.

I read all the comic books and Tom Swift Books that I could get my hands on with our limited budget.

There was no Internet, and no one was enamored with talking on the rotary phones so we played a lot, went to school and church, and when we were old enough, we joined the Boy Scouts.  There was a fair amount of fishing involved when the weather was warm and even sometimes when it was pretty chilly.

Once we got old enough for Boy Scouts, we were also old enough to go hunting which wasn’t a big deal in those days.  Boy Scouts eventually took over my life before high school which was probably a good thing.  There was plenty of camping, summer camps and even a last hurrah of a 20 mile hike on the Wilderness Road before I went off to military school at McCallie. Only after I came back from my first semester in 1963 at McCallie did we get a color television which I mostly remember as a portal into the political conventions of the day.  The only television that I remember at McCallie was in the canteen.  We could watch it for a few minutes after evening study hall. It was hard to get hooked with only fifteen minutes of TV.

It was a much simpler life in the fifties and early sixties. Doctors even made house calls but radical change came pretty quickly. As freshmen in college the fall of 1967, we wore sports coats and ties. That was pretty much over by second semester. Inadvertently, we learned by 1969, that our government did not always tell the truth.  We also figured out that at least in Harvard, there was a lot of police hostility to college students privileged enough to go to Harvard.

We can remember fondly those times when only the newspaper delivered the news (we had no TVs in our college rooms) but there is no way to unconnect our society just a little so it is best to take control of our new over-connected lives. Start by figuring out the right technology to connect yourself to the world. While it is not as easy as walking to Beck's General Store for a loaf of bread or a can of biscuits in the fifties, it is not impossible even for those of us with several decades on us.

When you get your technology connection to the world right, there will be no more cable company sagas or worries about being embarrassed by the lack of technology in your house. The last thing you want to do is embarrass those grown children with rotary phone equivalent of an Internet conncection. 

How To Be A Sensible Streamer

Streaming your choice of video channels is what the future holds. I spend a good chunk of my day job looking at the prices of Internet services across the county.

I studied cable, DSL, and fiber services in dozens of counties and communities last year.  That along with my personal experience with prices and as an early streamer starting several years ago has helped our family to continue to save money after switching from cable and its expensive packages to fiber and streaming services.

The way we handle our streaming services is to keep them on a budget.  We budget $40 monthly for streaming services.  We are Amazon Prime members so I am not sure we would allocate the full $8.99 (stand-alone cost) for Prime video but as you will see, even when we do that, we are still well under budget.

Our four current services for a fee are Prime Video at $8.99 monthly, Paramount+ $5.99 monthly, Britbox $6.99 monthly, and PBS Masterpiece $5.99 monthly for a total of $32.96 for all our streaming services.  We also subscribe to the free version of Peacock.  I recently canceled Netflix and Acorn  while adding Masterpiece and Britbox.

We stream so much that it is easy to run out of new, watchable programs in two to three months.  I manage most of our channels on Amazon prime so it is easy to see them and the costs  all in one place. You also have the advantage of being able to snare some Amazon specials like HBO Maxx or Starx for $1.99 a month for two months.  You just have to remember to cancel them.  The picture at the top of the post is what you see in Amazon’s Video channels management console.

My studies across the country along the current Hulu and YouTube pricing I see tell me that about $70 a month will get you full range of video services.  So if you are paying $70 or more for your streaming services, you are not saving money and it is time to go on  a streaming budget. 

Adding Fiber To Your Life

Fiber connectivity can make a huge difference in your life. When we started planning our move, my first requirement was that we find a home with fiber connectivity. It was not a snap decision. My work career in technology will hit four decades in 2022, and all of those years have revolved around a home office. Recent changes in what is expected from home office workers have reinforced the lessons learned from years of trying to stay connected enough to do my job.

Like many people who have been on a cable modem for decades, my experience has been a roller-coaster with some very frustrating experiences. Our most recent home before the move was in a new subdivision serviced by a national cable company. By the time we moved in February 2021, our speeds had increased to 488 Mbps down and 24 Mbps up. Because of bundling our phone service also was delivered by cable modem. The numbers looked impressive on the surface.

However, with a job that involves clients in over twenty states and a home office over seven hours driving away from our corporate office, experience had taught me that I could still expect problems with video conferencing which had become critical to meeting the needs of our clients since the pandemic.

Video conferencing with our cable modem, even with the best speeds that my cable modem company could deliver, involved using both the phone and my computer to establish a video conference link. Other collaborative tools like Slack were not consistently reliable when making phone calls or sharing screens. Even worse, sharing files was anything but instant since many of the proposals I prepared often reached sizes that were unimaginable just a few years ago. I depended on tools like Box for sharing files and an unreliable Internet connection is a nightmare when sharing files or screens in real time.

When we got to the point of making an offer on a new home, we had two homes with fiber connectivity and one with DSL. We quickly discarded the DSL home and bought one of the fiber homes. Having a symmetric 500 Mbps fiber connection provided by our local telephone company has taken connectivity worries out of my life and office. Now when I am joining a video conference whether through Zoom, Teams, or GoToMeeting, all I do is click a link for crystal clear voice and video. I no longer tie up our home phone line for audio in what can only be described as often frustrating video conferences where my participation was often flaky because of connectivity problems.

My biggest worry beyond office connectivity in making the switch to fiber was my wife and how she would take to streaming. What we could get through streaming turned out to be far more flexible and entertaining than I expected. While my wife cannot see all of her favorite shows live, she has not had to give up any shows and and she has found a far broader choice of shows. We get local live television through Paramount+. We rotate through a number of streaming services, cancelling them sometimes for several months until their content has been refreshed. My wife who is somewhat reluctant with technology changes has learned how to stream the shows that she wants without help from me. 

In our previous home, our cable service had the most basic TV service, the best Internet, and nationwide phone service. It took constant vigilance and regular arguments with the cable company to keep our bills under $180 per month. By the time we moved, our efforts to stay within the $180 meant we not longer had PBS, and saw only a very few sports events. Even the Weather Channel had disappeared from our service.

In addition to the monthly expense, an average of once a month, I went through an often frustrating reset of my cable modem due to loss of connectivity. I also had to switch out my cable modem every few years. At least twice during those switches, I lost connectivity for a day or more due to problems getting the new modems configured.

I do not miss my cable bills or the headaches. I love our fiber connection.

Our current costs with symmetric 500 Mbps (which not everyone needs- we have 29 connected devices in our home), nationwide/Canadian VOIP telephone service and a monthly budget of $40 in rotating streaming services is $140. Every service that we have now is better than what we had before. The almost $500 in annual savings is certainly a welcome bonus. We experimented with streaming while we were on cable, and there is no doubt in my mind that streaming is far better with the fiber than what we had in our previous house. We just don't have buffering issues now. I have also found that a simple large battery backup allows me to run our fiber network during power outages. There have been NO connectivity battles and I have not even talked to our Internet service provider since I signed up for service ten months ago.

With all that and what fiber to the home can provide now and in the future, I do not see us ever buying another home without fiber.

David Sobotta is a VP and Senior Broadband Analyst with WideOpen Networks which is currently building fiber to the home in Blacksburg, Virginia. He and his wife live in a very rural subdivision in Davie County near Mocksville, NC.

Streaming is Like Self-Serve Fuel Pumps

Technology changes like ATMs and self-serve gas pumps arise not because they were designed to immediately make our lives easier. Technology change almost always puts more pressure initially on the end users than it does on the people deploying the changes. In the case of ATMs and gas pumps, a lot of people lost jobs. I suspect it took most people a while to get used to both changes and that does not include the people without jobs. I know it me a while to adjust.

It had been easy just to drive up to the gas pump and not worry about getting gasoline on my hands or clothes before a sales call. It was also easy (at least when the Cable was working) to spend years in the simple-minded world of cable TV. When we first started using cable TV, there was no cable Internet. We got our first Internet connection through a dial-up modem on a telephone line.

A number of years ago, I started streaming with a Roku box. Netflix was the first service we tried. Since those early years, I have used many streaming services and devices but we always could fall back on cable TV.

Then we moved in February 2021. As part of our move we cancelled our cable service on February 1. We never even made contact with a cable company when we moved. There was no need because we were relocating to a home with a great fiber Internet connection. We signed up for a 500 Mbps symmetric fiber Internet connection and went all in on streaming.

The world of streaming in not as easy as turning on the TV and changing channels with a flipper. However, it is not impossible even for those less technical than me.

The first thing you need to do is to buy a new smart TV unless you have bought one in the last year or two and have yet to be able to figure it out. It might well be all you to embrace streaming. The next step is to cancel your cable subscription at the end of the month. Going cold turkey is an important step. Otherwise you might fall back into what is easiest but not cheapest. Your Internet will likely cost you more once you stop “bundling” with the cable company but you will still end up saving money.

Unless you pick an all-encompassing streaming service like YouTube TV, your choices of streaming services should be viewed as more whim than long term commitment. With a couple exceptions, most of our streaming choices only last a few months.

One of the exceptions is Paramount+. Because we can get live local TV for the news, we have yet to cancel Paramount+. Other services, even Netflix stay on a rotating schedule. We subscribe when we hear something interesting is about to be broadcast. Sometimes we ignore a service for months.

The other exception is Amazon’s Prime video. It comes built into our Prime membership. One of the other tricks to streaming is that we manage many of the subscriptions through Amazon. Now it doesn’t always work because there are raging battles for position in the industry. I believe HBO Max and Prime just had a falling out. You cannot get Apple TV on Amazon Prime because Apple wants you to manage your subscriptions on their Apple TV hardware. However, if you do use Prime, you can sometimes find channels on sale. We have tried a couple for 99 cents per month.

Currently, we subscribe to Britbox, PBS Masterpiece, Acorn TV, Paramount+ and Apple TV. The average cost is $5.99 per month for a total $29.95. When added to our $84. 99 symmetric 500 Mbps Internet , our entertainment expense without telephone or Prime Video is $114.94. Prime membership costs us $119 a year and I feel comfortable allocating it the same $4.99 a month that I pay for Apple TV.

With that our entertainment costs are $119.98 monthly if you allocate all of the Internet costs to entertainment. However, I work from home and use the Internet for work at least three times as as much as I use it for watching TV. I could easily say my entertainment Internet cost is $21.99 a month and my business cost is $63. Using that logic, streaming services (Britbox, PBS Masterpiece, Acorn TV, Paramount+, Apple TV & Prime Video) cost $34.94 and Internet for them costs $21.99 for a total of $56.93 per month. If you throw in the full Internet, the services rise to total of $119.98 monthly.

A lot of people use their cell phones for home phones, but since we have fiber, we bought an Internet VOIP service. It costs us $12.67 monthly for unlimited calling to the US and Canada. It includes voicemail, fax, and a number of other features. The line is used almost exclusively for outbound business calls.

However, if you are looking to compare a complete triple play cable modem Internet, cable TV and phone system to ours, our total cost with all entertainment & Internet costs would be $119.98 plus $12.67 for a monthly total of $132.65.

There are three or four months out of the year when we watch Netflix now at $17.99 per month. However, we work to keep our streaming costs under $40 per month so we will pause two or three of the other services when we are using Netflix.

Before we moved our typical cable bill for Internet, phone, and as little TV as we could get was close to $180 per month in 2020. Even then we were still using Amazon Prime Video and some Netflix on top of that. Our costs for all of it was around $200 per month.

Conservatively, we are saving $65 a month from our previous bills. On top of it all we have better Internet service and our phone calls are crystal clear. I can also do multi-point video conferences straight from my computers. The saving are almost identical to the $65 a month we are saving on our two cell phones after we switched from Verizon to the Google FI service.

Our total communication charges are now less than $200 a month including cell phones. At one time it was over $330. We are saving over $1,500 a year.

Today we have a more flexible system. We often watch our local news on an iPad Pro on the kitchen table. You have to be smart about streaming and it takes some learning but with a little practice, you can watch a very wide variety of shows and save significant money. Just like ATMs and self-service gas pumps were in their day, streaming is the wave of the future. You can embrace it now or cling to the old ways until they practically disappear.

Our TV hardware includes the following, LG - 65” Class CX Series OLED 4K UHD with Smart webOS TV and a Fire TV Cube — 4K Ultra HD - 2019 release. The Fire TV cube is under $100 and allows you to control some of the TV with your voice. There are TVs with Fire TV/Alexa built-in. We tried the LG Web TV interface but preferred the Fire TV interface that we were already using on another older TV. You can buy less expensive Fire TV devices. I am not sure how they compare. There is no exact way to put all this together and when you sign into the services make sure that you keep your passwords straight. I guarantee you will need them especially when you start turning services off and trying new ones.

A Thoughtful Technology Refresh

I have owned computers since 1982 when I bought my first Apple II+.  Over the years, computers got old and new ones took their place.   Often the monitors and the printers would last longer, but even they eventually needed to be replaced.

As computer prices have fallen and new devices have been introduced, we feel tremendous marketing pressure to upgrade to the latest and greatest products.  After a life working in technology, I am likely more addicted to new stuff than most people.

For twenty years a career at Apple gave me a source of the latest and greatest techno-tools.  I won one of the first iPads off the production line in a sales contest. There was always an employee promo where I could buy a slightly old product at a bargain basement price.

The problem was that I ended up with a basement full of old computers.  The way the world of technology works, even the best of them eventually have to be retired because manufacturers stop supporting them in the hopes that you will buy something new.

Starting in 2004 a series of Apple products that did not exhibit Apple's legendary longevity got me thinking about technology in a different way.  If technology was only going to last eighteen to twenty months like my 15" Aluminum Powerbook G4, why buy the most expensive?

My next laptop from Apple was a white MacBook.  While it also had to go back to the factory for repair, at least it broke while under warranty and was less expensive.  A couple of hard drive transplants helped keep the MacBook going for five years.  During that five years I also learned that I could accomplish just about everything I needed to do with an even less expensive Windows laptop.

When the MacBook started dying it got replaced by a 15" Lenovo I7 laptop that cost less than half the price of an equivalent Mac laptop.  At the same time my MacBook was dying, my iMac, otherwise known as my iLemon, was also in its death throes.

I managed to keep the iLemon limping along for several months by running it off an external drive.  While I was battling to keep the iMac going, I came close to leaving the Mac platform.  I finally decided that there were a few reasons to continue using a Mac so I recently took delivery of the cheapest Mac that I could find.

My new Mac is Apple's bottom end MacMini.  True to Apple's form, it might be the low end model, but it is still not inexpensive.  The MacMini listed for $599 and did not even come with a keyboard, mouse or a DVD drive.  The Lenovo tower that I bought the same week cost only $499 and came with a hard drive twice the size, twice the memory, a DVD drive, and they threw in a nice keyboard and mouse.  The Lenovo tower is replacing my dual G5 Mac which just celebrated its eighth birthday last December.  I still use it, but there is no longer a current browser available for it so its uses are minimal and mostly limited to Photoshop which I don't want to buy again.

The MacMini got attached to the eight year old flat panel screen that originally came with the dual G5.  The Lenovo tower got hooked up to a three year old Dell LCD screen.  It is hard to believe that I am managing to use these computers without a single Apple Retina display.  The two new computers join a Dell Pentium III system that was purchased in September of 2004.  It is running Ubuntu Linux and fortunately the Linux folks value older hardware so I have a good set of current browsers on it.

Together my two new computers cost a couple of hundred dollars less than the price of a single new iMac.  My iLemon is the last all in one computer that we will purchase.  Adding video connectors so dead iMacs can be used as monitors later won't change my mind.  I am done with products like the iMac.

iMacs are hard to service and are typically hard to upgrade.  The iLemon was our family's eighth iMac.  I think only one is still running.  The others all had to be replaced and all those still working and beautiful CRTs and flat panel screens went to recycling.  It is something that I regret.

This whole disposable technology thing puts us all in some interesting situations.  Just a year ago I ended up buying a new laser printer because it was cheaper to buy a new printer than to gamble that a new cartridge would solve the problems on my old printer.

I have no plans to abandon technology which plays a big part in my life.  I'm just planning to be a lot smarter about it.  I'm happy to say that both the new MacMini and the Lenovo are working well with our HP Inkjet which is over six years old.  They also like my $99 laser printer.

The manufacturers of televisions are pushing hard to sell these new smart TVs.  I'm hoping to add a few features to our six year old television for around $100.  If Apple ever comes out with their new super smart television, you can bet it will be super expensive.  I won't be waiting in line for it either.  I don't watch enough TV to care what kind of screen technology that we have. To me a smart TV is one that is turned off when I want some peace and quiet.

My new goal is to get the most technology bang for my limited dollars.  Most technology devices don't get used to their full potential anyway. There is generally a lot that can be done even with some of the less expensive products on the market.

I suspect there is very little that anyone can do on their iPad that I can't do on my $199 Nexus 7.  On top of spending fewer dollars, if I can send less technology stuff to recycling, I will sleep better at night.