emoodz.com » Death to Cable Television

Fri, 5/03/10 – 6:33 | One Comment

I rushed on the news of the launch of Viva services, and boy was in for another treat.. 21MB unlimited and FREE internet connection that is one LIMITED, and TWO not free and THREE with a connection speed that drastically varies based on your location within the country.

Read the full story »

Death to Cable Television

Submitted by moodz on Tuesday, 3 April 20075 Comments

There, two weeks have passed without a minute of cable TV. After a full year of legitimate subscription to Showtime and I must admit, it is not the same without it. I do surf more, read more news pieces in hope of staying up to date with the events on the international political scene.

Staying away from the cable redefined my connection to the internet; throughout two weeks I have been exploring the depths of youtube, getting my hands on TV series and cartoon sequels I haven’t seen since primary school. And I just came to realize that I can in fact ebay now that paypal accepts outgoing payments from Bahrain. (As geeky as it sounds, but I’m that type of person who buys more stuff online than offline) I have also finally been spending some time around this very blog writing posts, and I’m finally back reading!

I do miss having those chats by the watercooler with co-workers about what happened in yesterday’s episode of Lost, or their analysis of Desperate Housewives. I miss coming home after a long day, brain dead and tired only to lay down on bed and have dinner while I watch CSI.

But then again, I am 18 Dinars richer every month with an additional two whole hours to spare everyday. Not so bad I tell you..

I wonder what Bahrain would be without cable television, within a society and weather like ours, limiting any outdoor entertainment activities to an absolute minimum and therefore raising the appeal in TV entertainment. I wonder if people will really be smarter and more informed without TV; less prone to commercial manipulation and the redefinition of beauty standards. Would they possess better social skills and maintain stronger family ties? Will they appreciate better music and read better books? Will they be healthier with less obesity rates amount their young? Or would they just find some other way to keep them away from reality, for long hours..

It is just a cultural thing, and much easier for someone to watch Star Academy, eat donuts and wait for the apocalypse than to try to change..

If it ain’t broke than why fix it!

Will I be back to cable TV?
Maybe, but not anytime soon..

5 Comments »

amal said:

TV can be a good time-filler when one has nothing better to do.. I personally have been watching less TV myself, and I don’t feel like I’m missing much.. It’s good to know that there’s always something interesting running on some channel though..!

As for a Bahrain without cable, it actually depends on what Bahrainis watch. The effect of withdrawal would definitely differ from a loyal BBC news vie
viewer to a Melody Hits addict..

Anyhow, it’s obvious that the internet is gradually becoming a dominant source of entertainment and information for many people, as opposed to TV, thus minimizing the impact of TV.

- 4 April 2007 at 12:51 am

ThinkPink said:

Get IPTV, and you won’t miss your fav tele series nor those chats with your colleagues and you still get to be online. Enjoying the best of both worlds is usually rare, but it’s true in the case of driving online and watching your fav flick.

The downside of this is that you most likely would have to signup to a telecoms provider that’s not local to wonderland such as DU or Mobinil because the residential ISP here means lots of packet loss and delays while watching the tube. JumpTV in Dubai is doing the setup.

Showtime, Orbit and Comcast meets IPTV

- 4 April 2007 at 8:06 am

moodz said:

IPTV is out of the question here pink, it’s really not worth the hassle to go through another ISP. My friends and collogues are trying to lure me into getting one of those “Dream Box Decoders” (ones that illegally receive decrypting code packets sent over the internet) for a mere 50 Dinar yearly subscription. You get ART, Showtime, Orbit and a couple of Pay per view movies as well.

It’s comes down to a matter of conscious at the end of the day, I haven’t been stealing access since the late days of 1998 when I was caught by batelco and my father ended up in a police station paying 300 Dinars worth of stolen internet bandwidth.. Ahh..

I guess that did leave a scar somewhere!
But on a separate note, Cable TV started to get on my nerves the last days for the mere fact that I can not chose what to watch and when. It gets really annoying when I miss an episode of a sequel you were watching because I wasn’t home at that time. That is beside the re-runs that they air over and over!

I heard Batelco finally introduced new unlimited internet connection packages which aren’t that bad. I guess it’s about time we go back to P2P eh?

- 4 April 2007 at 11:43 am

LuLu said:

Well, I totally applaud you!! I think TV (cable or not cable) is a tooootal waste of time (well u know, unless u spend ur time watching the discovery and history channels but who does)– I don’t even have tv in my room! I think the last time I watched TV was about 4-5 months ago– btw love ebay too (welcome to geek central)