Consider Your Television Options
You just completed your big move across the country, unpacked your precious belongings and bolted your prized 60-something-inch, backlit, LCD, LED, super-plasma, 3D flat-screen television (with Wi-Fi!) to the wall. Now comes the hard part: deciding on the television service that will fill your fancy wall box.
It used to be you had two choices: (1) standard analog delivered via rabbit ears or (2) basic cable. These days? Well, there’s a lot to choose from. The digital age has ushered in a wealth of television options. Basic cable remains, as does the time-honored rabbit-ear-antenna approach, but we now have plenty of other options, such as premium cable subscriptions, satellite dish services and streaming options. If you are a television junkie, this is the golden age.
Basic Cable Package
Consider the basic cable television package to be your bare-bones setup. A basic package (aka group of channels) might include 20 to 30 channels, including local network affiliates, for as little as $12 per month. This is commonly known as basic service. Other plans, sometimes dubbed expanded basic, feature 35 to 55 channels and run $25 to $45 a month.
Premium Options
Premium channels cost extra and are often packaged in groups of two or more. These include premium movie channels such as HBO, Cinemax and Showtime; and sports packages like the MLB Network, NBA League Pass, NHL Center Ice and ESPN Extra. Thanks in part to the advent of digital cable, some cable systems offer multiple premium channels (up to eight HBO signals and five Showtime channels, for example) and over a dozen pay-per-view channels.
Digital Cable Package
Digital cable can include 60 to 250-plus channels. Costs typically range from $65 a month for basic digital service to $125 for a package that includes as many as 30 premium movie channels. Some cable providers offer dozens of CD-quality music channels and special packages. Most cable providers will offer discounts for a digital television package if the subscriber bundles cable with another service, like high-speed Internet or a landline. In most cases, the high-speed Internet service is delivered through the same set-top box as the digital television.
Netflix, Hulu and Beyond
The Internet has ushered in a whole new wave of possibilities for channel surfing. How does one procure such service? Well, a lot of televisions have the Netflix or Hulu or whatever service baked in as an app, as do Microsoft Xbox consoles, a lot of Blu-Ray players and media players like the Roku box. Apps for the aforementioned services are also available for smartphones and tablets, opening the door for even greater portable opportunities.and flexibility, a growing number of people have ditched the conventional cable setup for an Internet connection and a streaming subscription service such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime. Netflix, the most popular of the streaming services, offers a simple, relatively affordable monthly fee that opens the door to massive library of television shows and movies.