How we came to own 5 TVs, other streaming Internet devices, and how you might relate

Before we move forward in time giving you all my streaming solutions we have to move back in time. OK, I admit my wife and I are unusual in that we our have gotten used to TVs in many places in our house (mostly me). The TVs just kind of multiplied over the years. My first story is when my 20-year old stepdaughter destroyed the downstairs bathroom, for the second time. While my wife and I were gone on vacation, the water pipe burst and rather than turn off the water using the basement valve, she allowed water to pour over the bathroom floor, basement joists, dumping water on everything on the basement floor for days! When we asked her about this, it was a minor leak and nothing to really worry about. Rather than ask a neighbor how to stop the disaster… you get the picture. The bathroom floor never caved in but some joists under the floor finally cracked open. My $10,000 bathroom remodeling project turned into a lot more pain and expense when she moved out. In for a penny in for a pound so I put in a Jacuzzi tub paying contractors to reinforce the floor and replace the floor joists. While on vacations, I have sat in small Jacuzzi tubs without entertainment and things get boring fast. Reading in these tubs is next to impossible. We only had room for a small tub so I had to have TV entertainment. It was years ago when I mounted a very expensive 23 inch SONY LCD TV without a built-in digital tuner in the corner next to the bathroom door. The TV is now worthless for the most part but still has a good picture and has survived a lot a bathroom steam. I will leave it behind when we move.

20 years ago, my brother died in a car accident and left me his 35-inch CRT TV. That became our living room TV for many years and I think it weighed about 300+ pounds. When I got cancer, the fellas at work pitched in and bought me a 48-inch Visio 720p LCD TV. We replaced the CRT with that and yes that 300+ pound CRT was properly recycled.

Then there were the romantic evenings on cold nights in the bedroom. We live in the North so getting out of our warm bed and bedroom to cuddle in the freezing cold living room to watch TV got old fast. We saved up and found a sale at Costco, $1,500 for a 42” LCD TV. When we marched in, they had a massive 50-inch plasma for $250 less but it weighed 150 pounds. I’m a woodworker so I knew I could get it mounted on the wall. This sucker had a digital tuner and was 720p, which was all the rage at that time and 1080p TV was selling for over $2,000.

Then my wife wanted a treadmill and TV in the basement. Many years ago we purchased a CRT flat screen DVD/VCR for the basement to watch while treadmilling with, once again, no digital tuner in the TV. She had to have the VCR even though LCD TVs were out and much better.

About 10 years ago my mom wanted new digital LCD TVs for her and dad (cable was getting rid of analog broadcast) so she donated her analog 27 inch CRT TV to me. I put that sucker up in our office, but once again no digital tuner. However, I became hooked on having the TV as background noise which I worked on the computer and paperwork. I found that my brain would need a rest from time to time and I would watch shows repeatedly and look up at the good parts of the show. Transformers a dozen times were perfect while I worked.

Then on February 17, 2009, my analog world ended. Cable companies were about to make a fortune on renting digital-to-analog converter boxes for my TVs. This tied us into a digital cable DVR for $13 a month, a digital box at $6.00 a month, and three digital tuners at $3.00 a month each, which equals $28 a month in cable fees. I investigated other options but everything I investigated at the time was a dead end. I even purchased an antenna for the office TV but it was a digital antenna and my CRT TV was analog. Plus all the TV stations were either transitioning or already broadcasting in digital TV formats. When the cable bill hit $125+ a month I knew things had to change! The simple answer was to give up a TV everywhere in my house, but I was a TV Addict used to viewing it anywhere. I chose to pay the cable bill expecting to come up with a solution any day but life throws curves you can never expect. After surviving cancer twice and sitting in my recliner day after day, I enjoyed my cable TV!  The fellas at work buying me the 720p Visio TV had done well and I never worried about the expense of the other four TVs… until now.