Yes, for the most part TV is the devil, but it can definitely have its place, particularly during the cold and rainy season, especially for insomniac stay-at-home moms. I’m a fan of having a decent selection (we particularly love documentaries, classic movies, educational, interesting, edgy, uncut programming), because there’s so much crap on. We have an old digital box that until a few days ago picked up a vast array of channels, then suddenly 80% of them blue-screened, showing up as “unauthorized”.

We rent (still trying to save for that house buying goal), and our landlord covers the cable, so I thought perhaps he’d skinnied the package down, but it turned out that the recent digital/analog shake-up had messed up our cable box permissions.

Rather than him dealing with the cable company or us going out to buy a new box, our landlord generously gave us a converter that he wasn’t using often. It’s much newer than ours, we get even more channels than before (including the new HD ones), plus it records shows… I know, for those who are used to this option, no big deal, but it’s GREAT! I feel like we’ll not only be able to watch better programming, but we can record quality stuff rather than making do with what’s on at a given time, and save some gems for literal rainy days.

Very pleased. Also wondering if Hallmark makes “World’s Greatest Landlord” cards. 20 months ago