In the old days you had a home phone. From a wire from a pole. It worked when the power went off because the telephone company was worked off a large battery system that they kept charged with the regular power grid. In the event of a power outage they had their own generators that would keep the system up and running. The telephone was wired to the wall and could be placed in multiple rooms. And was indestructible.
Your television was received over the air. An antennae.Easy. But you only got three or four channels out in the country. But there was always something to watch. That was however till the station signed off. About midnight or one o'clock am. But it worked. And you did not have to go through so many channels to find something to watch. Sometimes less choice makes your choice easy.
Music was also available for free. Over the radio. AM radio used to be the main choice from the 1920s till the 1970s. It was used for aviation navigation through clear channel stations that maintained the maximum 50,000 watt broadcasts 24 hours a day. When other stations at the same frequency would power down at sunset. This permitted airplanes to lock on to the radio beam to the destination they were headed. Worked well I guess. FM radio came along in the late 1940s. But really did not get off the ground commercially till the 1970s. Giving superior sound and the ability to broadcast in stereo. But at a much shorter range. Heretofore FM was pretty much the realm of Public Broadcasting.
Fast forward to today. I am sure that people still listen to the radio. AM is now mostly just talk shows and news. FM is splintered into specific target audiences. Music wise most seen to to hooked up to their smart phones. I know music was the last thing on the list above and first thing now. But is unarguably the least complicated.
In this time of bundling vendors you can get a home phone, Internet and cable TV in one package. Price being commensurate to the package you get. I have not had a home phone for a while. When I did it was about $20 a month for unlimited calls within your local area and a charge per use for long distance. Seemed like a fair enough deal. Out of curiosity I checked on a land line from Verizon. You can either get a plan where you pay per minute on all calls. I am assuming this is long distance too? Or a one price long distance all and any call for a pretty steep price. I also see plans from Magic Jack ($35 a year) and Vonage ($9.95 per month). So should you un-bundle? Is that a word? We will pretend it is for now.
Now we move to the Internet. I remember when you could not use your home phone when you were on the Internet. As the computer was connecting to the Internet via the phone line. Over time you phone line could split the connection and you could use the phone at the same time Otherwise you had to have two telephone lines, one for voice and the other for your Internet. You also had to pay an Internet provider like MSN or AOL for an access fee. Many times you had so many minutes included and had to pay more if you went over this limit. Internet speed times have increased greatly. The dial up was 56K. Now they at 300 plus M. Now every time you load a page you are inundated with tons of ads, cookies and information that just wasn't there twenty years age. Now people are streaming media and need a higher bandwidth to make this happen. So what Internet speed do you need?
Now we head to TV. You know that thing that none of us ever claim to watch but is usually our constant companion. Your cable or dish package range is far and wide. My cable company has a basic deal that gives you clear reception on some of the local channels, one public channel (out of nine available over the air) and a few national cable networks. Almost like in the early 1980s cable gave you the local channels, WTBS and WGN. It was a stepping stone to sell you HBO and Showtime. Then we have a standard package. It has about seventy channels. The cable you came to love in the late 1990s. The only problem is that some of them are still showing the programs they did in the late 1990s over and over. Others that made their claim to fame with a genre are unrecognizable in their present format. Many are over ran with reality shows which are dumb and must be dirt cheap to produce. The channels I get that have movies seem to be getting worse about repeating the same ones over and over. I am beginning to feel that I offered a better selection in high school as the AV club used to run movies at lunch time for 10cents in the Winter time. Then you move to the top tiers. They have the same channels I get plus the same channels again in High Definition, some enhanced sports and a bunch or specialty channels. I believe that is is even a channel that you can watch paint dry. Unfortunately these channels also suffer from redundancy. The top package does not cover HBO, Showtime and all the other movie channels. And do have many pay per view and on demand options. And I thought I was a couch potato! Not to mention the DVR thing.
I have the standard cable and basic internet (although they say I have the high speed?). With the few channels that I use I sometimes wish there was just an Internet package. I need to get outside more and move around a bit more. A little less couch potato.
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