I have just done something rather drastic. I've consigned my Samsung TV, Sky Box and Sony DVD player to the garage for eventual disposal.
The reason is simple. Following recent local power outages, and presumably a power surge when the electricity has come on again, the TV and the Sky Box appear to have blown something important and no longer work.
The TV switches on normally, but won't show anything but a blank screen, and a message that it can't get a signal. But if disconnect the Sky Box and try to get a terrestrial channel, however weak, with the old-fashioned aerial cable, there is still no joy.
The Sky Box seems to have something more fundamental wrong with it. It won't operate at all. None of the usual lights come on, and the remote control does nothing.
The Sony DVD player, given to me by my friend Coline, to replace another Sony DVD player that bit the dust in 2021, does appear to work; but like TV and Sky Box it uses an obsolete SCART connector, and is therefore tied to them and won't be any good with a modern TV. (I should be able to replace it with a small USB-connected unit that will plug into my laptop. I have a collection of DVDs that I will occasionally want to see)
All three components - TV, Sky Box and DVD player - are really old, of pre-2009 vintage. That's mainly why I have decided to junk them and not spend time trying to find a fix. The obvious thing to do now is to replace the whole lot with a modern setup, based on tapping into the Internet. But that means (a) getting a completely new landline; (b) subscribing to a decent broadband service; and (c) buying a new panel TV with streaming capability. (I suppose it would sit on my mantlepiece, and I'd view it from the settee directly opposite) But I can't justify the cost. I wouldn't use it enough. I hardly ever watch any TV - never during the day, and certainly not every evening. Maybe two or three times a week at most. (I really don't get value for money from the TV licence fee, the very minimum one must pay)
In the main I watch none of the best-known and most popular programmes - and nothing you can get on subscription. There are three or four police dramas in mini-series format - on BBC and ITV - that I'll make a special point of watching, but they are strictly winter-season affairs. During the rest of the year I'll sometimes watch something to do with history or the arts, if I spot it. Then there are a couple of programmes I do quite like on the Yesterday channel. Occasionally I'll sit through a film on Film 4. But that's all.
You can ask me, if you like, whether I saw the programme you thought was the funniest/most moving/most scary/most spectacular but my answer will almost certainly be 'no'. And I probably won't know who you mean if you mention some presenter or TV star. Most of them have careers that have completely passed me by, because for donkey's years I haven't regularly watched TV.
I do check an app on my phone most evenings, to see what's on. But there's rarely a must-see programme I want to make time for. The truth is I've got better things to do, such as seeing people, or processing my pictures on the laptop (when I'll most likely be listening to the radio), or just reading. For me TV viewing has no priority at all. The last thing you could say of me is that I'm a TV addict and a couch potato. I don't have to watch any programme live. Not even a key episode of one of those police dramas I follow. I'm happy to defer the pleasure, and watch it later, at my convenience, on catch-up.
With the TV, Sky Box and DVD player now absent from my lounge, including the glass-and-metal stand that supported them, quite a lot of floor space has been freed up. Suddenly my lounge has become markedly more spacious than it was. I've got new options for moving furniture around. This is definitely a benefit.
My study has also benefitted. That glass-and-metal stand has gone there, providing support for boxes of files, getting them up off the floor, and handier.
And I don't have to be without any means of watching TV. I can do what I do in the caravan, when away from home. I can tether the laptop to the phone, and stream programmes using 4G. The signal is usually strong enough. I have a data allowance of 160GB per month from EE, more than enough for my purposes, even if I watched a few TV programmes each week. The cost of that has however increased to £25-odd this year, because of the current inflation. £25 is still an OK price, and I might stick with it for some time ahead, but once my two-year SIM-only contract with EE finishes at the end of April, I will be watching out for a better deal. Maybe I'll flip-flop back to BT.
Would I ever spend money on a proper TV and a broadband service? Only if I gave up (or seriously curtailed) my caravanning, and found myself with nothing much to do in the evenings. That might happen ten or fifteen years from now, of course, when I'm in my eighties. But I can't easily see my life changing so much meanwhile.
It must seem very odd to some people, my not having a TV in the house. For my generation, it's almost a sign of poverty, certainly of deprivation. Social workers and politicians of a certain persuasion might purse their lips. But I'm not poor; just rational about how I spend my money. And in my view, there is no point in automatically replacing old stuff with equivalent new stuff unless you are really going to make good use of it. So for me, a laptop screen will do well enough instead. A modest 13 inch screen at arm's length looks the same size as a 35 inch screen ten feet away across the room.
But I do feel some regret, and some emotional qualms. That TV, that Sky Box, were bought and enjoyed by my parents, and were part of their daily lives. They are not now holy relics, but I feel sad that after lasting so many years - fifteen at least - these old devices have (like my parents before them) succumbed to old age and died. Another link with Mum and Dad gone. Gradually, item by item, things break or stop working: the world my parents left to me - their home and its contents - is slowly but surely fading away. I can't think of Sky without a picture in my imagination of Dad, watching his golf, or his snooker. On the very TV that I have dumped without ceremony in the garage.
