Pulling the Plug on Traditional TV

Me and the wife made the bold choice on Saturday to get rid of our traditional TV setup. 

This is mainly because over the past year the only things we have been watching on terrestrial TV via our Virgin Media package are Doctor Who and Sunday Brunch when we are hungover and that's it. Everything else we watch via Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Blu Ray. 
So after a long phone call with Virgin Media and some negotiating, we now have 100MB broadband (), a phone line because that somehow makes things cheaper (that or Virgin really want us to potentially spend extra on phone calls) and no TV services. This includes having no standard aerial based TV too because our TV aerial was blown off the roof four months ago. 

So we are now completely unplugged from the shackles of British TV. The plan is to just watch things like Doctor Who via iPlayer and the like but otherwise we are done with traditional television.

It feels weird, great and exciting all at the same time!

Has anyone else pulled the plug?

I would like to try this myself but as I live with my dad (I have done ever since my mum died) it is obviously not completely in my hands. I have put this idea forward to him several times as we split the bills but he seems to want to hold on to TV... I have got him using Netflix and watching films off of USB keys which has helped convince him to drop our Virgin Package down to the bear minimum but he just cant seem to get over the hurdle of dropping from there.

Yep. Havent had Sky or similar for years now. Just have free channels via usual cable thing plugged into TV.

The girlfriend and I just watch TV shows via Netflix etc that way no shitty adverts or similar.

Sky TV and the like are such a rip-off as well that I don't think I'll ever get anything like that ever again.

Every time it comes around to renewing the TV License, not only a fucking rip-off but such an outdated idea, I keep intending to try to make the switch to catch-up/on demand only. I just haven't quite got around to it yet. Annoyingly, because TV on the whole is so fucking shit I very rarely watch anything and it's mostly just on for background noise.

As for subscription TV (a la Sky/Virgin), I got rid of that shit about 5-6 years ago. I only really ever subscribed to Sky for the convenience of switching up to the sports package whenever the NFL season rolled around, until they started cutting back on coverage. It was then that I researched 'other' *cough*not exactly legal*cough* methods of watching the games which meant that I was no longer shackled to whatever games Sky deemed worthy to watch but instead could whatever games I wanted to (the Seahawks every week and other games of my chosing) and I haven't looked back since.

However, I do feel that it's only a matter of time before I'm finally able to tell TV Licensing to shove that shit up their rectum.

The tv licence is outdated. I don't really watch tv. But for the F1 and that odd 20 mins before bed when I might channel hop I do not use any tv at all. I wouldn't even get sky or virgin as it would be a waste of money for me. But the tv licence is required for what I do use it for.

The TV licence has become an increasingly anachronistic poll tax  (I did my final year dissertation on the Beeb for my Politics degree in 1996 and it was old fashioned then) but it'll hang on for  a while yet. I'm broadly in favour of it for selfish reasons, with some misgivings (criminal offence not to have one is wrong, IMO) as I don't think the things I like the most on the Beeb - current affairs and factual progs and BBC.co.uk - would be provided as well by the market. I have all the commercial factual channels on Sky and they're shit, mostly.  The licence fee also annoys Murdoch and right wing Tories so it can't be all bad 


I have Sky and am held hostage by the football - I couldn't do without it (I have BT Sport too but it isn't enough). I don't have (and have never had) the movies though.

We have never had Sky, last had Virgin TV probably around seven years ago and now don't have a TV due to it breaking earlier this year and not being bothered about getting it fixed.

We tend to watch stuff on iPlayer/4OD or on DVD and we aren't missing anything on TV as we don't know what we are missing.