When I was growing up we had one BW TV in the living room.  How many TVs do
people have now, what size, portability, color, and where are they located.
Do you have antenna, cable, satellite dish, other services from the cable
company such as internet or music?  How many VCRs and where?  DVD players or
laserdisc players?  (Did I miss a video format?).  Do members of your
household watch during meals?  Do they watch together?  If so how do you
choose the program?  Can you watch two programs on one set at one time?

36 responses total.

I have two TVs; 25" in the living room, 13" in my bedroom.  Each has a 
VCR.  I have digital cable TV through AT&T Broadband, and I think I 
have a couple of indoor antennas.  No movie services, no music 
services, none of that.

The TV is very rarely on during mealtimes, but my son and I did have 
hot dogs while a baseball game was on recently.  I never turn the TV on 
for anything but sports.  My son doesn't think of the TV at all, which 
seems good to me.

We have no TVs and approximately six working VCRs two of which are hooked up
to a special sort of computer monitor (color - but amber or green TTL also
works, I think).  We watched the Olympics a few years ago on a VCR with a
tuner.  You need the pre-electronic tuners to get the weak stations.  
Jim keeps finding or being given working TVs which he gives away.  He has a
couple of not-working-at- the-moment 12V VCPs which he hopes to fix for a
friend with a solar system.  We could have free cable service if we wanted
to hook up to the wire outside the window for which the upstairs neighbors
are paying, and which the cable company cut when the third apartment dropped
service (while leaving the Y connector).  

We have one 25" color TV, hooked to digital cable basic service.  It lives
on the buffet in the dining room at the moment (that is where my mother-in-law
had it as only had distance vision, she watched it from the living room). 
As soon as the roof is patched (main leak is in living room) we will move it,
it will ultimately go in the basement (we are finishing it to be the
teen/media/craft/party/family pit).  

We have one VCR which probably needs a head alignment.  The kittens will
insist on using the height of the VCR ontop the TV to reach the windows and
keep knocking it down behind the buffet.  Last time we rescued it it wouldn't
play.

We each have our own computer (STeve has three the greedy guy :-), each
computer has a DVD player.  We have a membership to Netflix for DVD rental.

I actively watch very little TV during the week, a bit more during the
weekends, especially when taking classes.  I can see it from my desk but
rarely even notice what is on (being the oldest of 6 kids I learned to tune
out anything I didn't want/need to hear at a very young age).  I have been
known to turn it on to provide background noise as I sometimes find it hard
to study without having something to tune out.  

If the kids are around it is usually on.  Damon likes movies or uses it for
his Playstation.  Staci likes the music video channels.  Nari likes Cartoon
Network or Nickelodeon.  STeve watches CNN.  We often turn it to the Food
channel, Discovery, TLC, History or one of the PBS channels when not actively
doing  something else.  


I keep forgetting that digital cable has several music channels, but usually
don't use music as a background noise anyway.

Other than specific favorite shows (which we seem to agree on) we negotiate
what is watched.

One 27" TV in the living room, and my old 13" got moved to the kitchen as a
result.  One VCR (feeding both) and one DVD player.

No cable, just a big antenna, a rotor, and a hilltop location.  I get 4
different Canadian channels.  :)

Two.  One 20" TV/VCR connected to a DVD player, a separate VCR, and digital
cable in the living room (the TV is mono, so audio is routed through the
stereo system); one 9" TV/VCP connected to basic cable in the guest bedroom.

Six: one in the livingroom, our in our bedroom, one in each of the 
kids' rooms, one in the bar/lounge and one in the fitness room.  All 
but the last have cable, and all the ones with cable have basic digital 
except the one in the livingroom, which has a cable box and a premium 
package of some kind.  All have VCRs and two (livingroom and 
bar/lounge) also have DVD players.  The bar/lounge one also has SNES, 
N64 and Game Cube connected to it.  The cable, the three games, the VCR 
and the DVD player were added one by one, so there's a tangle of cables 
and switch boxes when you look underneath, which my son installed and 
seems to understand.  (We also have four computers, which I suspect is 
low for this crowd.)

[Also five printers, three scanners, two fax machines and a shredder, 
plus a little Iomega Zip Drive that I move from place to place.]

There are three TV's in my house. My roommate has a 19" upstairs with 
an antenna. In the 'den' I have a 19" TV with a VCR and a DVD player 
attached to it. That TV also has basic analog cable. I have a 13" TV 
and a VCR in my bedroom that also is connected to the basic cable. 

I am thinking about getting a larger TV for the 'den' If I do that, I 
will clean out my basement so I can put a stationary bike down there 
and I will put the old 19" TV down there with a cable connection so I 
can ride the bike and watch TV. 

DVD's are watched on my laptop. laptop is moved into bedroom and hooked up
to the stereo. one BW portable tv/no cable, which i turn on when i'm on the
computer for news (on right now watching BBC Worldnews) and a few shows i
like. monitor is about 3"x4". 

What do analog and digital cable TV cost?

the costs are endless..

One 25- or 27-inch color TV (I forget its actually size).  Cable, no premium
channels.  A VCR, a DVD player, a LaserDisc player (not currently hooked up),
N64 and NCube.

My apartment rent includes free basic cable.  I have zero TV's, VCR's, 
DVD players, etc. by choice.

We have three TV's.  A 24 inch attached to the cable, an old 25 inch attached
to a computer game, and a black and white portable with a three inch screen.

My digital cable service costs $47.50 per month.

one 19" TV, one hifi VCR.  No cable.  Can't afford it.  Don't 
especially want it-- we can watch it when we visit my in-laws.

Ahhh, I think I begin to understand.  Here's my theory:  Sindi is a secret
agent of some foreign power (possibly communist, most likely alien) planning
an invasion in the near future.  She is preparing a massive inventory of all
the crap in our houses so that they'll know who to hit first when the invasion
starts.  They need all of our crap for raw materials for their alien weapons,
which is why Sindi stores so much crap in her back yard.  Kiwanis is clearly
designed to be transformed into their command center.  It all makes sense to
me now.  

Re #17: My god, you're right!  Clearly they've also been influencing me with
brain waves, causing me to fill my apartment with other useless junk they
can later harvest!

Okay i have one 20" color television (toshiba) which is hooked up for cable
(basic) and a VCR (toshiba) that i paid for myself which are hooked up in my
room. I also have an RCA stereo system (it was a little expensive but it is
totally worth it) i also paid for the stereo myself.

This response has been erased.

Re 'crap' - what will the aliens be making out of all those bicycles?
I am glad to hear there is one other person in the world without a TV -
Walter, how do you waste your time?

I think my cable bill runs around $40 a month for analog cable. I think 
Comcast's digital cable is around $60-$70 but I am not sure. 

TVs: 33 or 35 or so in the living room, hooked up to the stereo (for audio),
with digital cable, a DVD/VCR combo, and an XBox. 17" in the kitchen, 17" in
the basement, both hooked to the cable (with the system set up so we could
watch three different channels, if we want).
 
Hmm... maybe the one in the living room is only 27" or so. I really don't
remember. I just remember it was so big I could barely carry it, which I
didn't think about until I was trying to get it out of the car (Val's mom's
SUV, because we couldn't get it into our own car... that should have been a
clue, but I had a rare Homerian "Oooooo... donuts..." moment at the Circuit
City).

OH for a minute I thought you meant that you had 33 or 35 TVs in your 
living room! 

Samsung 25 + Quasar VCR rigged to cable, split so can watch two channels
while also recording one, with transmitter to: Sony 19 + RCA VCR, no
cable, which is almost never used, except when daughter has large
parties so all the kids can watch REALLY STUPID movies on both sets
simultaneously.....

#24> That's right. I want to get as much as possible out of that digital
cable.

Not to drift but...  Sindi's name came up in our house this morning when I
commented to John that out of the 5,000 families that applied to be part
of the Frontier House PBS special, two of the three ended up not being
very good fits for the experiment.  First they had meltdowns over not
being allowed to wear makeup, then they cheated and brought modern food
and a modern bed, and one marriage crumbled over the course of the
experiment.  I'm sure out of the 5,000 who applied therehy had to have
been a few Sindi and Jims, and had they been selected it would have been a
facinating 6 hours.  Instead it felt like Survivor does Montana. 

sindi and jim would be bad participants since they'd kick ass out there in
frontier and prove that life was actually pretty nice back then. 

We watched it as well.  Damon demanded to know why we didn't apply.  After
the first hour we came to the conclusion that we wouldn't have been picked
because we were fully aware of what it would have taken and because we belong
to the SCA and have lived under even more primative conditions on extended
SCA camping events.  (Though STeve would probably whined about missing his
computers even more than the women did about missing their makeup  :-)

Yeah, I was mildly disappointed in that series.  It was okay, but I felt
like it could have been better.

Part of the Frontier House special was watched on our 27" Sony
flat screen in the rec room, to which is attached a DVD player,
a VCR, and a digital cable box.  Part of it was viewed on our
son's 20" TV in his bedroom, which is hooked up to cable 
(analog only) and a VCR.  There are no other TVs in the house.

        The Sindi & Jim's of the world don't watch TV, not even
PBS, so would not know of the experiment.
        27" TV which can view rotor antena (very rare), analog basic
cable, a hi-fi VCR or a DVD player.  The front jacks on the TV or
the VCR can also watch the computer, but not when a DVD is playing, 
only the software harddisk recorder.  The good VCR can watch the
other VCR for cross-tapeing shows.  So the other VCR has a 5"
portable TV hooked up to it, so that it may be programed.

We have one 25" TV hooked to a DVD player and a VCR player, but we have 
neither cable service nor a TV antenna.  This used to be in the master 
bedroom at the old house, but now that we have a den, it is there.  
Arlo watches up to 1.5 hours of video a day (usually much less), I 
sometimes rent DVD's or videos and occasionally buy some.

I think my previous TV is in the garage.  It's tiny and half dead, but 
does have rabbit ear antennas.  We drag it out every New Year's party 
so aruba can see the ball drop.

We have six computers in active use, and innumerable relics.  Actually 
only four of the six have been unpacked yet.

We have 1.33 tv's for three people--one in each bedroom and one in the living
room.  We've discussed getting one for the kitchen, but there's no cable 
jack in there :)  (We have digital cable, a couple extra channels in the
living room, and three VCR's but only two functional ones).  Each of us has
a DVD player on one of our computers (5 total).  We are a comparatively
poorly-equipped apartment in terms of standard MIT student apartments :)
OMy favorite sports bar has a truly ridiculous number of TV's--an average
of one per table, plus multiple TV's over the bar and one in each bathroom.
They also have all the DirecTV sports packages, so that you can watch any
game that's on anywhere.  I expect to go there when I die, if I'm a good
girl.  

i friend of mine put his tv out on the street for someone to take. he said
it was ruining his life. he's a lawyer and now he has a trial in LI and has
to stay in a hotel room where the tv TAUNTS him. he's a great guy - he should
have an action figure made of him.

come to think of it, so should ..

Someone once made an action figure of me.  I still have it.  It's very 
cute.

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