As a single young adult, I never had a TV and didn't miss it. For awhile, I lived with a boyfriend who had a small TV hooked up to a PS2, which also played DVDs. His behavior with it drove me completely bonkers. We split up within six months of that thing showing up. (My previous serious boyfriend in high school was huge sports fan, especially college basketball. IT WAS SO BORING.)
My rule, after those experiences, was that to get to a third interlude with me, a guy could neither a) own a video game console or "gaming" computer, and b) could not be a fan of televised sports. This was on top of the "must be employed" rule.
Good rules, these. The next man I dated met all three of them, and I married him.
Neither of us had a TV when we married and moved into our first apartment together. My ILs got us a television for our first Christmas as a married couple. We had it for, I think, three months, before we realized that we had free cable with our apartment. DSS didn't have TV at his mom's house (they had one, but no service- it functioned as a monitor for VHS/DVD), and I quickly realized that the real trouble with kids' television isn't the content, but the ads. They are reprehensible.
When we moved up here, we went without a TV again until a year ago. We had been using Netflix on our desktop, but were horrified to discover how much our clunky old desktop was costing us in electricity. So we got rid of it, and replaced it with a laptop, a new television, and a Roku. (Our very young children would have destroyed a laptop within days.) I admit, it was nice watching movies all snuggled up on the couch rather than huddling around the computer. What was really funny was that these purchases totaled $760 altogether, and our desktop cost us $660 when we bought it in 2004.
What I like about this system is that it is cheap and there are no contracts. Right now, we have Netflix ($8/mo), Hulu+ ($8/mo) and HBO GO (which is $16/mo, and we only got if for the three months that DH is recovering from his hip replacement). We only have this stuff from November through May. We are too busy and outside too much during the summer. (I'd drop it in April, but those May sweeps! We always want to see the season's resolution of 30 Rock and Parks and Rec.) During the warm months, if there is something we really want to see, we get it off of Amazon VOD, which is all a la carte- you pay $1 for most shows, and about $3 for each movie. There are a bunch of free channels that we can use in the summer, too, if we get exceptionally bored. My favorite channel is actually a free one- Pandora. I have discovered that I love streaming music. I can't remember the last time I fussed with CDs.
We don't go to the video store (even new releases are on Amazon VOD), we never have to mail discs back or clean out a DVD cabinet, the only equipment we have to mess with is the Roku itself and it's little 8-button remote. I would guess that what we annually spend on TV/movie watching now is equal to or even less than what we spent when we were renting movies every week (not counting the cost of gas), and it's much more convenient.
I probably watch the least TV of anyone in the house, and I certainly could live without it. That said, I'm a big fan of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and I would not have gotten into these brilliant shows if not for the Roku.
