We have had one TV, the same one TV, in our family for over ten years. A few years back the sound died on the set, so now we just have an old set of speakers plugged into the attached DVD/VCR player. No cable, no satellite. The fact is, in our house we almost never watch TV. But I see a lot of TV shows.
On the other hand, each one of us has a laptop computer. Youngest child has oldest laptop, I have the next oldest (though my desktop is newer), and Mary has the newest tech (she’s a go getter, she is!). We watch our TV online. Hulu, ABC, iTunes, and other streaming media. We really loved the raw streaming coverage of the Democratic National Convention, for example. In fact, we get so much of our TV via computer that we are pretty sure that when broadcast TV moves to digital next year, we are not going to bother replacing the TV set.
So I will second Laura Holson’s article in the NYT. Who needs a TV? We watch on laptops too.