Since we moved we’ve been without television.
There’s a home-owner’s association, and winter, and we’re unsure of where to put the dish, and the CATV MSO is more expensive, and we’d need to get a new TiVo, so we’ll wait.
This does not mean that we’ve been without video on a cathode-ray tube. We did not hook up the TV for a couple of weeks, but I did finally get around to looking for the cables and found them — and there are still things on the TiVo that we haven’t seen. But perhaps more interestingly my laptop has S-video output, and the television has S-video input, and the videos sold at the Apple iTunes Music Store look just fine at NTSC resolution.
Which brings me to my point, such as it is. People do not care about channels of television; they care about their shows. That is why they say, “my soaps.” It is why popular shows have continuity, plots which continue from episode to episode. If you can miss an episode, and not care that you missed the episode, then that show was just filling time. But if you care, then you’ll pay $1.99 for the episode so that you do not miss it.