Consider Investing in Comcast's "On Demand" Service

I use the word investing as though television was collateral. But sometimes, when you're busy...a little relaxation via turning off your brain to mindless television can be worth a lot. My husband and I moved and decided to go with Comcast Cable and Internet around last April. They have a service called "On Demand", with its own special button on your ridiculously cluttered little remote. We were scared of that button for a little while, scared some kind of "mini-bar" secret charge would appear on our bill just for pressing it. But press it we did, and we found that we got lots of choices at basically free rentals. Workout videos, movies, television shows, music, karaoke, music videos...you name it, it's there. And the great news is, most of it's free! (Well, free with your monthly ninety dollar bill, so the least you can do is take advantage of it. Right?) Just pay attention, they will list the charge on the screen as you are browsing.

How can you espouse all these benefits of cable television and not feel a little ashamed? "Look how many channels I have? Look how many choices I have to rot my brain?" But there are some benefits you don't have to be embarrassed about. Their On Demand service offers a lot that we only recently discovered from friends of ours. Many of the movies shown on your regular cable channels are shown for free on On Demand, so you don't have to worry about keeping track of a billion different channels schedules. And if you run into a movie in the middle of it showing, just press the On Demand button, find the movie, and watch it from the beginning. And they show series as On Demand as well, like Sex and the City and Flight of the Conchords, two HBO comedy goodies. I've found that the more I take advantage of the On Demand service, the less television I watch in general, because I can be so specific with what I want to see. We also rent fewer movies too.