Random Questions - The Media Age

RK over at Just RK has posted her weekly random questions. I’ve been answering the last couple rounds in her comment section, but this set needed a little more space. She has invited others to play along, so head on over and pick up your list and start answering!

Round 4--Media--How reliant are we?

1. How many TVs are in your home? All hooked up to cable/dish/etc? Have you gone HD?
We have four televisions: One in the livingroom (it’s a widescreen HD); one in the “playroom”; one in our bedroom and one in the basement. They are all hooked up to cable. We have all the stations available. My husband likes to have all the movie channels and sports. We don’t buy the extra sports packages although, if Hubby had his way, we would. We used to have a satellite dish. This was when they first came out about 11 years ago. Hubby insisted it would be better than cable because the cable was always going out. I hated it. It was much worse than the cable on service. Anytime there was a cloudy/rainy day, service was affected. One of Hubby’s great selling points on the dish was all the channels you get (500 stations!) So Saturday morning I got up early to have t.v. all by myself. I sat down and flipped through infomercial after infomercial after infomercial! I insisted we go back to cable when we moved.

2. Do you have any VCRs in your house still or are you full DVD?
We have two or three vcr’s still. There are too many vcr tapes to get rid of the system, but we don’t record on it anymore. We have two or three DVD’s, one is the kind you can burn on. This doesn’t count the ones in our computers. Two of our cable boxes are DVR boxes, one of those is an HD DVR box. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we are a television obsessed family!

3. How many computers are in your house? All hooked up to the internet? How many video game systems (i.e. XBOX, Wii, etc.)?

We have two computers: the main one upstairs and my laptop. The laptop is connected to the internet through a wireless connection. My husband is as big of video game player as the kids. I don’t care to play because I am no good at it and get easily frustrated. We have a Sony playstation (the original, but we don’t have it hooked up or use it); a gamecube, xbox 360 (I have a post to do about this wonderful system); a Wii; Nintendo DS light; and gameboy. I think I got them all and named them correctly. Again, this is not my field of knowledge!

4. What age is ok to have a TV/computer/game system in the child's bedroom?
Personally, I never plan on letting the kids have t.v.s or game systems in their rooms. I think we have plenty of places to watch and play t.v. and I don’t want it in their bedrooms. As far as the computer, for now I am opposed to it. My husband makes noises of getting M.A. a computer for school that is not hooked up to the internet. I don’t know if we will do that or if it will be in her room.

5. Do you have DVD players in the car?
What do you think? Yes, we do. We’ve had the portable DVD for years, but this Christmas we had one installed so it has wireless headphones and can be played through the car speakers. With three kids we plan on doing more driving trips and we hope it will make travel easier on Peanut. She really doesn’t travel well. We are going to test out the theory this weekend. We are planning a trip to Denver. My husband has to go there next week for work and it’s spring break for the kids and I. We decided to make a mini-vacation out of it. We want to go to Florida this summer so we’ll get a feel for how well (or miserable) that trip will be.

6. The big one.... Would you be able to take a media/technology break, like a day without? How long could you do it?
I realize from all the above my answer would appear to be no, but I think I could. I have given up t.v. in the past for lent (that’s 40 days). After the initial shock, it wasn’t so bad and I found a lot of other things to do. The problem was my husband. He didn’t give it up and went crazy with sports and other obnoxious t.v. shows. It is one of the main things we do as a family. I know that may sound bad, but it works for our family. We do have other activities and spend a lot of time together as a family.