I know that I am entering the thread late, but I wanted to toss my two cents in anyways. I know that “seniors” are all individuals and what I am saying below does not apply to each one, but I have seen this repeatedly. Also, budgets are individual.
+1 on work with the cable company to lower the bill. If you have more than one cable company to choose from, you can get a target price and, yes, you need to be ready to change, but you probably will not have to do so and even if you do, they are all about the same. Cable TV companies as anything more than internet providers are on the way out IMO. I have successfully done “battle” with Cable TV for more than two decades. They raise the bill, I call to get it lowered – repeat every 6-12 months. I have had so many “special promotions”, it is a joke. I recently had a promotion that they said expired because it involved equipment that they no longer supported (but were still renting to me). The only reason I ever rented anything was to get some promotion that got rid of the $35 bill raise…..it goes on and on. I am always successful and it is always a battle and sometimes creates odd situations, but so far, I have prevailed.
-1 on any non-cable solution at this point and here is why… In my experience, many seniors do not want to learn new TV crap and it has nothing to do with not being technically inclined. I have seen this over and over again…accomplished professionals…years into retirement…they are frustrated with having to learn this ‘new’ technology because they have spent a lifetime where learning also means understanding. IOW they do not have the intuitive, “play with the app until you find that setting” that the 15 year old has. The difference is that the younger one has never known anything else. The seniors know what TV is to them and that it what they want – that is the place for TV in their lives.
When I have tried to teach some folks how to do something on a computer or cable TV or whatever, it can be painful. They want to know the exact steps and they want to write them down and they want those steps to be understandable and to work next week and next year. After all, they grew up with only a few channels on the TV and likely remember when UHF channels were added. They remember actual TV shows that came on at the same time, each week, until summer reruns.
They don’t need 4K or even 1080 because that is not, necessarily, their idea of TV. I try to appreciate where they are coming from and respect it as both their choice and moreover, a rational choice. The inclination is to get them to do all sorts of new things that are better – but they are not ‘better’ for them.
Of course there are exceptions. I have one relative…I set up his first phone many years ago (and subsequently others)…started to explain all of these other things – voicemail boxes, phone number lists, one button dialing, ring tones all that crap. He stopped me. He only wanted to know how to turn it on/off and dial a number – nothing else. To this day, I do not believe he has ever answered that phone (or that it has ever rung). To him, it is a portable phone booth and that is exactly how he wants it to be.
On the other hand, I once showed him how he could read newspapers from all over the world online. He liked that and he learned how to do that and he does it all the time – one of the few things he does online. If I want to send him a picture, I either send him hard copy prints or I email it to his daughter to be shown to him because he has no interest in email (again, if needed, he will have is wife or daughter do it for him). I accept that and I don’t try to change him unless he requests something specifically. That’s what I mean by respect.
So, I say, let them have their TV as close as you can get to how they want TV, regardless of what else they can get that is cheaper or “better”….and if you are paying for it, more power to you!
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