As a public service, I have been detailing my attempt to "cut the cord" and get the idiot-box bill below the weekly grocery bill for a family of nine, four of whom subsist entirely on saffron-dusted goose livers and Godiva chocolates.
To recap: The satellite company, perhaps keen to put itself out of business as quickly as possible, announced an online streaming version that was half the price. The offer came with HBO Max. I have no idea what that is. Is it HBO? No, it's something else. Does it have HBO shows? Yes. OK, then just let me know when you roll out HBO Min, which boils all those seven-season shows down to 90 minutes.
They also offered a movie channel with some nondescript name, and I declined. Here's how it works these days:
Ten minutes scrolling through Netflix for something to watch. Nothing looks good. Or it looks too good, and you don't want to commit to a series right now. Plus it reminds you of those other series you never finished but meant to. Some day you'll finish that series you really liked, but for now, you just want to watch something you don't like too much.
You don't find the right show on Netflix, so you go to Amazon Prime, where an entirely different slew of unfinished shows awaits. Save those for tomorrow when you're not so tired.
You don't find the right show on Amazon, which leaves your saved shows on the satellite box, the Apple TV shows, the shows on Hulu, or CBS Now, which is on Apple TV, or CBS Then, which is on Amazon, or CBS In the Theoretical Future on the app panel on the Blu-ray player. You decide to watch the first 10 minutes of that James Bond movie you've seen 37 times.
So, no, I don't need another movie channel.
But I did decide to get the rest of the new service. I immediately encountered the first joy: logging in. Remember logging in to broadcast TV? Man, that was a pain. You had to write your password on a sheet of paper and mail it in. Took weeks. Now you can do it from home. Alas, you can't see what you type for a password because little black dots obscure what you entered in case there are hackers outside pretending to be phone repairmen at 10:30 p.m., using binoculars to steal your credentials.