Peter McKay

This weekend, if it's like all the weekends before it, my wife and I will sit on the living-room couch with the intent to relax and watch a movie on demand. We will fail. Miserably.

This past spring, a salesman knocked on our door with an offer we (I) couldn't refuse. Actually, he was only about 20 years old with sneakers and an earring — more of a salesdude. For only slightly more money than we were already overpaying for cable TV, he said, we could switch to fiber optic TV with crystal clear channels and megastereo sound.

And if we acted now, we could also get, for no extra cost, virtually every movie channel in existence. If we ever become tired of all that entertainment (and who could?), we'd have access to hundreds and hundreds of movies, some of which were still in theaters! (He didn't use exclamation points, but he might as well have.)

He didn't have to push too hard. The year before, I'd convinced my wife that we should spring for a big HDTV for the living room. But with our old cable system, we had a great picture with few choices. A big fiber optic entertainment package would complete the picture.

The salesdude presented me with a form with check marks all over it, and I signed where he had placed an "X." The monthly fee was about what you'd budget for a car payment, but it made sense — to me. I can't be sure, but I think I signed up for the next 10 years.

I explained to my wife that this was actually a way to save money. Just think, I said, of all those films — some still in theaters! Just think how much we'd save on going to the multiplex each year.

My wife pointed out that we only go to the movies about five times a year, never buy sodas and sneak in our own snacks. That meant that we would save exactly … $80 a year by staying in. I turned to the salesdude to tell him we had to think about it, but he had slipped silently out the door.

Now I realized why he wore sneakers.

Determined to prove the wisdom of my decision, at least once every weekend, we get a couple beers, plop on the couch, and I grab the remote and start scrolling through the menus.

It's very difficult to find a movie that we both can agree on. My wife has certain rules. We can't pick any action movies, science fiction or time travel movies, or anything starring Christian Bale, Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts. I refuse to watch anything that involves single ladies sitting around sipping Manhattans or where a woman kills her husband.

First we go through the "new releases," which has about 12 movies. When you eliminate Hanks, Bale, Roberts, action/adventure and chick flicks, it's slim pickins. Then we go through the movies that were new releases last week; they are now just almost new releases. Given that we rejected all of these last week, it's a pretty quick scroll. Then we go through the movies that still cost money, but aren't all that new.

We know beforehand that we won't pick any of these movies, but it gives my wife a chance to declare, in an outraged voice, "$3.99? $3.99 for 'D3: Mighty Ducks'?" After that, we jump to our eight movie channels. This takes another 20 minutes, but because the movies never change from week to week, we can scroll pretty quickly. Finally, we go to the free movies. These movies are free because no one wants to watch them.

We then flip through what we call "regular TV," the 578 channels that come with our package. There are so many channels to go through and reject that I have to keep the button pressed down, making the listings a blur. I look away every once in a while so I don't get motion sickness.

At this point, we're pretty tired. Actually, I'm pretty tired. My wife is already asleep, having dozed off after the whole brouhaha over the third "Mighty Ducks" movie.

Eventually, I nudge my wife awake and we trudge up to bed. We didn't find anything worth watching, but that's OK — we saved almost $20 by forgoing a night out and entertaining ourselves at home!

Thanks, salesdude!

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