It used to be sim­ple: Net­flix for on-demand movies, Hulu for on-demand TV, all for about twen­ty bucks. As we increas­ing­ly grow accus­tomed to not pay­ing for things (or pay­ing very lit­tle), I think many of us naive­ly expect­ed a future where these two ser­vices would be just about all we need­ed, accu­mu­lat­ing more and more con­tent, the Coke and Pep­si of cord-cut­ting (or maybe the peanut but­ter and jel­ly), the de fac­to win­ners in the fall of cable TV whose low fees and inter­net-first approach would per­ma­nent­ly sim­pli­fy how we pay for and con­sume TV.

Things aren’t pan­ning out quite how peo­ple seem to have imag­ined, as NBC read­ies tak­ing The Office to its own stream­ing ser­vice, leav­ing Net­flix with­out one of its most streamed shows. Mean­while, there’s cur­rent­ly a CBS black­out on AT&T ser­vices like DirecTV Now. It turns out à la carte TV may be more cum­ber­some and expen­sive than we thought. Maybe some­body should bun­dle all these chan­nels togeth­er and sell them to us in one big package?

Anoth­er solu­tion: grab an anten­na (the best-sell­ing Mohu anten­nae are cur­rent­ly 40% off with pro­mo code “Mohu10Years”), a Blu-ray play­er (Wire­cut­ter’s picks are $70 or less), and a copy of The Office on DVD for fifty bucks.