And really, is there really anything on TV that you “can’t live without”?

We currently have Dish Network (and an antenna for our local channels). I have been trying to convince my wife that we need to dump the dish and just use the antenna and our laptop that I already have hooked up to the TV. Everything we watch is either off of the antenna, or available for free (at Hulu, etc) or available on itunes for a price that is much less than we are paying a month for TV.

Maybe someday I will talk her into trying a “pay-TV free” lifestyle. :)

Here is the alternative we implemented: Boxxu, Hulu and netflix streaming like you. Also I got a PC to make into a HT PC, which was actually dirt chap, it streams OTA, Netflix, our own collection of about 2 TB of movies, and anything off the internet to any monitor in the house, not just out two TVs but also to our two PC, our laptop and even my HTC touch pro phone! I got a $40 winegard 1080HD antenna at amazon, and a good OTA signal splitter.

Cost of all the new equipment and yearly subscriptions is about $1,100. We already had an xbox and a legacy blockbuster subscription.

We are saving $900 per year this year (after equip purchase) and $1,650 next year!

Out two year plan is to get comcast for two months each year with hbo and shotime to catch series we miss if they are not out on DVD. Comcast reinstall is just $30 and we can get hbo and showtime for $80 a month.

Costs:
Four months of comcast hbo+showtime HD for two month pop: ($30+80+80) $190
Dedicated HT PC with Digtial HD OTA Tuner/DVR and a TB: $650
OTA outdoor antenna, cabling and distributed amp splitter whcih gets us 50 HD and Digital channels: $100
Netflix streaming through existing xbox with xbox live: $150/year
Blockbuster subscription: Existing already N/a

yearly recurring costs (netflix, two months of comcastHBO/SHO): $340

I hope your experiment works for you and your family. I’ve heard it takes 28 days for a new activity to become a habit, so after a month without cable TV it should feel normal to not have it anymore.

In fact, I would argue that those who don’t watch sports, and don’t know what’s going on have a large career and monetary disadvantage. It’s all about finding common grounds and building relationships. Sports is one key way!

As much as I continue to see good arguments for ditching paid TV and switch to web based solutions for a while, I never see a good solution for watching live sports. Fact is, they don’t really offer live streams. Even if they did I’m not sure I’d want to do it that way.

Sports really is the deal breaker for me. If it wasn’t for that, I might just make the switch Smithee made.

It’s easier to focus on making $100 extra a month in this case.

The most major piece of equipment i bought, however, was a d-link media lounge. this, i LOVE!! Any thing that is on my computer can be wirelessly played on my tv with this thing! that means no running cables, no extra flash programs and no watching something off of a laptop.

check it http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=438 feel free to ask plenty of questions. i recommend this to everyone that is cutting the cable.

Oh, and i have netflix. we got the $18 plan with 3 dvd’s at one time. and the beauty of netflix is that you have have sub-accounts. so i have my own queue, then the wife with hers and then the 2 kids with there’s. each queue gets 1 dvd at a time and all the ratings are separate AND we have the streaming feature!! but we only have a wii and there isn’t a streaming disc for that one just yet. but were ok with the laptops for the streaming for now.

GOOD LUCK!

But to the point here, *I* watch only NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS anyways. I could probably get rid of my TV service although. However, my wife likes some of the extra channels… so we still have the service. And it’s comparatively cheap from what I can tell.

You might want to look at MythTV for digital over the air TV. It’s free but with a $10 per YEAR subscription to zap-2-it you CAN have an on-screen guide. MythTV also has DVR auto-recording of shows, and commercial skip as well. I use MythTV for PBS and the major networks and Boxee for anything I can’t get over the air. The combo works really well for me. Can’t wait for the new Boxee beta next month, as well. Over the air is HD as well and looks way better than anything my local cable provide offers with their horrible compression ratios.

I will have to try out Boxee, it looks great.

Thanks,
Forest.

Got used to it and did not miss the 100+ channels that I have now and probably only watch 10-12 on a regular basis, if that many.

Plus only Internet was Dial up, unless I wanted to go to a local coffee shop for wi-fi. With images turned off in Firefox I could do the basics – e-mail, banking and so forth.

I learned I could go back in time without a problem.