Goodbye Cable TV – The Future Starts Today

Having just completed moving into our house and starting to unpack the, what seems like a never ending pile of boxes, we realized we hadn't called to get cable or satellite TV hooked up. After a few discussions about what was really important in our entertainment viewing and after looking a few of our past bills from our cable company, we decided to ditch cable TV and try something progressive.

Like most folks who utilize a DVR or TiVo device, we use our DVR to capture the shows we want to watch that are either going to air to late to watch live or are on at times when we have other plans.

Here is an example of our average TV watching on any given evening: The Daily Show, Big Bang Theory, Two and A Half Men, Conan, The Late, Late show with Craig Ferguson and a few other shows. Most all of which are available for streaming free online via the network websites.

The cost of our entertainment, consisting of high speed internet and a cable television package, in Casper was an average of $135 a month. That included our TV and Internet service, DVR service, remote and equipment rental fees, taxes, etc. It seemed a bit much after closely considering a review of our television viewing habits and realizing we only watched TV in short bursts. The real kicker was that most of those bursts of TV viewing was something we had recorded to the DVR.

Instead of cable TV, we will be utilizing our XBox 360, a PC with HD video card, as well as an internet ready TV, to provide us our television entertainment and movie viewing.

Our entertainment investigation has found that most TV networks offer their programing and sporting events via their websites for instant streaming. The big upside here is that viewers can enjoy many of these for free (with internet connection) and others are available on an ala-cart fee basis (like for sporting events, movies, etc).

After a quick preliminary breakdown of this cost savings effort shows that we will save almost $1000 a year, with little changes or effects, if any, on what we watch on TV. Its simply us, switching away from conventional television cable programing, for more streamlined, on demand TV viewing without the cable provider as our middleman.

Wonder what we'll do with that $1000 we're going to save? What would you do if you had $1000? A vacation? Pay Bills? Save it for a rainy day?