you can get more info at Storm’s website: storm.ashiqur.com

Hope this helps someone.:)

When the contract terms reach around 12 months, i’m going to just pay the ETF and say goodbye to cable television.

I canceled my local phone service and now I use my cell phone for all of my phone calls. Why do I need local phone service when I have a cell phone? I signed up with AT&T prepaid pay-as-you-go plan and my yearly bill is only $100. I am saving tons of money!

I found out that it is possible to get high-speed internet with out local phone service. You have to ask for “Dry loop DSL” and with AT&T it only costs me $10 a month. That is cheaper than dail-up.

For movies I either borrow them from the library or rent from Redbox for only $1.08 per movie.

Joe, I agree 100% and cable was cheaper then too, so people would sign up. They got big fat and greedy and priced themselves right out of the market as post after post online shows people opting for free tv again over cable.

Plus, the DVR I bought allows for 30 second fast forward (unlike cable and tivo dvr’s) so I can easily skip commercials I don’t want to see instantly!

OK Thanks, Just wanted to ad that info.

Then get rid of cable all together so monthly cost is $0 and still record all your shows automatically in HD with crystal clear HD broadcast for free.

Add a $9 a month Netflix account and rent DVD’s and watch free streaming tv, even HD over your cable internet or dsl line.
Oh yeah, I did keep my cable internet at $29 a month for a year, they bargain down for one year if you threaten to cancel from $49 a month.

Also I have a Roku box which had cost me $99 a year ago and it allows me to see streaming movies from netflix in HD right on BigScreen without computer being on. And they recently added Amazon On Demand to the Roku device. So I now can actually pay for tv a la carte.
Boy did cable give away the store! on a la carte by forcing people to give back their cable boxes!

Good luck every on saving money! and Enjoy.

My only hope is that showtime and hbo will offer direct sales over the web, I’d pay another $9 a month to get hbo streaming to my PC and route it to my TV.

United we stand!! Damnit.

[...] Thanks for visiting!I’ve had several requests lately to update my two-year quest to find cheap alternatives to cable television. In March of 2007, Kris and I were paying $65.82 for a deluxe digital cable package that we rarely [...]

TV should be free, and politicians should stay out of our private lives and wallets… but what are the chances of either happening?

I will never go back to cable unless:
1) my job depends on it
2) my life depends on it (unlikely)
3) the cost becomes more reasonable (Free is prefered, but I would say a fair price would be for 50 to 80 channels, most of which I never watch, $15 a month). Better yet, a $3.00 minimum charge then .25 to .50 per station that you subscribe to.

Remember, Radio is free because (gasp!) ad revenue.

If you have access to a public library, read this book:
“Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television”

It’s definitely worth the time to read this book.

—-Joe

I just cannot see paying for television. It’s just that simple. Television should be free. That how god made it

When I was single, I didn’t own a TV. We have TV because my wife wants it. So in the interests of domestic tranquility, we have TV. But paying for it? Bah!

So I ask you: what is the purpose of television. If I look at what television is… I see the following:

- The purpose of television is to sell.
Sell what?
Sell cars and fast food, mostly.
Sell ideas and political candidates.
Sell, sell, sell. (Is that what you want to pay money for… to be sold to?)

Yes I agree, sometimes what is broadcast is interesting or compelling to watch. (I dont find those interesting or compelling enough to *pay* for the priviledge to watch them.)

And sometimes historically interesting or even important. (This would be the most important loss, I’ll admit. But all the most important stuff–presidential debates, inaguration, major news events… all are on the over-the-air broadcasts. So I dont miss them, I just dont have to pay extra for them.)

–Joe

We got the box and and installed it. It would have been really nice if they had given us directions on how to hook it up, but after talking to three different people at Comcast (all very nice and helpful) we finally got it working.

Features I really like:

The ‘guide’ button. I LOVE being able to see if xx show is on and if it’s new right from the tv. Since we have this we cancelled the tv guide. We save about $45/yr. The tv guide had become more of a People magazine anyway with very little listings and I was always looking things up online.

The parental controls: Very good. It gives you flexibility in what to block. We have channels blocked and content blocked. And once the show goes off, it reblocks. The controls on our tv — once you unblocked one channel, all channels were unblocked until you turned the tv off. This is much better.

The On Demand feature: we rarely use it. I did use for the last episode of Mad Men but other than that, not much. Possibly we’d use it more in the summer.

Commerical skip: It doesn’t have it! Geesh, I have one old remote that has this and it is a great feature. Wish all remotes had it.

So we’re still considering reducing cable. I called Comcast a few weeks ago because I saw a commerical for Digital Economy. They gave me a listing of all the channels we would get with it. There are about 12 channels (from our favorites) that we wouldn’t get. Of them, the only one’s I’d miss somewhat would be TLC and HGTV but truth be told, I just don’t watch them that much. We’d also lose the On Demand feature. Uh oh, what to do about my beloved Mad Men? I searched and searched the internet for a site that would let me watch the show but found none. Until my daughter introduced me to SideReel.com. Bingo! As long as I can get my Mad Men fix, I’m a-okay. As an alternative, we could always buy an A/B video switch and hook up the dvd/vcr player to the On Demand box to record it. Also, Hulu.com is a great site. Checked out Doogie Howser, M.D. for fun the other week — my, my was Neil Patrick Harris just a puppy! If we decide to go with digital economy we’d save $20/month ($240/yr). Economy runs $40/month vs. On Demand which is $60/month.

One last site for you – Last.fm. You can listen to songs in their entirety on this site, rather than the 30 second snippet that itunes offers. You can also purchase from here (or not). Nice music site, you should check it out.

1. I’m not crazy about seeing commercials myself and I’d really rather not have our kids see commercials. Fast forward is okay, but not ideal.

2. We also have cable for the internet. We chose to keep the basic analog cable tv (though it’s not even hooked up) because if we didn’t subscribe to it it would raise the price of cable internet $10 and they would lower the internet speed. So on a net basis the basic analog tv costs us $3/month and gives us a better internet speed.