Cable TV alternatives - one year update.

It’s been over a year now since we canceled our cable TV service.   We’ve saved a lot of money and now watch all our favorite shows using a combination of free HD broadcast TV and the Internet.   We’ve been very happy with our decision and have been taking advantage of some pretty cool new services.

Here’s a quick summary of our current setup…

Our main living room TV is hooked up to a digital converter. This lets us watch all network broadcast shows (and FOX/PBS/weather) in perfect HD quality for free.   We also have a Roku device hooked up.   The Roku lets us watch approximately 20,000 free shows and movies on demand.  We tend to watch most first run movies using our Netflix subscription or if we are really impatient, the Roku device lets us instantly rent movies from Amazon’s video on demand service for $1.99 - $3.99 a movie.

Our total cost for everything was a one time $99 purchase for the Roku and $17/month charge for Netflix (which allows us to have 3 DVDs out at a time in additional to unlimited instant viewing).

We have a second HD LCD TV which we use to watch Hulu.com, Netflix Instant and Amazon videos.   In addition, we use a laptop and a $300 Netbook to watch videos in other rooms of the house.  Once in a while, we will use iTunes to buy kids shows or watch a HBO or Showtime show that isn’t on Netflix yet.

We do watch less TV then we used to, but more importantly the quality has improved.   Since we need to be more proactive and select shows from Netflix or HULU, we read a lot more reviews and tend to sit down and watch complete movies rather than just swiching around hundreds of channels.   The same goes for kids shows.  We add about 10-15 shows we select to the queue and then let our kids watch whichever ones they want.  Another nice benefit is that shows watched on the ROKU do not come with any commercials.

Site updates…

We are planning for many site updates over the coming few weeks and months.    Starting with our Showfinder guide and also many reviews of some of the new services that are coming out.   If you have any comments or suggestions for our site, please let us know.  Thanks!