I am very tempted to get rid of cable TV. There are only three things preventing me from doing it, Heather, college football, and the DTV conversion.

First, the reasons why I would get rid of cable. The shows I watch on cable are few and far between. Outside of sports, I can only think of a few shows I regularly watch on cable: Nip/Tuck and Mad Men. We canceled HBO so Entourage and Big Love are no longer on that list. Every other show is a network show. These shows were available with a cheap antenna but as of February 19th (?) they won’t be. But there is still the internet. All of the networks put their shows up on their own website somewhat soon after they air. Since we never watch shows the night they are on, this wait is acceptable. So between antennas/converters and the internet I can watch almost all of the shows I want to see. The rest of the shows are available on DVD. It may be 6 months to a year later but they are available.

The next reason is all the DVDs we own and Netflix. We dropped Blockbuster recently because we weren’t getting our moneys worth, but I want to pick up Netflix mostly for the instant streaming. When  you consider the couple hundred DVDs we own, and the ability to rent Netflix movies or watch them instantly, there is always something you can watch. There are TV shows out there that I never watched that I would like to see, The Shield, The Wire and West Wing to name a few. Watching those would occupy me as well.

Also, we have all this great internet content available. Revision3 puts out some great shows: Diggnation, Totally Rad Show, Tekzilla. Plus there are more shows up and coming. Factor in Hulu and Joost and there is an amazing amount of content to watch. I figure that will all the netcasts I watch, there is at least 3 hours of content a week that I already to watch.

Of course, the savings is great too. We spend about $100/month to have one of the cheapest cable plans, plus 2 DVRs. That is $1200 a year. I am confident that you could buy antennas, converters, and build PVRs for about what you spend in a year.

But of course there are reasons for not going this route. One is initial cost. Building the PVRs and buying converters for at least 2 TVs and antennas for them as well means you need to pay up front. Another reason is college football. I spend most of my Saturday(s) in the fall watching college football. There are games on network TV but not always. At the moment there isn’t a way to watch these games on the internet (even though I would pay for it) so I would miss some games. I don’t care much about other sports. The Sox play a lot of games on cable, but between the games I go to and the ones I network TV I would see enough games. The NFL is only on cable on Monday nights, so I would only occasionally miss the Bears (once or twice a year) and I could go somewhere and watch those.

The biggest stopping point is Heather. She watched a lot of cable shows on TLC and Discovery and re-runs on other channels. I respect that she doesn’t want to give it up, so that really puts a stop to it. But I would really love to embark on a year-long quest to see how it works out. Of course, this could just be crazy talk…