This is a guest post by Keith Lemery, a professional chef, network administrator, husband and father.  It was written to compliment and follow up the complete list of of websites to stream full tv shows and movies from.

Several months ago my wife and I decided to cancel our Time Warner cable television service.  We had the digital cable package with DVR, remote, and HD Tier.  All together this package cost us just around $100 per month.  We then added a Netflix subscription for $8.99 per month, which includes mailed DVDs, as well as unlimited streaming.  This reduced our overall television bill by at least $80 per month, or almost $1000 per year!

I had been dabbling with internet television for a while.  Hulu, Justin.tv, TV.com and NBC.com on my iPhone.  When we made the switch, it was a little awkward, but after some tweaks, we don’t miss cable at all, and if anything, wonder why we hadn’t made the switch sooner!

Here is our setup:

A four year old Toshiba A55-S106 laptop, hooked up to our 32″ Westinghouse HDTV, via the SVGA out port.  This cable I had bought on eBay a couple years ago for less than $5.  To do this on a Mac, check out Mike’s article utilizing Understudy and Front Row.

My iPhone serves as a remote control.  I am using Air Mouse Pro by RPA Tech, Inc. which is available on the iPhone App Store for $5.99.  It controls the laptop by using the iPhone as a touchpad and also has a soft keyboard.

When opening FireFox, three tabs open up.  Yahoo.com, Hulu.com, and NetFlix.com.  I could add any number of channels we watch, NBC, CBS, Disney, but these suffice on startup.

Hulu is amazing.  We have several subscriptions to programs we watched regularly on television.  We usually DVR’d the programs to watch at a later time, so the fact that the programs are posted to Hulu a day or two after showing doesn’t bother us in the least.

As for NetFlix, we keep our DVD queue active, and use the unlimited streaming feature to it’s fullest.  I subscribe to the NetFlix new release RSS, so I get updates of new releases on my iPhone through Google Reader.  When I see a program or movie I like, I open the Phone Flix iPhone application, and add it to my queue.  It’s a seamless process.  Something I never imagined I would be doing a year ago.

Local channels and programming is somewhat hit or miss, but most new televisions can pick up local HD channels.  There are some great YouTube videos on building your own HD antenna from coat hangers if you are out of range as we are, but the only thing we ever watched locally was the news.

I don’t miss the …coming up after the break cliffhangers and three minute commercial segments at all.  I can easily check the web for local news if I have the desire.

My wife and I have no intention of ever going back to paid cable service, ever.  It seems that soon enough all television networks will have an internet presence, if they don’t already, and will put most if not all of their programming online as ad revenue for online programming increases.

And the best part of all, we can watch an hour long program in around 41 minutes, and a half hour program in 21.  So roughly 30% of the time a program is on is given to advertising.  Sure, Hulu has commercials, but they are usually 15 to 25 seconds.

We are really enjoying having all of this control over what we watch, as well as the savings.  For us it was a simple decision, one that we should have made a long time ago.

How about you?  Are you still paying for cable television?  Could you use the extra $1000 a year savings?

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