A world without cable...

From J:

A and I have finally had it with Cox increasing our cable rates every couple of months.  Inspired by our recent visit to C and D, we're ditching cable and going with internet TV.  Our new media setup (note that I had all of this on hand, making the process really painless):

1) An LCD TV with computer audio (1/8" jack) and video (VGA) inputs.
2) A's old laptop.  I took off a bunch of old software, turned off most of the startup programs, and installed Google Chrome (it uses less processor power than Firefox or Internet Explorer).  The end result is a serviceable media laptop that can run flash and other internet video smoothly.
3) One 6' male-to-male audio cable and one 6' VGA monitor cable.
4) One wireless mouse, for use as a remote control.
5) One high speed internet connection with which to view Hulu, CastTV, espn3, and Clicker.  Clicker is a nice aggregator for all of the episodes of different shows on different websites (like TBS, Hulu, NBC, etc.), Hulu is superb, if a bit limited in its offerings, and CastTV has a big selection of shows across all stations, even Discovery and HBO.  The offerings are a bit spotty, but it always has the latest episodes of popular shows like Deadliest Catch and Breaking Bad.

In the living room, I set up an antenna with our other TV so we can get our local stations (except NBC...what's the deal, WNBW?).  As it turns out, the new digital broadcast quality is very nice, and looks identical to the cable signal.  Football season, here we come.

As I am a notorious flipper, the biggest change will be moving away from mindless channel changing and picking something to watch.  And agreeing on watching that, since channel changing is much less convenient with the internet.  But that adjustment won't be too tough.  Anyway, A and  I are pretty pumped to stick it to the cable company.  As of Monday, we're going cable-less.  Updates to follow.