Here in the armpit of America known as colorado springs we have one cable provider, Comcast, at least in the area we live in.  For the past four years we've had Extended basic cable service for about $50/month with no cable boxes required.  Two xmas's ago our "big" projection TV in the living room died.  After living without TV for about a month I finally put up the $1600+ for a new sony bravia LCD with all the bells and whistles.  I hooked a computer up to it very easily and stream ripped movies to it over wireless, though that sometimes doesn't work too well (I need to try 802.11n to see if that's any better since running CAT5 is a pain from my office to that TV).  Since then, this TV has worked wonderfully as a cable-ready system that supports clearqam digital signals.  That means that after the digital broadcast switchover, I was able to pick up the ClearQAM channels Comcast delivered via cable.  PBS, for example.  We don't get closed captioning on the digital PBS channel, but the picture is much nicer.  Most of the channels, however, are still analog and make no use of the fancy features in the TV.  Personally I didn't care that much.  TV isn't all that interesting these days anyway. 

So now I've discovered that Comcast is switching to all digital channels except for Basic Cable.  Basic Cable is the big networks plus PBS, a few community channels and NASA.  What this means to me is that I need a cable box on all my TVs, including the new Sony, in order to actually use the "extended" channels I'm paying for (CNN, ESPN, etc.).  Comcast provides 1 cable box plus two DTA's for free.  The DTA's allow display of the digital signal on regular TVs.  These boxes are puke.  They don't do HD, they barely provide a better picture and the cable box has a builtin channel guide that is a major step down from the nice guide I had on my big TV.  The DTAs don't even get a channel guide.  Not to mention that now I have yet another box on my mantel (and beside every TV) and have a bunch more (and really crappy) remotes and I get the privilege of paying Comcast an additional monthly fee per box.

So let's add things up:  I have more crap in my house, more remotes, worse channel guides, loss of function on my high end TV and I have to pay to have all this. 

I don't think so.  I'm sick to death of companies nickel and diming me .  The phone companies do it with their cellular plans.  I'd dump that too if my kid wasn't away at school.  I hate phones more than I hate TV.

Sadly, Comcast is cheaper than Dish TV and directtv so I'm just going to get rid of TV.  Period.  I have the Internet and most of the shows I like (except the big bang theory) can be seen online in HD.  The Sony is hooked to a computer and it has internet access and high end graphics for media playback.  Any show I do like that isn't in HD online I'll purchase on DVDs (until they force me to Blu-Ray and make everything 3D – which gives me headaches – in which case I'll stop buying those too).  So cable tv serves no purpose for me.  And I can save $50/month by dumping it.

Thanks Comcast.  You just saved me $600/yr.