Two years ago today I cut the cable. Not literally, but I did have a friend once who was so perturbed by his cable service that he actually ripped the coaxial cable out of the wall and cut it. That's a little extreme in my book, but I did find a way to stop paying for cable and switch over to a digital alternative for just $7.99 a month. You can too.

How many times have you been sitting in front of the television and flipping through your 200+ channels only to remark "there's nothing on?" I hate that. There's nothing worse than having all of those channels and not being able to find anything to watch. It's a waste of time and money.

There is another way. Instead of paying for the endless parade of cable channels you never watch, ditch your cable service and go "On Demand." Services like Netflix, Hulu+, and Amazon Prime offer a wealth of TV and movie viewing options that can be delivered right to your TV. Plus, by adding an iTunes and Google Play account you can stay up on the latest shows and movies.

One caveat: don't go in to this thinking that you will get service exactly like you had with cable or satellite. It doesn't work that way (yet). These are digital on-demand subscription services and there isn't really a way to replicate live TV. While some services allow you to watch current television programs, it always premiers a day or so after it aired on live TV.

That said, I feel that this is a decent alternative and a lot cheaper than cable.

What you'll need:

  • A TV - The bigger the better (that's a given)
  • Internet Connection - The faster the better
  • A Roku or AppleTV

Here's the easy part: hook your Roku or AppleTV to your TV and your internet and you're done.

I highly recommend you have a Netflix account to start. It's only $7.99 a month for the streaming portion of the service, and you don't need DVDs anymore anyway. The selection of movies and television programs is pretty decent, but you're not going to find the latest episode of 'Agents of SHIELD' or 'The Walking Dead' on here.

For that you need a Hulu+ account. I've had a love/hate relationship with Hulu. Sometimes it's great, while other times it's the most frustrating service on the planet. It's only $7.99 a month and lets you watch a lot of premium television.

Originally I used a laptop with a combination of Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes for about a year as my media center. It was nice, and if I wanted to show the family a YouTube video I could play it on the big TV, or we could check out websites in the browser.We added a 1 TB hard drive for movie and TV storage and we were set... but it wasn't as fluid or pretty as a true media center solution.

Roku loves Netflix. In fact, they were made for each other.
Roku loves Netflix. In fact, they were made for each other.
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I upgraded to a Roku and I'll never look back. The device, which is the size of a hockey puck, wirelessly connects to my network and pushes Netflix, movies, and Hulu to my TV in full 1080p HDMI. Plus it has Angry Birds on it, and a slick remote. This is most definitely the way I would recommend going. And at $49 for the basic Roku it's way cheaper than an additional computer.

So there you go. You can stop worrying about your over inflated cable or satellite bill and watch good, premium content for less than $20 a month.

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