It’s been about 6 months since my wife and I decided to go cable free after moving to our new house.  At first it was an experiment to see how we’d fare without the $60 cable bill.  After 6 months I’m to the point I would question why I would ever go back to subscribing to cable.

We are currently subscribing to Rogers Express service, which allots us 10mb service with a 60GB download cap.  The bonus to having Rogers internet without having cable is the fact that we actually do get a handful of channels, as Rogers is unable to shut off all of the channels and provide us with internet.  We get Global, CTV, CBC and Omni 1 and 2, along with a smattering of other channels.  This is great since much of the syndicated primetime shows appear on Global or CTV in Canada anyways.  Then we’re just left to fill in the gaps.

Our current setup in the house has a HTPC Hackintosh setup in the living room, then an Xbox running XBMC in the bedroom.  When I want to watch something on live TV that isn’t on our TV, I typically turn to Justin.tv.  Quite often you can find a live stream of popular shows just by searching their listings.  I find this is pretty indispensable for live sporting events.  Even if I had cable I would rarely be able to catch Senators or 49ers games because I live outside their broadcast market.  You have to pay for $250 packages like Centre Ice or Sunday Ticket, and even then you’re paying for tonnes of games you’ll never watch.  The football season has started and I’ve probably watched more 49er games this season then I have in the last 2 combined, even with the ability to timeshift and watch west coast NFL broadcasts.  No more suffering through Buffalo Bills games anymore for me.

If you want to watch episodes of shows that have already aired, you can’t really go wrong with a site like SurfTheChannel.  You can pretty much watch back episodes of pretty much every show on television.  There are also quite a few sites out there that allow you to stream DVD quality movies too, many of which are still in theatres.  Watch Movie Links has all sorts new releases, ready to watch.  No downloading or anything which is pretty sweet.  I think my favourite for doing this is NinjaVideo, always has quality streams and is organized really nicely.  They even have every documentary you might ever want to see which is awesome for those who might miss content from channels like Discovery or National Geographic.

The compromise to using online feeds is that you can’t always count on great quality for these feeds.  Some of them are fantastic, others are pretty crummy.  Going cable free isn’t for everyone, as sometimes it does require patience to find what you are looking for online.  But once you get used to how to use online streaming there are a world of options as to what to watch online.  I find nowadays I watch TV I actually want to see instead of being tied to TV schedules and whatever garbage might be on right now.   Not spending $60 a month on cable has been a great decision for us.