Can you cut the cable?  I mean really get rid of your cable provider?  A month or so ago I set out to see if I could.

The first step was to list all the shows my wife and I enjoy and determine if they were available online.  I was surprised to learn that most were.  Our prime time favorites were available on their network sites (abc.com, nbc. com, etc).  Others could be streamed on demand via Hulu or through widgets like the one from Amazon, below.

The second step was making sure my dsl network could handle the increased bandwidth which is the capacity to send and receive more data at a faster rate.  Can you cut the cable?  Probably not without the bandwidth,  and I wasn’t able either.  I dropped the dsl and opted for a fiber connection from a local carrier.  It was a little more expensive, but cheaper than cable.

The third and final step was getting the green light from the wife.  I didn’t get a green, it was more like a yellow.  Gentlemen, as an aside and as far a wives are concerned, anything but a green light is a RED light.  Ok, so I went for it against the sage advice just offered and there were some bumps in the road as a consequence, but I healed.  Otherwise, we are a month or so into it and the experiment seems to be working.  Besides torquing off your wife, some other things to consider before diving in would be:

1.  purchasing a digital antenna for local and network channels.

2.  determining whether or not your TV has inputs for a computer.  HDMI would be an example.  Some TVs have monitor inputs, too.

3.  will the change replace some of your existing equipment?  Our main TV is older and doesn’t have HDMI inputs.  We no longer use it unless we are watching a DVD.  And, often, it’s just as fast to pop the DVD in the computer.

So, can you cut the cable?  If you have made the jump, then let us know about it in the comments.  I’d like to hear some advice from some of our readers.