CNet has an article about a couple who saw the writing on the wall, recession-wise, and canceled their satellite TV package. Surprisingly, they are, in fact, still alive and not at all depressed.

Here’s what they did instead:

• “Using an existing rooftop antenna, James plugged her TV into the hook-up to get more than 50 high-definition TV channels over-the-air. The cost for these HD channels: zero.”

• Instead of HBO — Netflix for $17 a month allows you to rent 3 movies at a time over the mail and watch lots of movies on demand — including ones from Starz.
• Hulu, Fancast, Joost, YouTube, and most major TV networks’ Web sites offer TV shows and other video content for free.
• They spent $600 on a computer that will serve as TV tuner, has a High Definition Multimedia Interface cable for carrying high-definition video, and an embedded Blu-Ray/DVD player, and can be used as a DVR. The cost of the new computer was paid off in about six months.
• They upgraded their DSL to 3 Mbps downloads and 512 Kbps uploads for an extra 5$ per month.

  According to CNET this ended up saving them $93 a month and they say they prefer this set-up to Dish Network. Something to think about.

  You don’t need satellite TV when times get tough [CNET] (Thanks, Klay!)

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