So, yesterday I trundled down to Radio Shack and picked up the $6 part that would let me hook up my new TV to the aerial antenna that's been sitting on my roof since before I bought my house. Tuning in the analog stations reminded me why cable TV was such a cool thing back in the '80s... but then, I tuned the digital stations. As I hoped, my crusty old reception hardware handled the new signals handily, so I watched the news in high-def... then quickly surfed through the broadcast channels (mains and alternates... PBS is now three separate channels!) to verify that programming in the digital spectrum was about as terrible as programming on cable, and turned off the TV for the night.
Today, on the way to work, I dropped by my local Comcast office and dropped off my cable box. Sure, I'll miss CNBC and the Cartoon Network, and the occasional oddity I might stumble across otherwise on cable, but for $50+ a month, keeping cable TV just wasn't worth it. Of course, Comcast won't let you off their hook too easily... now, I'm paying $10 a month more for my Internet access (which I expected, that's how they keep people from migrating to sattellite TV en masse), and I'll get a one-time $12.99 "service downgrade" fee for them to come out and filter their crap off of my cable connection (something that I think is just wrong, but, well, since my Internet options are limited, I'm not about to pitch a fit about).
With any luck, I'm done with cable TV forever... we'll see what thunderstorms and (eventually) snowstorms do to convince me otherwise. Now, if Qwest would just speed up their fiber rollout plans...
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