Almost instinctively, I felt the urge to ignore him and walk on.  Perhaps mumble something about not having any money on me as I quickened my pace.  Then, for a split second, I thought to myself: What if I was in his position?  What if I was laid off and my family rendered homeless?  What if my best bet to put food on the table for my children was to ask for money from strangers?

I told him I didn’t think I had much cash, but fished a couple of dollars out of my wallet to give him.  I wished him luck and we went our separate ways.  As I did so, I felt a wave of sadness that I couldn’t do more to help him.

Sure, the guy could have been lying to me.  He could have taken my cash and gone directly to a nearby liquor store instead of buying food for his kids.  Maybe he doesn’t even have any children.  I’m a big believer of taking a person at their word, though.  A bit naïve?  Perhaps, but I’d rather assume the best about someone and be proven wrong than assume the worst of people from the outset.

I hope that, that night, his family was able to eat, in part, thanks to the money I gave him.  I also hope that his luck turns around and he is able to find work soon.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever had someone down on their luck ask you for money?  If so, what did you do?  If not, what would you do?

Don’t forget to enter my $25 EdenFantasys giveaway!

P.S. If you haven’t already, go visit FollowerHQ and let me know what you think of my Twitter application.

P.P.S. For a bit of fun, try my other Twitter Application, Rout. It’s a +F in Fun!

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #123

Disclaimer: The “Money – banknotes and coin” clipart above is from OpenClipArt.org.

As I got older, I began to understand more and more what money was and how important it could be.  To some degree, I was still protected from the harsh realities.  My parents paid the bulk of my tuition and other assorted costs.  The rest were paid by loans.  Oh sure, I’d need to pay those back, but to a college student, paying by loan (which wouldn’t need to even start being repaid until you graduated) was essentially the same as free.

Once I graduated, I decided to get a job.  This wasn’t so much because I needed the money, mind you, as because I wanted to accomplish something.  I had decided against graduate school because that seemed like more theoretical work and I wanted to make stuff.  Meanwhile, having left the college dorms behind, I moved back in with my parents.  Yes, I bought a car and thus had payments to make, but the lack of rent, repair costs and more kept me from feeling the harsh sting of reality.

Still later, I got married and B and I lived in an apartment.  I was finally in The Real World.  We made rent payments, paid our phone and cable bills and made sure all the other expenses were taken care of.  I saw that splurging on something for me made a dent in our saving account balance and so I tried to rein in my urge to splurge.

When we had NHL, of course, the expenses multiplied.  Suddenly, there was this little guy who almost literally ate money.  We needed money for clothes for him (which he went through all too quickly), money for diapers for him (which he’d fill up for us), and, once he began eating solid foods, money for food for him.

Next, we moved into a house.  This was the American Dream, right?  Own your own house?  Well, at times the Dream seemed more like a Nightmare.  Some days, it felt like everything in the house gathered in a great big conga-line waiting for its turn to break.  It felt like money went out for repair costs as fast as it came in.  Add in a second child and I often felt like I was running on a monetary treadmill.  One that someone turned up to level 20.  Jane!  Stop this crazy thing!

Why the sudden interest in money?  Well, as you know, we booked a trip to Disney World for just the two of us.  This is a splurge for us as our usual “time to ourselves” is a meal out (preferably someplace we have a coupon for) while B’s parents watch the kids.  Still, it’s our 10th anniversary so we figured we’d do something special.  Considering that our honeymoon was also in Disney World, this will, in some ways, be a second honeymoon for us.

Still, once the trip was booked, that conga-line marched on.  First, our bedroom TV went dead.  This was an old, CRT, non-HD television so it was bound to die eventually.  I lugged it downstairs and brought in a spare TV we had.  (Also, an old CRT, non-HD set.)  Except, that set was dead too.  So we had to buy a new TV.

Then, last night as I was shutting down and preparing to go to sleep, I tried to close my laptop.  I felt something odd, like it was snapping in two.  Alarmed, I opened it up and saw that it was coming apart.  Panicked, I booted it back up.  Luckily, it still worked.  I just couldn’t close the lid.  So I backed up my laptop, shut it down, and carefully put it to the side.  Now, I need to find a place to repair it and hope it doesn’t cost too much.  If it does, it might be cheaper to just buy a new laptop.  Either way, it’s another expense that we really didn’t need.

Some days, being an adult is overrated.  Can I go back to being a kid again?  Maybe just for a day?

My sister and I would constantly pick up whatever money we found lying around. Usually, this would be a penny here and a dime there. Occasionally, we’d luck out and spot a dollar bill. One time we spotted a twenty. I thought that a guy standing near it had dropped it so I decided to wait to see if he’d pick it up. My sister didn’t wait and grabbed the twenty.

My father would constantly tell us that it was a waste of time picking up that money, but we insisted that all those pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters added up. We disagreed, of course. In some respects, I’ve proven him wrong thanks to my recent 12 pound coin deposit.

As I got older, however, I passed money on the ground more and more. I found it just wasn’t worth my while to walk across a room just to pick up a nickle. For some reason, however, I felt an urge to pick up this 36 cents.

After picking it up, I began to think. I still wouldn’t pick up a lone penny on the sidewalk, but would definitely go out of my way if I spotted a twenty on the ground. I wondered what was the threshold a given amount of “ground money” had to reach before it turned into a worthwhile amount for an adult to pick up.

So my Aloha Friday question to you is: What is the smallest amount of money that you would pick up off the ground?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #21

Cashier: “Your total is $3.65.”

Me: “Ok, here’s three singles. And let’s see. [digs in pocket] A quarter. A penny. Another penny. A dime. A nickel. Another dime. Another nickel. Another quarter. Oh wait, that’s too much. Let me take back those pennies, one dime and one nickle.” [Glances back to see people in line behind me giving me the evil eye.]

Much better to simply pay in dollar bills and save the change for later, I figured. Perhaps I could even buy something nice with the saved up money.

Since I didn’t want it stashed in a thousand spots around the house, I took an empty spice container (one of the big ones you can get from BJs) and started plunking my change in there at the end of the day. Over the years, the container filled more and more.

Last year, the coin jar got to be too heavy so I figured it was time to roll the coins up. So began a project with NHL. He enjoyed helping me count the coins and roll them up. I stuck the rolled up coins in another empty container and made a mental note to deposit the money. Somewhere along the way, though, my mental note came loose and sliped under the mental refrigerator.

Recently, I decided to finally deposit the money. First, I rolled up the new coins that I had collected.

After counting it all, I stuffed the rolled coins back into the container.

Of course, lifting it was a challenge. It weighed 12 pounds. (Yes, I weighed it. I’m that much of a nerd!) Have you ever tried to life 12 pounds of coins? It was HEAVY! I toyed with keeping it around for weightlifting but figured a set of dumbbells would cost a lot less than the amount of money in that container.

So how much money is 12 pounds of coins? Well, in my case it totaled $144.50! Not bad for a few years of tossing coins into a jar!

A few years back, after I caught the photography bug, I decided I could sell posters of my work. It’d be very simple, really. (Or so I told myself.) First, I’d snap a few photos. Then I’d edit them a bit, perhaps add a catchy phrase or two to it, and post it online for sale as a poster. My monetary investment would be virtually zero as I already had all of the tools. Visions of money rolling in from poster sales danced in my head.

Then I got splashed by reality. Suddenly, I had a thought: If it was that simple, why doesn’t everyone do it? I don’t kid myself. I’m a decent photographer, but I’m no pro. I wouldn’t even call myself an exceptional ameteur. Probably a bit above average. And while I’m proficient when it comes to photo editing, I’m not going to light the world on fire with my skills. Who would really want to buy from the Slightly Above Average Photography Collection?

In the end, I abandoned my dream of running my own photo studio. I still enjoyed taking photos, but I didn’t worry about making money off of them. Instead, I focused on making websites. (Luckily, I love doing that also and get paid for it.)

Why post about this now? Recently, I found a recipe for fudge and decided to make some for a few of B’s family members for Chanukah presents. It was well recieved. Everyone loved it and the fudge was devored. B’s grandmother gave some to a few of her friends and someone even asked if she could buy some.

Now, I don’t know if this lady was serious or not, but that one comment started turning wheels in my head. Could I sell my fudge? TechyDad’s Olde Fashioned Fudge Shoppe? I found myself figuring out how much a batch of fudge cost and how much I could sell it for. I even wound up on websites that sell ingredients in bulk. (After all, you don’t want to buy your ingredients from the local grocery store if you’re using a lot of it.)

Meanwhile, we decided to make more fudge for presents for teachers/co-workers and tried a few new flavors. So far we’ve made: Plain, Creme De Menthe, Craisin, Toffee, and M&M. I’m even planning on trying a spicy fudge and pretzel fudge at some point. (A Cooking With TechyDad segment on fudge will come, I promise.) My menu was taking shape. Why couldn’t I sell it? Perhaps even online… does fudge ship well?

Reality hasn’t hit just yet, though I’m sure it will at some point. Then, all my fudge shoppe dreams will melt away and I’ll return to life as usual. (I feel compelled to add a “Maybe.” Maybe because the fudge dream is still alive.) I don’t think these are mid-life crises. I’m only 34 and I’m not dreaming of buying a Porche with my fudge empire fortune.

Perhaps it is only normal for someone to look to turn a hobby (be it cooking, photography, etc) to a money making proposition. What have your experiences been? Have you tried to make money off of a hobby of yours? If so, have you had any success? And, as one last question, would anyone want to buy some fudge?

Thanks to the one two punch of Netflix Online and Roku, I’m pretty confident that my kids would survive a cut cable cord without too much screaming.  So where does this leave cable in our household?

For now, it hasn’t been cut, but don’t confuse being uncut with being safe.  We’re currently looking into many options ranging from cutting to going with an alternative service like DirecTV.  (Any DirecTV reps out there who want a technologically savvy daddy blogger to do a review on your service? )

My original conclusion, meanwhile, has been revised.  Previously, I determined that we would save about $15 per month if we cut cable.  However, I soon realized that that relied on two erroneous assumptions.

The first was that we would buy $15 in DVDs every month.  We really don’t buy many DVD movies because we tend to watch them once or twice and then add them to the stack.  Kids movies get a bit more play, but there’s only so many times you can let your child watch a show before you go insane.  Now, we tend to rent our DVDs via Netflix or our local library.  DVD purchases happen pretty much only if a deal is extremely good or for a Chanukah or Birthday present.  Our total DVD purchase budget is probably closer to $30 per year than $15 per month.  This increases the Cut Cable savings to $27.50 per month.

The second assumption was that we would frequent Amazon VOD.  Apart from having Mythbusters episodes, I just can’t see spending a lot of money on this service when I get essentially the same thing "for free" with my paid for Netflix subscription.  (Yeah, I know Netflix isn’t free, but you know what I mean.  I don’t have to pay $1.99 just to see another episode of Heroes.  It’s right there.)

The only thing I might pay for is the aforementioned Mythbusters.  (TechyDad want big boom!)  At $1.99 per episode and an average of 25 episodes per season, I’d only be paying about $24, or $2 per month, for this Amazon VOD.  This is far short of the $26 a month I initially assumed and raises the Cut Cable savings to $51.50 a month.

I’ve also re-thought my setup.  I don’t need to invest in a media streaming setup.  I just need to manage our existing DVDs better.  So I’ve used EMDB to catalog all of my DVDs.  I plan on making a list out of it and laminating it for the kids to refer to.  This way they’ll be able to point to an item on the list and have B or I put it in rather than wondering just what we have to watch.

The only tripping point at the moment is how we would hook our existing TVs up to receive over the air broadcasts (do we need to buy any equipment for this?) and what DVR to buy to replace our cable company issued one.  TiVo is a possibility, of course, but the monthly fee ($129 per year) would eat into our Cut Cable savings.  Still, even after TiVo, we would have over $40 left per month in savings.  The first six months of savings would pay off the purchase price of TiVo.  After that (and possibly a few months paying off equipment to receive digital OTA signals), we’d be in pure savings mode.

Alternatively, we could switch from Time Warner Cable to DirecTV.  The one year locked in rate would save us $28 per month over cable.  Either way, money talks, especially in this economy.  Unless things radically change, I don’t think our current cable connection has much of a life left in our household.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

When we last left our intrepid Cable Cutting hero, he was talking about Netflix streaming devices.  There are many of these on the market, to be sure, but my favorite is the Roku box.  This small box, and I’m talking palm of your hand small, will easily fit into any home theater arrangement.  It is easy to set up, navigate and has plenty of content available on it.

Once your Netflix Instant Queue is set up, the titles appear nearly instantly on your Roku box.  If your title includes multiple episodes, say because you’re watching The Addams Family, you can jump to a specific episode easily .  Fast forwarding and rewinding, though inexact, are simple to master.  Simple enough, in fact, that my 6 year old figured it out quickly and now is not to be trusted near the remote.  Not because he’s going to mess something up, but because he *will* fast forward/rewind/change the video when I just want to watch what’s playing.  In fact, all of the controls are easy to master.  If I hand NHL the remote, I can be certain that he will find a show that he wants to watch and will be able to play it with no problem.

The only problem we ran into was constant wireless network connection losses.  However, considering I’ve been experiencing these on my laptop as well, I think this is more of a problem with my network (more specifically, my router) than with Roku/Netflix.  Even when the network is acting funky, though, reconnecting is as easy as clicking "OK" a few times.  Assuming that the network cooperates, that is, but you can hardly fault Roku or Netflix for not being able to connect to a trouble-making router!

Since introducing them to the Roku, my children’s viewing habits have changed.  Whereas before their "default" choice was Noggin, The Disney Channel or possibly PBS Kids, they have rapidly made Roku one of their favorite choices.  Why, after all, bother with waiting until their favorite show is on when you can just click and play.  JSL has learned to ask for "Wiggle Roku" for his favorite Wiggles videos or "Bobby He Can Build It Roku" (Bob the Builder on Roku) and NHL has found enjoyment in some of my old favorites: Inspector Gadget, Super Mario Brothers and The Pink Panther.

Previously, I had mentioned how Netflix wasn’t resting on their laurels.  Well, Roku isn’t either.  While Netflix on Roku might be enough to justify the $80 – $130 price tag (depending on which Roku box you buy), Roku also offers access to Amazon Video on Demand, which has some great movies and TV shows, and Major League baseball.

Those offerings require extra purchases, however.  Amazon VOD requires you to pay for each video while MLB insists on a yearly subscription fee.  To increase the value of your Roku box, they are branching out to other content providers, most of which will be free for all.  Their Channel Guide allows you to customize your channel listing to include Motionbox, Mediafly, blip.tv, twit.tv, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Frame Channel, Flickr and Pandora.  These options just came out, so I haven’t explored them fully.  Still, I got a taste for how much more content they have just made available via Roku and I like it.  Clearly, Roku is trying to position itself as the go-to box for streamed media content.

Coming up next, will the cable cord survive being cut?

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Previously, I mentioned that Netflix is keeping up with the changing rental climate.  One of those changes is online viewing.  I’m a big believer that the future successor of DVDs isn’t going to be Blu-Ray or some other super-incredible-ultra-high-resolution disc, but no disc at all.  All of the pieces are in place or nearly so.  Internet speeds are fast enough in many areas to support video streaming. Video codecs can alter video quality to account for changes in bandwidth.  Wireless technology allows for devices (*cough*Roku*cough*) to stream Internet videos without needing any wires (save for the power cord).

In fact, online viewing, though I expected it would be good, completely changed how I and my family watch TV.  There is a selection of movies and television shows that are available for instant viewing.  This selection is admittedly smaller than the mailable DVD list, but the blame for that rests with content owners being reluctant to let their videos touch anything Internet-related.  Netflix is constantly adding new titles to this list, though and I suspect that the pressure to add videos to Netflix’s online selection will only increase.

When you find a title that you would like to play instantly, you simply press the Play button.  Alternatively, you can add the title to your Online Queue.  This is like the mailer queue except titles never arrive/leave.  They simply sit there for you to watch whenever you want.  As nice as computer-based viewing might be, it gets much, much better once you add a device such as a Roku.  Using that, you can stream the content right to your television screen.

In many ways, it is just as altering an experience as first getting a DVR was.  When we first got a DVR, was were amazed with the freedom that we had.  Suddenly, we didn’t *HAVE* to be at home to watch shows we liked.  We could record them and watch them later.  Now, we don’t have to be limited to what the TV networks are showing in our area.  We can watch old shows that have gone off the air, see shows from overseas or see titles that might otherwise suffer from a censors’ axe on network television.

Best of all, we can watch them without ever fiddling with discs.  If you are sitting on the couch at the end of a long day, you might not want to go over to your stack of DVDs, root through them to find the specific disc you feel like watching and then play it.  Instead, you might want to just sit on the couch, select a movie from your Instant Queue and hit play.  Netflix makes it that simple.  And with more and more devices supporting Netflix, you should be able to easily fit a Netflix streaming device into your budget.  You might even already have one in your home.

Coming up next, speaking of Netflix streaming devices…

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Regular readers will know that, a few months back, I won a Roku box from Buck Daddy.  After getting it set up, I wondered just how I was going to use it.  This led to my Cutting the Cable Cord post and eventually to a trial membership with Netflix.  While I knew the features that were going to open up to me, I was unprepared for how they would change my television viewing habits.

You’ve Got DVD Mail

The basic Netflix DVD mailing system is quite simple.  You browse their website looking for movies or TV shows that you would like to watch.  Given Netflix’s incredible selection, it isn’t hard to quickly generate a long list (or Queue as it is called on the website).  Aiding you is a "More Like" feature.  When you add a title to your Queue, a screen pops up that not only confirms that the addition took place, but recommends additional titles to add.  Clicking on one of those brings yet another "More Like" screen up.  In this manner, you might attempt to add one title, but wind up adding a dozen.

It also means you will be exposed to titles that you might have otherwise never have even heard of.  I wound up watching The IT Crowd, a British sitcom about office workers in an IT department, and Tripping The Rift, a TV-MA computer animated show about aliens and robots on a starship, thanks to this feature.  In each case, I would have never had even known that they existed but now I’m a big fan of each.

Netflix has many distribution points, so chances are you’ll receive your video quickly.  We’ve been averaging about 2 days between notification that the disc was mailed and its arrival in our mailbox.  And Netflix helps ease mailing the DVDs back by making the mailer envelope double as a postage paid return envelope.  Simply stick the DVD back into the mailing envelope, rip off a perforated side, peel off a protective backing on the envelope’s glue strip and seal the envelope.  Then back in the mail it goes to Netflix.

Overall, we were very satisfied with this system.  As I said, the movies arrived rapidly.  And, since you don’t need to return them by a certain date, you can keep them until you’ve watched them all.  As of this writing, I still have the first disc of Dinosaurs out until I get to watching the last episode or two.  Meanwhile, we’re managing our queue to make sure each family member gets the chance to have something out.  Looney Tunes for NHL and JSL (ok, and me), Weeds for B, and Mr. Bean for me.

All along the way, Netflix seems to be all about communication.  We get notified when a movie is sent out and when it is received.  We even get e-mailed questionairres asking about the quality of their service.  In the one instance we had of a disc having troubles, Netflix made reporting and getting a replacement for the bad disc a cinch.  They strike me as a company truly determined to not rest on their laurels.  Sure, they may be on the top of the Online DVD Rental game now, but things can change quickly.  Netflix seems determined to keep up with those changes.

Coming up next, Netflix ups the ante with online streaming…

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Of course, our cable TV doesn’t go unwatched every day. NHL and JSL watch it. B watches it. I watch it. So we can’t just rip out the cable line and pocket the monthly savings. Some kind of entertainment is going to need to replace the cable TV loss at or below the cost of cable TV. In doing research on this, here are some of the options I’ve come up with:

Rentals/Purchases

We currently don’t rent very many movies. However, we do take out a lot of movies from the library. Under a “No Cable TV” plan, I’m sure our library use would increase. Still, the library only has so many DVDs. Eventually, we would tire of taking out the same kiddy DVD for the twentieth time. This is where Netflix could step in. Netflix lets you rent DVDs from a massive selection. They mail the discs to you and you mail them back when done. Using Netflix, you can also watch an ever-increasing catalog of movies and television shows online or on your TV.

TV watching requires an “unlimited plan” ($8.99 per month or more) and a supported set-top box like Roku. Now I just so happened to have won a Roku box from Buck Daddy (thanks again!), but a Roku box would normally only set you back $99. The Roku box connects to your wireless/wired network and allows you to watch movies on Netflix or Amazon Video on Demand. Roku is also adding podcasts, MLB and others. Those don’t happen to interest me, but it does show that “Roku box content” is going to be a growing selection.

This also leads me to my next Rental/Purchase location: Amazon Video on Demand. Amazon lets you rent movies and television shows from their site to view online or on your Roku box. Some shows, like my must-watch Mythbusters, are only available on television or Amazon VOD. Television shows, like Mythbusters, cost $1.99 to buy. Movies cost more, but aren’t prohibitively expensive. A season of Mythbusters can contain 30 episodes, so this might seem expensive. However, this $60 is less than one month of cable TV. Assuming that we bought three TV shows per week (one each for B and I and one for NHL/JSL), we would wind up paying less than $26 per month on Amazon VOD purchases.

Of course, we wouldn’t just buy online shows. We could buy DVDs also. More and more shows are releasing DVDs with multiple episodes of television shows. We already have many DVDs that go unwatched, so we could dig those out. We could easily give ourselves a $15 monthly DVD stipend, saving it up if we want to buy a more expensive box set or taking advantage of sales to buy more DVDs.

In-Home Streaming

The big problem with DVDs is loading/changing them. Right now, NHL can sit down in front of the TV, turn it on, tune in to Noggin, and watch away. (He can also program the DVR, but that’s another subject entirely.) We don’t want to risk scratched discs, so we won’t be letting the kids load and unload DVDs themselves anytime soon. This means that watching a DVD would entail parental involvement to: 1) Find DVD from our ever-growing library of discs, 2) load movie, 3) put old movie away, 4) watch. It would be a lot simpler if NHL could simply browse through all of the movies we own and click which one he wanted to watch. (This shouldn’t be read as us trying to abdicate parental responsibility, but NHL should be able to choose what he wants to watch from the options we provide him.)

As it so happens, you can actually do that. I blogged awhile back that I was drooling over the IOGEAR Portable Media Player Enclosure. Unfortunately, that product looks like it has been discontinued, but others, like the Argosy TV HD Media Player ($69.99) are still on the market. If we ripped our DVDs to a 1 TB hard drive ($74.99), we could watch them on our television quite easily. Another solution would be to rip the DVDs to a central computer and stream the videos from that system (using free software like Tversity) with a wireless media player like the D-Link DSM-520 ($229.99).

Internet

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know about YouTube. There are tons of videos on there that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. I won’t pretend that there aren’t videos on there that don’t violate copyright (for example, some old Looney Tunes cartoons that I’m sure WB didn’t upload). Still, YouTube could be a good source for entertaining videos.

The same is true for Hulu. Started by some cable companies as a YouTube competitor, Hulu has a lot of television shows and movies available to watch for free. These, unlike many of the ones on YouTube, are completely legal.

The only problem with these two sites is that they are limited to your television screen. YouTube can be watched on the Wii, but it is a kludgy solution at best. My ideal solution would be for Roku to support Hulu and YouTube. Then, I could just select from the menu on Roku’s screen and begin watching. If Roku didn’t support YouTube/Hulu, then any Tversity-based solution I went with (see the “In-Home Streaming” section) would support these as well. Either way, this would be a free entertainment addon.

Final Cost

What would the final cost of cutting cable be? Our one time costs would total between $145 and $230 depending on which media player setup we went with. Monthly costs would run about $50 a month. This would mean a $15 a month savings. No, $180 per year isn’t a windfall, but every little bit counts. The first year’s savings would obviously get eaten up by equipment costs, but after that we would save money.

Another factor to consider is the multiple room problem. Right now, we have cable in two rooms: the living room and our bedroom. The costs I’ve quoted here give us only one rooms’ worth of Netflix/Amazon/YouTube/Hulu/In-Home Streaming. We have a DVD player in the bedroom, but ideally I’d like to be able to watch anything in the bedroom that we could watch in the living room. This could increase our one time setup costs by $244 – $329. With the setup costs for a two room scenario, savings would only be realized after 2 or 3 years.

Adjusting To Life Sans Cable

Obviously, doing this would be an adjustment. JSL probably wouldn’t care. In fact, he’s pretty well adjusted to this switch already given that he’s constantly asking to watch “Wa Wa Bee DD” (Wiggles DVDs in JSL-speak). He probably wouldn’t miss the loss of cable TV at all. Initially, NHL would greatly miss Noggin and Disney Channel. However, I’ve seen how adaptable he is to television change. One month Sid The Science Kid is his favorite, must-watch-every-day-or-else show. The next month it is Penguins of Madagascar. The month after that: Secret Agent Oso. A month or two after the cable cut, NHL would probably forget all about those cable channels and focus on the DVDs and other shows that were available to him instead.

How would the grown ups react? Well, we would have the biggest adjustment to make. There are plenty of programs that we really don’t care about but that we “watch” to either add noise to the room or to help us unwind mentally after a long day. We obviously wouldn’t be able to simply tune to Food Network and zone out to Guy at another diner, drive-in or dive. Movies require more mental attention than we are up for many nights. This could be solved by skewing our Netflix/Amazon/DVD rental/purchases away from movies and towards TV shows. Still, it would be a tough adjustment to make.

The Final Cut

In the end, I don’t think we’re ready to cut our cable line. I think that the alternatives to cable just aren’t as easy as cable TV (especially once you add a DVR to the mix). In addition, the equipment to support them on televisions (as opposed to a laptop screen) is just too pricey at the moment. However, I do plan on keeping an eye on this market, though. I think that this is the direction that we as a society are moving towards. Five years down the line, you’ll likely be able to purchase a Netflix/Amazon VOD/Hulu/YouTube/streaming media/whatever set top box for $100 or less. Then, cable companies will have a serious problem on their hands as people begin to question why they are cutting a large monthly check every month for entertainment that they could get more-customized for less money.