About a year ago, I wrote about our decision to end our subscription to cable after 20 years, and rely on off-air DTV and online sources for our viewing. (It was the subject of a piece that ran on CNN Money in February, 2009)

This decision was driven by a couple factors. First, I got tired of paying around $70 a month for access to video content I never watched. I can afford it; I make a lot of money. But what’s the “Pleasure ROI” on about $850/year spent on cable? Well, it’s unbelievably low, even when compared to something as fleeting as two $200 a plate meals. So, what’s the point?

Second, our decision was driven by the vast amount of content now available online, legally: iTunes, Hulu, etc.

In May 2008, we ended our cable TV subscription. We kept the cable Internet service because, at 20 MBps, it’s the fastest service available in our area. (Unbundling cable from Internet costs an extra $10 a month where we live.)

We connected an Eye TV USB HD receiver to an unused Mac G5, connected a small antenna to it, and connected the computer to our 32-inch Samsung HD set.

The end result: the EyeTV’s included software turned the computer into a DVR for viewing/recording/timeshifting over-the-air (OTA) content. The computer’s internet connection delivered all Internet video. Our DVD player connected us to our Netflix habit.

An important caveat, which I noted a year ago: we’re not big fans of live sports, and we don’t watch a lot of live news on TV. If you fall into either category, you probably won’t be happy with the results.

So, in the past year, what have we watched? Nearly everything we wanted to, with a few exceptions, which I’ll note below.

Over-the-air: Despite having all the local channels available to us through our little antenna, we’ve watched only public TV, and our OTA consumption is has been almost exclusively how-to shows: Lidia Bastianich, Rick Steves. The computer records them, and we watch them later.

DVD player: we watched our weird assortment of Netflix videos – travel shows, documentaries, horror movies.

Online: everything else. We watched some episodes of 30 Rock, Family Guy, and a couple vintage shows on Hulu. We subscribed to Top Chef and Project Runway on iTunes (after NBC Universal returned). We bought single episodes of cable series like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. We subscribed to video podcasts and watched them full-screen on the TV, from Deutsche Welle to TVO to WineLibraryTV to TED to The Cook and The Chef on Australia’s ABC. We watched tons of streaming video full-screen, ranging from Frontline and NOVA at PBS.org, to live CBC News from Toronto, Montreal, and PEI, BBC World News, Radio-Canada’s 24 hour news network RDI, to live coverage of the Mumbai attacks on Indian TV. And specialty sites delivered a lot of good stuff to us – from the aforementioned TED to Fora.tv, among others.

What have we missed? On election night, I wanted to watch live returns from every possible source all at the same time. With cable, this absurd desire is basically achievable. Without it, you’re left with ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS and a few online sources. We listened to NPR and watched a variety of video with the sound down.

That’s the only time, thus far, where I truly wanted cable. That said, I miss indulging my Barefoot Contessa habit on Food Network, but I had already grown bored of channel-flipping so I was weaned off it long before we got rid of cable.

Now, long-term? This is where it gets interesting. I’m not a big believer that all video is going to go online for free, or even in some advertiser-supported manner. I think a fair amount of stuff will stream free with ads, and I think the iTunes subscription model for series is reasonably viable.

What about the rest? I think cable companies will swallow the online distribution model through new set-top boxes that make watching TV and the Internet a near-seamless experience; and second, they’ll develop content deals with networks and producers to offer a huge array of stuff either through their own on-demand libraries (disastrous) or perhaps more likely, through Internet delivery platforms that are available only to cable subscribers.

This will add the magic element of Actual Revenue You Can See On A Balance Sheet to the online video equation, and most content of consequence will shift here. And again, the new set-tops will make the transition between traditional cable channels and Hulu-style internet delivery basically seamless.

Which means in 5 years, maybe I’ll be back on cable again. This has been my theory for the past two months. Two months from now, I might have a different theory. But that’s why this is fun, right?

Between now and then, we’ll be transitioning to a Mac Mini to reduce the electronic footprint in the living room.

A few caveats: we’re not a household that spends 4 hours a day in front of the TV. We’re not big consumers of the current hit series, with a couple exceptions. We don’t watch much live sports or live news. So keeping that in mind, let’s look at what’s available.

TV… Meet the Mouse

This little saga began with a new house, a difficult satellite install that led us to settle for cable, and our general dissatisfaction with the results. In March, we hauled Chuck’s old Mac G5 out of the closet and hooked it up to the TV. Yes, we can now write emails in a font large enough that passersby can read. We don’t do that, though. We watch the web. Most of that stuff out there in the cloud scales nicely to full-screen with a click of the mouse and a lot of it looks great. And connecting the computer to the TV opens up a whole range of viewing possibilities. So much so, that cable and satellite are superfluous.

Local Digital Television

We plugged in the Eye TV Hybrid USB tuner I bought last year, installed the software, hooked up a small indoor antenna (we live near the tall towers), and we have access to our local SD and HD signals. Elgato’s software uses your computer as a PVR, so I set up a few shows for the software to capture (Charlie Rose, NOVA). Done.

I want to stop for a minute and think about the enormity of this single change. It’s big for me, at least, because, since 1980 (the year my parents got cable), I’ve lived in a world where video was delivered over coax and not over-the-air. There are still large numbers of viewers who watch OTA TV, but if you had told me 5 years ago that I’d be buying an antenna for broadcast TV, I would have thought you were crazy. What changed all that? Digital encoding, first of all: as long as you can get a usable signal, it looks great; there’s no in-between. Second, cable’s truly awful compression of of video, including HD, as companies have tried to add more and more channels on finite bandwidth. (I think satellite-delivered HD – also compressed – looks better, but I couldn’t care less about that debate.)

OK, so now we have the networks, as well as the local PBS multicast (four channels in Kentucky.)

Hulu.com

The content platform from NBCU and Fox now includes lots of other providers, and as much as I didn’t want to like it at first, we spend a couple hours a week now, watching current and archive episodes of The Simpsons, Arrested Development, Top Chef and some classic TV shows on Hulu. It’s a go-to place for currently available network content. So are ABC, CBS, CW etc., all of which offer some full-length episodes. Hulu (and most other network platforms) insert commercials, which you can’t easily avoid, but in the case of Hulu, each break generally lasts 30-seconds or less. I think I’ll survive. The streaming service is reliable, and looks great when it’s fullscreen on a 32-inch LCD.

iTunes Music Store: TV Shows

There’s a lot of stuff here from a variety of networks – shows that might be harder to find elsewhere, at least before they reach DVD – from sources like History Channel and BBC America. One Saturday night a few weeks ago, we bought a couple episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations series from the Travel Channel. For $4, we got 90 minutes of entertainment. We thought it was a good exchange. You can also subscribe to a season from many series and get automatic delivery of new episodes. (Hulu has just added this feature, although it’s an addition of the episodes to a queue, not delivery, since Hulu is a streaming service.)

iTunes Music Store + The Internets: Video Podcasts

Video podcasts are taking off, but file size and download speeds, as well as viewing habits, generally dictate that these podcasts are on the short side. Still there’s great stuff to match your interests. We watch Winelibrary TV nearly every day, for instance. Automatically downloaded (like any other podcast), the video looks just fine on a 32 inch LCD. I subscribe to ScobelizerTV and a few other techie podcasts, too. I used to watch on my notebook or iPhone, but I’ve transferred these subscriptions to the TV. More video podcasts are also switching to HD.

Joost

I use this platform sometimes on my notebook, but the Mac version is limited to Intel Macs – our TV-connected G5 is a PowerPC model. Were it not for that, we’d watch more video on Joost.

Netflix

Whether you’re streaming movies and docs from Netflix or getting them in the mail, I count them as networked video because of their speedy delivery and large selection.

Personal Public Television

I named this category for what I think would be the perfect Me-PBS. Of course, no one would ever watch it but me, but you can make you own personal PBS or CSPAN, too, with stuff you find fascinating.

• Fora.tv, which features all kinds of smart television, from seminars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the Long Now Foundation. I import feeds from some providers directly into iTunes, and I’ve created some custom feeds for specific topics.
• iTunesU, part of the Music Store, has a wealth of lectures and college courses from around the country. There’s a lot of audio, but you’ll find a growing library of video, too, produced by universities, KQED, LinkTV and the New York Public Library, among others.
• Google Tech Talks. Google brings some of the smartest people around to its campuses to speak to staff, and Google shares nearly all of it free. The tech talks are probably the most well known, but if you search, you’ll find a range of guest speakers. I’ve grabbed the Tech Talks feed and iTunes takes care of the rest.
• Beet.tv. I wouldn’t call myself a heavy viewer of Beet.tv, but I have the feed in iTunes, and regularly find interesting short-form, technology-related content there.
• CBC and Radio-Canada: We watch The National from CBC occasionally, as well as CBC Montreal’s evening news. We’re glad to have it, but CBC doesn’t offer a full-screen viewing option. Such an omission was acceptable in 2005. It isn’t now. Radio-Canada’s 24-hour French news network, RDI, streams most of the time and we watch that, too.
• ABC Australia: a few shows are available for download, including The Cook and the Chef – personal favorite. (ABC has a history of good cooking shows – Kylie Kwong and Surfing the Menu among them. Kwong made it to the US on Discovery Home; I don’t think Surfing has.)
• One of the best sites to discover new content for your Me-PBS channel is Open Culture.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re still going around telling that old joke that the only video on the Internet is stupid cat tricks, you should really have a look around.

Most of the content I’ve listed above downloads to your computer; having a fast connection isn’t required. But for Hulu and other streaming services like ABC.com and Joost, you’ll need a decent broadband service. (We have 20Mbps at home, but even a basic 1.5Mbps DSL or cable modem service should work well, depending on what else you’re doing online.)

What will we miss by cutting the coax? A few things, I suppose. A number of shows aren’t available online. I like a few Food network shows, but Food is pretty much a non-player online, unless you count the small video effort on its own site. I’d like to see all of the Scripps networks get on board with iTunes, Hulu or Joost. There’s also very little HD online yet; programs like Discovery Atlas look good on iTunes but they’re breathtaking on DiscoveryHD.

But, after years of paying more and more to get access to hundreds of channels that I don’t watch, plus the small number that I do, I think we’re just about at the point where we can let it go, and in return, discover a wealth of stuff we can enjoy.

UPDATE: Lest, I create confusion, I’m canceling my cable subscription, but not my cable broadband service. So I’ll still have a black cable coming out of the wall. Where I live, cable provides the fastest Internet service and I want speed. For the bean-counters, my monthly Internet charge will rise (because of the cable company bundling strategy), but I’ll still be paying around $50/month less without cable.