What is it like to go for a year without cable TV?

Kevin Sintumuang stopped subscribing to cable TV a year ago, and he looks back on his decision.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m glad we went our separate ways. You still act like such a jerk. When are you going to learn that it’s wrong to force people to buy hundreds of channels they don’t watch when they really only want a dozen or so? I know, I know — that’s just how the business works; it’s how you’ve made money for decades. But have you ever thought about how that makes the people you’re supposed to care about, i.e., your subscribers, feel? Sometimes I think you’re missing a sensitivity chip. You should watch more Oprah and fewer house-flipping programs.

Internet TV? It respects me. It’s progressive. It lets me choose what I want to watch, when I want to watch, whether a show I buy through my Apple TV or some foreign movie I stream on Hulu Plus that makes me feel like an artsy college student again. I can even watch live sports on Aereo (see sidebar). It’ll never force me to subscribe to a channel with a show about pawnshop owners making customized bikes for ghost-hunting housewives.

Aside from a brief stint earlier this year so that we could watch the Olympics, we’ve gone without cable TV for several years, and we’ve hardly missed it. Between Netflix and Hulu, we’ve found plenty of content to watch, and we’ve saved hundreds of dollars. Unless you’re an avid sports fan, or you really want HBO et al., I’m convinced that there’s little to no reason to be a cable TV subscriber these days.