We "cut the cord" about a year ago.  We were paying about $100 bucks a month to essentially watch three or four shows.  Like Rain we have a "smart tv" and got a digital antenna which gives us all OTA broadcast channels in uncompressed HD...which is great.  I studied the layout of the cheap streamers and went with Hulu and Amazon Prime (which also gives us free two day shipping on anything we buy through Amazon).  Just recently (again, like Rain) we purchased, in our case, a Roku 3 and after setting it up and adding all the free channels we wanted...which were numerous...decided to try HBO NOW...which we'll probably keep and let one of our other paid subscriptions go.  With the exception of not being able to watch The Rachel Maddow show one day after airing (my wife's favorite, which we used to dvr) we get everything we used to watch and much, much more for much, much less per month.  From my reading folks are ditching their cable/satellite TV in droves and true "ala carte" pricing is in the not too distant future.  We'd never go back to the old paradigm.  Of course it's just the two of us...no kids...and we don't watch much TV...we only have one in the house, which seems to have been quite an astounding fact to every cable or satellite provider who has come to hook us up to a new service over lo these many years.  So...YMMV.
 

patm300e
2 words - Live Sports. 
 
The cable companies have a monopoly on them and they currently are the only reason I have cable... sigh...
I have an Emby Server for movies (Like Plex, but works on ripped DVDs without converting them). 

 
Well, we get more live sports than we'll ever be able to watch and we don't have cable.  We have Dish.  I used to have DirecTV and that was much better than cable as well.
 
We DO have to put up with Comcrap for our internet service, but that's the only thing.
 

No cable here. An antenna gets me local news, and Netflix provides all the entertainment I can possibly handle. 
 

A couple of years ago, after Comcast (our local provider) had been slowly raising our rates every year, I finally had had enough. When their customer service would not reduce our rates (it was going to be hiked to $161/mo for basic cable & internet), I cut the cord and dropped the cable altogether and just kept the high speed internet service for $60/mo. I got a pair of digital rabbit ears and got free HD signals of local broadcasts over the air. About a year later a Comcast rep called out of the blue and offered a deal to get us back. A one year promo for basic cable, double our existing internet bandwidth (from 15 to 30megs up/down) and they threw in HBO to sweeten the deal for only $11 more a month ($71/mo total). Maybe because of past history (of me walking away from high rates), Comcast offered to extend the same deal another 2 years (until October 2017) when the one year promo was about to expire!!!!!! Being a huge Game of Thrones fan, how could I pass on basic able, free HBO and double my internet speed for only $11 more a month with the rate locked for two more years!. 
 
The point to the story is you have to be willing to walk away from your cable for an extended period of time. That is when your local provider will come back to you with an amazing deal to get you back.
 
Cheers,
 
Billy Buck

We did this in the UK a few months back. We did have Sky(satellite tv) and was costing us £75 pcm for tv phone and broadband for basic package no sports or movies.
Now have Now Tv which bizarrely is owned by Sky got movies and extra entertainment channels plus freeview and record on our sky box plus phone and broadband for about £35. We have now tv on two different tvs plus two other devices. That includes unlimited broadband (not fibre but we get about 14mbps through our line) and all evening and weekend phone calls.

Moshkito
Hi,
 
Considering I work for a cable company, I do not have TV at all. I only use the Internet, and gave up on TV, because I do not like commercials and interruptions to the shows and such, are very bothersome for me and my imagination.
 
 

That is exactly what I cannot stand about the TV. You cannot immerse yourself in a show because of the constant interruptions from ads, trailers and promos. The music associated with these horrible things disturbs me deeply too. Every now and then in the gym I figure what the hell, I'll watch 5 minutes of TV. I last about a minute. 

D.V.R.

sharke
 
That is exactly what I cannot stand about the TV. You cannot immerse yourself in a show because of the constant interruptions from ads, trailers and promos. The music associated with these horrible things disturbs me deeply too. Every now and then in the gym I figure what the hell, I'll watch 5 minutes of TV. I last about a minute. 

From watching Hulu and being forced to watch commercials, I gather that there is a new trend among the people who come up with publicity - commercials need to make as little sense as possible, and in a lot of cases, to have strictly nothing to do with what's advertised.
 
I guess the tactic is to puzzle you as much as possible so that the brand name sticks in your mind. My wife and I often end up looking at each other going - what the... Can it really be THAT stupid?
 
I personally find it an agression on intelligence so if anything, it only causes me to boycott those product. On the other hand, the usual alternative, an agression on the senses, isn't much more successful with me.
 

Hey, thanks for all the replies. Some very interesting options out there, it seems
 
Much to look into, even though I already have been scouring Google for different things as it is.

bitflipper
No cable here. An antenna gets me local news, and Netflix provides all the entertainment I can possibly handle. 
 

Ditto