PVR Wire

I've pondered several times whether I could cancel my cable subscription and still catch all the shows I really want to watch. Well, Paul Colligan was tired of pondering, so he decided to go ahead and do it -- for an entire year. He's cleverly titled his blog documenting the project Year of Living Digitally.

The other day, for example, he listed the seven TV shows he wants to watch regularly. If he purchases each episode via iTunes at $1.99 per episode, he'll be spending $52 a month on television. That's less than some people's cable bills. Of course, some of the shows are available for free, through web services set up by the networks that air them.

Colligan's main ally in his quest for digital entertainment is his Xbox 360, which acts as a media extender for content on his computer. He can also download videos directly from the Xbox Marketplace.

I don't think anybody doubts that you CAN sever the cable connection at this point, the question is, would you want to? If you like tinkering around with your media in multiple formats before watching it, maybe. And if you like having to go to iTunes to purchase some content while other's available at sites like MovieLink, and yet other content is available for free if you stream it through a web browser, then have at it.

This still seems like an early adopter game to me. I'll be most interested in seeing how his wife and kids react to the new reality of the Colligan household.

Two last things to note.

1. Colligan will not be spending much time on peer to peer networks here. His goal is to highlight the legal options for obtaining digital entertainment.
2. The saddest part of the experiment so far is that he went and put the family TiVo up for auction on eBay.

[via jkOnTheRun]