I spent a lot of time researching entertainment options before making the call to AT&T to cancel the TV portion of our U-verse service. Along with the TV service, we also had 6Mbps U-verse high-speed Internet, which we have kept and has provided almost all of our entertainment for the last three years. Dropping U-verse TV took our monthly bill from around $105 monthly to $35/month for AT&T U-verse 6Mbps high-speed Internet only. The Internet price has increased to $40 and now $43 monthly, but is still a great value for us at about one-third the price of what we would be paying for TV and Internet.
My first step was to invest in two indoor "rabbit-ear" type powered antennas - one for each of our TVs. These can be found at Amazon or some local retailers and vary in signal strength and price. I bought Zenith and RCA antennas that cost around $30-$40 each. If you live in or near a city with local TV stations, you can receive more local channels in better quality than cable or satellite provides absolutely free. How? Now that TV broadcasting is digital, many local stations offer a second and sometimes third channel as well as the main channel you are used to watching. Some extra channels may have continuous local weather information while others may offer music videos or other variety programs. The extra content may or may not be of interest to you, but it is absolutely free and unavailable on most cable and satellite systems. When watching an HD program with an antenna, you are getting the best signal available anywhere. The HD signal you pay for with cable or satellite begins with a direct connection or antenna feed, is highly compressed to travel along with the hundreds of other channels, and then uncompressed when the box or receiver sends the picture to your TV. Visit antennaweb.org, enter your zip code, and you will see the type of antenna you need and a list of channels you can expect to receive.
Most of our favorite shows were on the major networks - ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. If we were unable to see them live, most were streamed on Hulu.com or the network's website. I bought a cable that used the S-Video output and headphone audio output of our laptop to connect to our TV's RCA inputs. It is even easier to connect with an HDMI cable if your laptop and TV have HDMI ports. A note about using HDMI - DO NOT pay for an over-priced, "premium" cable. Look for a low-cost one on Amazon.com and see how much you can save.
Our cord cutting journey began with absolutely no monthly cost for entertainment (besides our monthly Internet access) - only the one-time cost of antennas and the laptop-to-TV cable. Having twin newborns at home cut down on our free time, but one of us was always home with the boys, so we had a lot more time at home than when we were both working. Our entertainment consisted of local over-the-air TV, local radio, streaming radio/music/podcasts, our rarely-watched DVD collection. I also used the laptop and iTunes to create a huge library of our MP3 music and many of our music CDs for instant access to lots of music that we were able to control from anywhere in the house with the iTunes Remote app on our phones.
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