Maximum PC

I'm trying to cut down on monthly utilities, and am thinking of getting rid of my cable connection (for TV). I plan on keeping my cable internet, though, and am looking for a way to watch cable/satalite TV channels through the Internet?

I'm aware of sites like Joost and Hulu and such, but want to know if there's a paid site that you can use to watch newer content (and as much of the cable channels I would normally hoave gotten, such as Spike, Discovery Channel, etc), and even some of the local channels ABC, NBC, etc.

Anyone know of a service that provides this (I just don't want to pay $80 per month for cable TV when I only watch a handful of TV shows, some of which I can watch on Hulu).

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking here as the question you're asking doesn't seem to be along the lines of "I went to switch service" (you are paying for cable, and now you want to pay for satellite instead?)

Anyhow, it does sound like you should be using something like Boxee or upgrading to win 7 and using the media center capabilities and just pull the shows you want to watch from there. Mind you, not everything is available through those places either and I'm sure there's probably instances where you need to subscribe to a cable or satellite provider to watch it.

What I'm really after is something similar to Hulu, but that has newer content, and in particular, content from some of the major cable/satellite TV providers, such as Comedy Central, SPIKE, Discovery channel ,etc.

I don't need the movie stuff, just want to be able to watch new episodes of my favorite shows (some of which come on regular broadcast TV anyway). I just mainly want to see if I can save some money by not having to get cable TV and cable Internet (I will get the cable Internet regardless of what I choose with the TV service). Even if it saves me only $30 per month, then it's worth it to me.

I have Comcast right now, and i'm aware of their XFinity package, but it ends up being close to $120 per month after promotions...

AS for the subscription, I don't mind paying a small amount, I just don't want to pay $70 per month so I can watch four TV shows on a regular basis...

Does this make more sense?

OK, I have Win7 on all of my computers (all of them have Media Center capabilities included). Are you suggesting that maybe I get a TV tuner for the computer and then just use Media Center with that??

You can use a TV tuner to pickup and record OTA broadcasts (generally your local channels). It's not going to pull in feeds from say DiscoveryChannel.co though.

I believe though you can add, again say DiscoveryChannel in the media center settings, so it just shows up as a channel you want to watch there.

Itunes carries many shows (including Discovery channel shows) and you can buy them there for around $1.99 an episode.

Amazon.com has TV shows as well for around the same price.

@OP: I think you are going to have a very hard time finding exactly what you are looking for. Outside of subscribing to cable/satellite, there isn't much that competes. Oh and don't sign up for one of those online subscription services that promise you a ton of channels for a small monthly fee.

yea...at best, you may be able to lower your base package with the cable company and subsidize the content via live streams or go solely with live streams and possibly lose some content...whereas you would need to investigate what's out there. Unfortunately, there's really no pre-definded setup for these places with any program or service and you certainly can not equate cable/satellite with watching across the internet.