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Francisca and I have loved numerous HBO shows for years. Entourage continues to be one of our favorites and we like what we’ve seen so far of In Treatment. I say “what we’ve seen so far” because we don’t actually get HBO. We’re watching the first 15 episodes of In Treatment on our Apple TV via the free official podcast and getting Entourage via DVD.

We made a decision to cancel cable (including HBO) last year, because we didn’t watch enough TV in an average month to justify $89.70 a month plus tax. (That happens to be the minimum non-teaser price from our cable company to get a package that includes HBO.)

Many of the shows we watch are available for free via an HD Over-The-Air antenna that works with our HD TiVo. And, most of those that aren’t can purchased for $1.99 either via iTunes and sent to our Apple TV or via Amazon Unbox and sent to our TiVo.

I say “most” because HBO doesn’t sell any of its content on iTunes or Amazon Unbox. I would happily pay HBO $1.99 per 30-minute episode of In Treatmemt, which seems more than reasonable to me, if it would just sell the show digitally. But, it won’t.

Hell, HBO doesn’t even sell old, discontinued content digitally. If you want to watch Six Feet Under from 2001 or Sex in the City from 1998, it means buying or renting DVDs. Is HBO seriously thinking that digital sales would cannibalize DVD revenue for content that old? It strikes me as a company that just doesn’t understand where content delivery is heading.

Up until recently, HBO was by far the best content provider on cable and so could dictate the terms of content delivery. I think that is going to change. Networks like FX, AMC, and Showtime are creating great shows and selling them digitally (though sometimes after a delay from when they aired on cable). The earth is moving under HBO’s feet.

At some point, I think people will tire of paying their HBO Tax and want to get their content when and how they want it. Let’s just hope that HBO wakes up to this fact sooner rather than later, as I really would love to keep watching its shows.

Marco just wrote about his frustrations with paying so much for entertainment cable and getting so little in return. I reached this same boiling point a few months back, though my frustrations extended to Internet access in addition to entertainment cable. So, I killed cable and here was my solution:

• We switched from a cable modem to Verizon FiOS. It’s a lot faster for about the same money as I was paying for my cable modem. (Admittedly, not everyone can get FiOS, but there is probably a solution that is as good or better than your cable modem for about the same money.)
• My wife and I already didn’t have a home phone and we still don’t. With mobile phone, Skype, iChat, etc., a home phone is just more money, another number to remember, and another voice mail to check.
• I bought an HD Over-The-Air Antenna and a TiVo Series 3 (the lower-end model). So, we can now record broadcast content in HD for free. Sweet. As bonus, I can use the TiVo Series 3 to view Amazon Unbox content, which includes a pretty extensive TV and movie selection.
• I also bought an Apple TV, so we can view content from the iTunes store on our TV.
• We already had a DVD, so we can still buy or rent DVD content.

So, now we don’t pay for cable at all. We either get our entertainment in broadcast HD for free or we purchase/rent the specific content we want via Amazon Unbox, iTunes Store, or DVD. (If you watch live, non-broadcast sports, this plan won’t work for you. But, that’s not an issue for us.)

The upfront costs of all of this were significant, I won’t deny that. But, the monthly TiVo subscription of $17 is our only monthly payment now for TV entertainment. No cable bill. And, buying/renting the content we can’t get free via broadcast is costing a small fraction of what our cable bill did. Best of all, during the holidays and the writers’ strike, while everyone else is paying $80 or more a month for re-runs and reality shows, we’re only paying $17 for our TiVo.

We’re saving enough money that we’ll probably recoup our initial costs within a year a two. And, I so love not giving the cable company money each month!