What's out: Cable TV. What's in: Internet television.

I'm looking at my expenses for duplication of services. I have a home phone and a cell phone for example. I also have cable television and high-speed Internet. Not duplicate services, you say? Yeah, you're right; cable TV decides for me what I'll watch and when, while TV over the Internet lets me watch what and when I want. For free.

All right, "for free" only pertains when I'm taking advantage of free wireless in public places, but still, the cost of my eight mg. service at home is slight compared to my cable bill. I have around 200 channels of crap programming on my cable, but only watch half a dozen of them.

Meanwhile, all of the networks and many independents are offering the same shows, plus many, many more, in streaming video format I can watch on my PC. Better yet, most of these come with considerably few commercials. The public is catching on, too; in the past year, the number of adults watching streaming video has jumped from 49% to 60%.

Not all is beer and skittles, however; the picture frame on my computer is rather small, since each square inch of video takes up considerable band width, and therefore the feed doesn't work well for group watching.