[Getting Rich Slowly] When we cut our cable bill from $65.82 per month to $11.30, I knew we would save over $50 per month… Since we started, we’ve purchased eleven “seasons” from iTunes, totaling $398.42 (or about $36.22 per season). This works out to about $16.60 per month. When added to our $11.30 basic cable bill, we’re paying $27.90 each month for television. That’s less than half of what we were paying before.

Back in 2006 (and again in 2007) I made the bold statement that Television, as you know it, is dead.

Since then, we’ve had a digital conversion (oops, make that June 12th now), but the basic assertion was that opt-in video is simply a better way to consume television. The post this morning up on “Getting Rich Slowly” reminded me on how much of a better model this also is for your wallet.

So here’s the obligatory 2009 post to document my shift in the way that I consume media:

• My home theater is now powered by a Macbook. While I’d prefer this to be a ‘dedicated’ device, such as an Apple TV or XBox 360, I need the ability to stream ‘live’ events to the big screen.
• How do I push around HD? The HDHomeRun (in the closet) has dual QAM tuners and ethernet out – I can push HD quality television over IP anywhere in the house.
• The living room has a TiVo Series 3 HD. Since this room is where most of our TV watching occurs, it had to have the most WAF friendly device present. Added bonus: Netflix Instant Watch movies.
• Apple TV. Probably the biggest change over the last 2 years has been this devices infiltration our our home. Ranking very high on the Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) scale, we now have one in the living room, the playroom and our bedroom.
• Media storage and server. A few years back, I had a massive PC with 4 drives in a RAID array serving digital content (photos, music and video) to the theater. Today, this is all handled by a single Mac Mini in the closet with 2TB of external storage.

And, like all things, nothing is perfect. Here’s my short list of 2009 “wants”:

• Slingbox to release a native HD client for the Mac. None of this “browser” based malarky that they’ve announced.
• Slingbox to finally release it’s iPhone client.
• Time Capsule to be able to be an iTunes Server, so I can dump the Mac Mini and have my entire library served up from a small, embedded device in the closet.
• Netflix to release (as part of their API) a way to get Instant Watch streams via H.264.
• Apple TV to support USB QAM tuners, this way I could switch to a ‘device’ in the theater, making it easier for the wife and kids to watch content in there.

Now, if I could only get Hulu and Netflix streaming on my AppleTV…..