We went to San Diego to visit Chips family this Christmas weekend and we were introduced to a concept that we never even thought of when it comes to watching tv. Cancel our cable and get an internet tv box and watch Netflix and Hulu only.

Ok, I’ve known about Hulu for a few years, I love Hulu for watching shows that I missed when they first aired on tv. When I was a regular user of the site they only had Fox and NBC that I knew of. Whenever I’d miss my CBS, ABC and CW shows I’d go there and they would redirect me to the network website.

We used to get Netflix DVD’s in the mail and I was a member when they first introduced streaming movies on their site. They would only allow you to watch 8 hours of movies per month with the rental membership and that clock was ticking away even when your movie was paused. I would pause it so that it could download because it played faster than it could download. This was when I had a lower DSL speed. So if I let it play in real-time, it would keep pausing which made it very difficult to watch and they only had older movies available for download so it really wasn’t worth my time since they had a very small selection.

What we were told by relatives was that if we had an X-box then we could watch Hulu and Netflix and replace our cable but what they don’t realize is that we don’t have an X-box, Wii or PS3 so we can’t just go out and pay a few hundred dollars for a video gaming system just so we can save money every month on our cable. But I may have found an alternative.

The Roku player is way cheaper than an x-box and it allows you to watch your internet tv shows and movies with Hulu and Netflix as well as many other services. There is no monthly fee with Roku, all you pay for is the monthly fee that the services like Hulu and Netflix charge. Hulu Plus charges $7.99 per month and Netflix charges $9.99 per month. Well, I pay $110 per month for my cable and I hardly ever watch it.

I can watch my shows when they come on at their regular time but sometimes that time isn’t convenient. Also, I ignore the phone when it rings because I don’t want to be interrupted during my shows because if I miss one second of it then I feel lost. Well, this way I can pause it when the phone rings instead.

The downside is that I can’t watch my shows when they air, like when Chuck is on at 8pm on Monday nights, I won’t be able to see it until the next day. I mean, I can deal with that but at the same time, I like to watch it when it comes on, not the next day. The last few seasons I had multiple shows on multiple channels at the same time so some shows I was forced to watch on Hulu the next day which I didn’t mind but it was irritating to have to wait. Also some of my shows weren’t on Hulu, I had to go to the ABC website for Pushing Daisies and the CW website for Smallville.

I have a DVD recorder but ever since they switched over to digital cable they have a block on recorders unless they are DVR recorders. I used to record one show on one channel on a DVD Ram disc while watching another show on another channel while it was on. After my shows were over then I’d watch what I recorded then delete it from the disc. Well, now I can’t even do that so my DVD recorder is a giant $250 paperweight.

Well, we won’t be starting this up right away because we have to order the Roku box for the living room and order the Hulu and Netflix services the day it arrives then we will try it and see if we like it before canceling our cable.

The problem is, I’m still going to have to use my computer to watch my CW shows because I looked on Hulu and they aren’t there. They might be on Netflix, I don’t know because they only have the dvd’s for season 10 of Smallville on their site. It doesn’t look like I can watch ALL of my shows on there which is a real bummer.

Also, sometimes you just like to turn the tv on and watch whatever is on. I don’t know if I want to feel pressured to choose something to turn on then when it’s over I gotta make another decision. At least with Cable you can turn it on a channel and watch whatever is on for a few hours.

I also didn’t see any of my HBO and Showtime shows. True Blood comes on in the summertime and if Hulu doesn’t have it and Netflix doesn’t have the current episodes for streaming then I’m gonna be screwed. I’m gonna have to go to a p2p website and download them. I don’t want to have to do that. I pay for HBO and Showtime each month and I’m gonna lose them over this so that would suck big time.

On one hand I want to save myself some big bucks every month but on the other hand, I’m still gonna have to use the computer to watch certain shows which I don’t like.

But, maybe this will convince me. Like I said, I pay $110 for cable and if we get this then I will only have to pay $18 per month for Hulu and Netflix. That’s a savings of $92 per month, that’s $1,104 per year in savings. Of course that will only go towards buying more groceries every month so that is great for us but not great when I can’t see True Blood.

I have a lot to think about here. Maybe someone can give me their opinions about #1 the Roku box and #2 this whole concept of canceling cable and going with internet tv instead. Please, give me all of your thoughts.