Cable / Satellite are on a lot of people's chopping blocks when it comes to shaving month expenses anyway they can.

This year alone, I've already canceled my Sirius subscription. $12 a month may not seem like a lot to most people, but when the provider removes value to me - like taking channels from the genre I like and giving the bandwidth to an XM channel post merger, I called it quits.

Cable was the only option for me until 1994, when DBS became affordable enough to purchase and install for the regular people. I dumped cable in 1994 because the lines in my neighborhood were 13+ years old at the time, and every-single-time it rained, I'd have to deal with picture quality issues until the weather was warm enough to dry the lines again. With that type of wonkyness, there was no way I'd even think about using cable for internet in my area.

Satellite is this/close to being the next item I chop from the budget. Because I'm 20 miles from most of the transmitters in Chicago, it's reasonable to assume I can install a decent antenna on the roof (wow - remember those!?) and get over the air uncompressed (no MPEG4 recompression by the DBS provider) HD programming.

The real kick in the (male reproductive organ) this year was when I received a notice on the 5th of March, dated on the 4th of March, and postmarked on the 3rd of March notifying me that they were again going to raise my rates on the 1st of the month of March. That's low - sending mail 4 days after you've raised the rates to tell me "we're going to raise the rates". Why even bother wasting paper and postage to tell me what you've already done?

I don't bother with premium channels or pay-per-view, since the extra $8-$14 per month isn't sometime I value. IF, and this is a big IF, IF I wanted to see an un-cut un-edited-for-television movie, I can rent it from Lackluster or via online delivery.

Subscription based services will decline this year IMHO because more and more people will start wondering why they need to pay for what they don't want and the programs they do want are available by alternative means - both legally and illegally.

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