Why Life Without Cable or Satellite May Be Easier than You Think – Saving Money – Lifehacker.

If you’re interested in dropping your overpriced monthly cable bill but aren’t sure how you’d survive without your TV favorites, the gadget gurus at Gizmodo turn an eye toward their pocketbooks and discover life without cable isn’t as hard as you’d think.

Back in January Kevin detailed how he cut the cable for good with Boxee and Apple TV. Gizmodo’s Sean Fallon takes a similar approach, but opts for a small Windows box over Apple TV so he’s got more options to easily try out different media center software as it comes out. After ditching his cable package for a month for media he could stream for free with services like Hulu or Netflix, how did he feel?

When all was said and done, I found my experience without standard cable television to be more liberating than anything else. Sure, streaming video isn’t always HD quality, not all of my favorite shows are readily available, and I have to search around a bit more for the things I want to watch—but I didn’t suffer and I didn’t feel like I was missing out. The added expense [of cable] was not justifiable—especially when I was paying for a bunch of things I never watched. The best part is that I was able to get pretty much everything I needed with a basic set of tools that anyone with a computer can take advantage of right away.

It’s worth noting that Fallon didn’t even “cheat” and use BitTorrent, so all the content he was accessing was freely and legitimately available on the internet.

Have we got any ex-cable or -satellite subscribers who’ve made the transition away from their bloated subscription packages? Let’s hear more about your experience in the comments.