After some thought, Sarah and I have decided that we were spending entirely too much money on services from Time Warner.  Our bill from them tops $160/mo, for digital cable TV (with two boxes), home phone service, internet access, and home security monitoring.  Now, internet access is a necessity, and the security monitoring gives us peace of mind...  But the TV and phone... well...

I looked at what we usually watch on TV, and the vast majority of it is on the broadcast networks.  The small amount of remaining programming we can live without, certainly at a savings of $50/mo or more.  So as an experiment, I drove over to the local Radio Shack and picked up an antenna to see how well it would work.  Turns out, it works great.  I get all the broadcast networks in perfect HD (actually higher bitrate than I was getting over cable), plus all the silly sub-channels.  I ran a cable from the antenna to the HD tuner card in the MythTV box, and all appears to be well.  Only minor issue is that I only have one HD tuner in the MythTV box, so I could only record one show at a time, but that's easily remedied with the second card I ordered (due to arrive today).  Cost: $20 for the antenna (though I might need to exchange it for a more expensive model), and $50 for the additional card for the MythTV box.  Savings: about $50/mo.

So then there's the phone, which is a little more tricky.  The home phone service costs us $40/mo.  Sarah and I both have cellphones that have a ludicrous number of extra minutes every month, in addition to the fact that we're usually only home at night when minutes are unlimited anyway.  But... the home security system ties into the phone, and because of the location/construction of the house, the cell phones don't work as well as I'd like inside.  Problem 1 is solved with a cell modem for the security system that the security people sell.  Problem 2 actually has a cooler solution.  Sprint now sells a device called Airave, made by Samsung.  It's a femtocell.  Basically, it hooks up to your internet connection and acts as your own private cell tower.  So I picked one up and tried it out, and it seems to work great.  Calls are now perfectly clear.  Cost: $100 for the cell modem for the security plus $12 extra per month for service, and $100 for the Airave plus $5 extra per month (yeah, I'm slightly annoyed that I need to pay to improve Sprint's network for them).  Savings: about $23/mo.

So in total, this experiment will cost $270 up front, but will save us somewhere on the order of $80/mo.  So after 4 months, we'll make up the initial cost and will be saving a decent amount of money.  Not too shabby.