I'm at 2 years without subscribed cable and haven't missed a thing. I was on PVR time, so I never watched live TV. I'm not into sports or events like the Oscars/Grammies, so that part isn't a problem. For content, one needs a source, delivery device, an internet connection with lots of bandwidth (not the basics). Sources: for tv shows, EZtv.it will cover most of it. other private torrent sites like IPTorrents, TVTorrents, etc. will fill the gaps for movies, IPTorrents, RessurectTheNet, Passthepopcorn if all else fails, Piratebay's latest URL. They move every few months. here's a guide to find some public torrent trackers Fuckin' NETFLIX ($7/mth). Get an unblock-us.com account for $5/mth and have access to stream content from any locale. Connection: The speed doesn't necessarily matter, but the bandwidth allowance does. one can work with 250 GB if they don't get all the super high quality bluray rips. If you have a 1080p display and 5.1 digital system, you will do fine with each compressed format (x264, xvid, and mp4) without noticeably losing quality. Delivery: I've found AppleTV to be a great device. Having a mac, and the worst thing one has to do (which isn't bad) is to convert formats like xvid and mkv to mp4/m4v. Buuuut it pretty much requires iTunes. So if organizing video media in iTunes is agains your morals, you can try other media centers with 3rd party tools. They definitely exist. There might be some hacking (jailbreak) involved though. Dangerous road. I have tried the PS3 functionality with a windows app that takes care of streaming and I found AppleTV to be superior and stopped there. So I can't comment on Roku (apparently great) or chromecast. If I was dependant on a windows PC, I would probably avoid AppleTV and go for Roku.