Our household is set up like gobrono. DH handled the research for our house audio. He decided to use the sonos system. I believe he said it can get expensive if you want different music playing in different rooms. But if you are okay with the same music everywhere with a volume on/off switch in each room then it's not that expensive. I know it was nowhere near $1300/room. We were able to put speakers in 5 areas-outdoor patio, mater bath, exercise room, pool table room and kitchen. The receiver will be in our office. And he said something about playing the music from our itunes and being able to choose music on our iphone.

Hi to Ravencajun...thanks for the warnings. I looked at the links and did a google search and while it may be a hit or miss kind of thing and I may get "burned" by wildblue....I can not tell you how fed up I am with dial up. Willing to try anything!!! I looked into aircards too but not available in my area. At least not that I could find. My tech knowledge is very limited (read 33rpm in an I=pod world) and I generally rely on my children to guide me along. All I can say is hopefully the satellite thing will work out for me. It seems to be only option other than dial up at this point. I will try to post again and let you know how it works out for me. Please wish me luck. Murphy

I was in a bad financial situation several years back and cable TV became a definite unaffordable. I tried to ween off from it by going from the $45/mo "basic" to the $15/mo very basic that, as I recall had Food channel, WGN and maybe TBS or something like that. After about a month or two I figured out it wasn't worth $5/mo per channel so I dropped it. I've debated about getting Dish, but I am happy with simply broadcast. I enjoy the morning news. I enjoy the reruns. There's a few broadcast shows I really enjoy and the PBS stations here are very good. They have a wide variety and are very progressive and I watch them a lot. They give me a better weather channel than cable. And I have a lot of tapes of movies and shows that I enjoy so I can have something to watch if I really want to. When I'm out of town and staying in a motel, I used to look forward to having cable again. I don't find much on there I really like that well! Now there is one thing though, the high speed internet. That has me thinking, but around here it would be about $35/mo for the cheapest broadband by the time you get all the taxes and fees on it, so I'll stay with my $5/mo dialup. I do like the internet. I like to learn things. I like to share things. I like to keep up on the weather and stuff. So the internet is important to me, and it also is so much entertainment that I can turn off the TV much more easily. A year and a half ago the power went out for a week. If I had broadband I'd probably be without internet. I have dialup and a laptop and I had internet for entertainment, news, weather and communication. I charged the laptop in my van and it was great. Also have a battery TV so I could watch the local news and a tv show or two that I enjoyed. Health keeps me indoors more and more and unable to do the physical activities I used to enjoy. So I'm probably more dependant upon the tv/internet/computer than many. But I know many who are far worse!

Do you use it frequently? We use ours daily. We wake up to the news and I come home for lunch M-F and tune into shows during that time. We also watch TV at night, especially before bed. Do you spend the big bucks on cable for the TV and not watch it very often? Yes, and I feel ripped off with Directv. Also do you fight over it with your SO? No. We have multiple TVs so if we disagree on a show then I just watch in a different room. Our house isn't that big and it's just me and the hubby. We have a 54" in our living room and I don't consider that very big anymore. When we replace it someday we'll go to 65-70". Our living room is open to the kitchen and I have to squint to see the guide on my 54" so bigger is needed lol. In our bedroom I think we have a 46" ?? It's not very far from our bed so it's plenty big. And in the basement we have around a 50" but we never go down there. Our TVs are older but get the job done. It's so hard for me to spend money on an item when I have something that already works. So I just wait until things break. I'm down to my last working HDMI port on the living room TV so once that one goes then I'll cheerfully buy a new 65-70"...