I'm coming full circle. When we moved to Portland 8 years ago, I got Comcast triple play (voice, TV, internet) for $115, it was such a good deal! Well, over time it went up and up and last year, when it was $230 or so, I dropped voice and replaced it with a $12 extra line with our cellular carrier. That took the Comcast bill from $230/mo to $130/mo This weekend I dropped TV, something my kids have been telling me to do, since we hardly ever watch cable TV. That takes my Comcast bill to $95/mo for just 50 MB/s internet. I will also drop my TiVo service at $15/mo. I can reduce it to $85/mo by downgrading to 25 MB/s internet, or I can drop Comcast entirely and get internet from our local telco. They charge $80/mo for 40 MB/s, but there is a 1 year introductory $30/mo price, and I'm told they extend that for another year if you call and state your intention to drop. We are paying for $16/mo for Netflix and Hulu Plus. I might subscribe to an online sports streaming service for another $10/mo. In the summer, I might pay $30 to watch the Tour de France online. TL:DR version - "I was paying $245/mo for Comcast + TiVo, I am now $123/mo for Comcast + Netflix + Hulu + a cellular home phone, and I can get it to $58/mo for telco internet 1-or-2-year deal + Netflix + Hulu + cellular home phone." I will spend about $200 one-time for a used modem, Roku, cables to connect Mac to TV, maybe an OTA antenna. We are still figuring out the limitations of Netflix and Hulu. For example, my son asked how he could watch the current season of Doctor Who. Turns out that BBC UK streams it but only to the UK, and by going through a free proxy server in the UK, you can watch it in the US.

I just checked, and it doesn't appear to be stuck. Then I checked the batteries, and discovered they were the original Sonys, now five years old. So I changed them, but that didn't help. The red light still goes on when I operate the remote, but it's off when I don't push a button. So that would indicate that the button isn't stuck, yes? Thanks for the suggestion.

We bought a different universal and it still wouldn't work with our dvd. We don't lose ours very often, but when it goes for a walk it is sooo irritating. The last time it happened (last week), everything just stayed off until the kids located the darn thing. We had checked all of the typical sofa cracks, underneath, etc. The bad part was we needed it so DH could use his hearing aide headphone thingy. Turns out it had fallen off into the trash can which sits next to the sofa. One of the kids probably had it on the sofa arm and when they did something it slid off. Only instead of hitting the floor it went in the container. I have a drawer in a corner cabinet which is acutally the "home" for the remote and all of DH's hard of hearing adaptive equiptment. When I do my night time walk around just making sure things are picked up, I stash it back in the cabinet. Gloria

We have a Roku ... the company I work for has a wireless chip inside so a number of us at the office were given the Roku as a Christmas present a couple years ago. The Roku is very, very easy to use. Setup probably took all of five minutes. When Netflix was not charging to stream videos, it was a very good deal but now they charge $8 for mail order DVDs and $8 for streaming. Old movies aren't all that hard to find in regular programming with the cable service we have but I love watching documentaries, which are harder to come by, so streaming is good for that. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. Jodi-