The way I consume television has evolved throughout my life. As a young kid, if I wanted to see something that was on television I had no choice but to sit in front of the TV screen as the show was airing on broadcast. Cable came quickly after but the difference in the schedule was no different. Then came the VCR, recording shows became possible. That evolved into the DVR. TiVo was my friend for many years. Now, I’m watching television in a completely different way.

For the last three years I have been debating over the idea of cutting cable television in favor of an Internet based system. I have chosen Apple TV to fit those needs. As I said this has been a long time coming. I got my first Apple TV for Christmas in 2008 but the decision to cut cable was still to hard.

The hardest part of cutting cable is giving up sports. As an avid sports fan it’s difficult to give up cable, losing out on all those games throughout the week. It’s slowly becoming easier with the help of ESPN3 on my Xbox 360. Add in some “follow your team” subscriptions on iTunes and suddenly things look a little brighter.

For the last three or so months I have all but ignored cable television, using iTunes subscriptions, Netflix, Podcasts, my vast DVD collection and ESPN3 on Xbox Live to cover 95 percent of the television I consume. The five percent of cable viewing came because of the Minnesota Vikings. It’s not easy to find pro-football on the Internet, but I do have an antenna.

Cable TV hasn’t been on much over the last few months since I purchased my second Apple TV, but I still haven’t called the cable company and told them the bad news. I have some hardware I need to return to them and I am planning to do that at the latest after the Superbowl.

I reserve the right to eventually go back to cable if this whole experiment falls through, but I have to say it has been an easier transition than I originally thought. I’ll write more about my experience as I move forward.