3 steps to cut your cable bill by 90%

This post comes from Brandon Ballenger at partner site Money Talks News.

Cable companies have a dirty little secret: They're not really needed for TV anymore.

Of course, that doesn't stop them from charging out the wazoo. The average American adult spends $954 a year on "audio/visual equipment and services," the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Money Talks News vice president Dan Schointuch was paying more than twice that for his cable TV, and decided to quit.

But you know a TV lover isn't going to miss his favorite shows. Instead of giving them up, Dan found a cheaper way to watch -- and you can do the same. In the video below, he explains how he cut cable. Then read on to learn more.

Technology has evolved to the point where you can go right around the cable company to get your favorite programs. Depending on where you live, you might have to stick with them for Internet access, but there's no need to pay for big packages that include channels you don’t watch. Here's how you can keep the good stuff:

• Broadcast. You can still snatch many stations out of the air with an antenna. But before you buy one, use AntennaWeb to get an idea of the channels available at your address and the best place to put an antenna. Thanks to the switch to all-digital in 2009, there won't be any fuzzy pictures or static -- you either get a channel or you don't. And if you do, it might even be in high definition. If that's the case, your TV needs an HDTV tuner to take advantage of the HD signal. Many but not all newer TVs have them built in. Check your manual.
• Program sites. Some shows host episodes on their own websites -- for example, "The Daily Show"with Jon Stewart. If the program doesn't have its own site, check the network's. ABC posts episodes of many of its popular programs, including "Desperate Housewives" and "Dancing With the Stars." You'll still face advertisements no matter what, but at least you aren't spending money to watch ads.
• Video services. Sites like Hulu and Netflix carry a wide variety of current and/or past programs. Some shows on Hulu are free to watch from your computer, while newer shows and streaming to your TV will require an $8-per-month Hulu Plus subscription. Netflix has a streaming subscription rate of $8 a month. If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber for the shipping benefits, maybe you didn't realize you already have access to a large library of movies and TV shows too, at no extra cost.
• Sports. If you get Internet from one of these companies, you get ESPN3 for free. This broadband network doesn't stream everything, but does offer "thousands of live games and events" every year including college sports and major tournaments, with real-time stats and scoreboards. There's also subscriptions like MLB.tv, but you might be better off at the local sports bar. Mmembership for a season runs about $80.

If you have a gamer in the family, you may not need to buy anything else: A PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii has streaming capabilities for services like Hulu and Netflix. An Xbox 360 requires a Live Gold subscription ($8 to $10 a month), while PlayStation and Wii charge no extra fees.

If you don't have a current gaming console, you can buy a Roku ($60 to $90) or a Boxee Box ($180), neither of which charges monthly fees.

There are other ways to connect a computer or laptop to a TV, but they require a little more technical know-how and won't duplicate your experience with cable (no remote or channel listings, for instance). There's a wide variety of plug-ins on different models of TVs and computers, so you'll have to figure out which ones to use. If you want to try, here's a video explaining TV input connections.

You can usually get episodes of shows from premium movie channels like HBO a couple of days after they air for a buck or two each on Amazon and iTunes. But you can save a lot more by waiting for the season to come out on DVD or Blu-ray, when you can probably stream it on Netflix or buy or rent the discs. Everything else you can hopefully live without.

Look at the math: That nearly $1,000-a-year figure for cable we started with breaks down to about $80 per month. Invest in one of the consoles or devices mentioned above and you're out between $60 and $200, which pays for itself in less than three months, tops.  Add on a streaming subscription fee for $8 a month and your new setup is costing 10% of what it did, and still getting you pretty much everything you care about.

Anyone out there using some of these techniques? Take a second to tell us how it's going.

More on Money Talks News and MSN Money:

• 26 tips to save on entertainment
• 10 ways Americans waste money
• 12 things we buy we could get free

• Try the 50-30-20 budget

• Cable operators finally consider unbundling

• Should you cut the cable TV cord?