[ An outrageous $150-a-month cable bill, cable boxes, Apple TV, Roku, Vudu, and half a dozen other TV devices] are all behind me now.

I disconnected everything, threw it to the side and canceled the cable months ago. Instead, now I have a Mac Mini, wireless mouse and a Microsoft Xbox hooked up to my television.

This quest for cable freedom has been a couple of years in the works. Before I called the cable company to bid my farewell I imagined that I would need a vast array of devices to fill the entertainment void: a device for games, something for television shows, a contraption for streaming movies through Netflix and, finally, something to control all of the above. But it turns out a computer can do all those tasks with some software upgrades and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Read the whole thing at NYT >