CHICAGO (MarketWatch.com)—If cash is tight, it might be time to cut the cord on cable and satellite services in favor of online options that are free or considerably cheaper.

But be prepared. It’s scary to switch and learn a new behavior.

“It is a big jump,” said Janko Roettgers, a San Francisco-based staff writer for GigaOM, an online technology information site. “It’s a completely new way of doing things and you have to figure those things out, sometimes as you go.”

Fortunately, there are resources out there to help you navigate the maze of devices and services you’ll need. Roettgers, for one, researched the alternatives for five years before writing his book, “Cut the cord: All you need to know to drop cable.”

“Cord cutting may seem daunting these days,” he said in the book. “But a few years from now, everyone is going to watch TV like a cord-cutter; without big, expensive cable bundles and with new devices that make your cable box look like a relic from days gone by.”

That might be jumping the gun a bit considering that cord-cutters represent a very small piece of the viewing population now. But cord-cutters are nibbling away at the nation’s largest cable and satellite providers, according to second-quarter results released earlier this month.

U.S. cable and satellite companies combined lost more than 670,000 customers in the quarter, according to Bernstein Research. That’s been the case for the past two years in the second quarter, the research firm said, noting that the quarter is typically one for turnovers—when students, for example, drop subscriptions ahead of a new school year.

But the continuing economic challenges also have played a key role as consumers—particularly younger and lower-income users—look for ways to cut expenses.

Industry analysts refer to the so-called “cord-cutting debate” as if it were a contentious dispute or deliberation on the pros and cons of pay-TV. It’s not.

Those for and against cord cutting carry basically the same argument: At $80-$150 each month, it’s a costly proposition to have access to hundreds of choices of programming and content—the vast majority of which you may never even see or know it’s there.

Why people do away with pay TV is a matter of debate as well. On blogs and Twitter, consumers say they cut the cord because the costs outweigh the benefits and there are easy alternatives out there. No one really watches or needs 700 channels, or even 100 channels.

Others insist that abandoning cable and satellite services has led to a better viewing experience with no commercials.

“Sometimes the cord-cutting experience is just flat-out better than having cable,” CNET reviewer Matthew Moskovciak wrote in May.

“The 100% commercial-free experience (which you get on Netflix, Amazon Instant, and iTunes) particularly lends itself to high-quality cable shows like “Mad Men,” which I can’t imagine watching with commercial breaks,” he added.

Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett suggested that the real culprit, if there truly is one, behind the shrinking pay-TV numbers is a basic case of symmetry taking its place in the market. In other words, the time has come to try other things.

“While it is tempting to conjure sports analogies, with narratives around winning and losing and comebacks,” he said in a recent research note, “all of those overdramatize what is, in fact, far more pedestrian.

“Subscriber gains for the (telephone companies) and satellite operators (are) slowing, as they must with maturity. And as they do, losses for the cable operators, therefore, (are) slowing as well. Equilibrium.”

He acknowledges, however, that the year-on-year growth rate in cable falling below the level at which new households are formed is troubling. “There are homes that are cutting the cord,” he said.

“Growth of half of 1% is hardly reason for the industry to break out the bubbly, but it’s likely enough to justify a continuation in the Pay TV rally that began early this year,” he said.

So though the flow from cable to cobbling together your own viewing package might be more of a trickle than a rising tide, it is swelling.

That comes with thanks to technology, the constant reinvention of which is giving rise to new forms of customized movie- and television-watching. You can watch major networks shows on websites like ABC.com or YouTube channels likes SBNation or you can turn to services like Hulu and Netflix for movies.

And don’t forget this: Network television can still be free, on your TV.

Here’s a primer of what you need to know before you cut the cord.

First and foremost, take a look at what you really watch and when you use cable or satellite, including what you get on basic TV channels.

“Take a test drive,” Roettgers said. “Get an antenna and try that out and start looking into new sources of content before you disconnect.

“That’s fairly easy to do and if it doesn’t work for you, you’re still hooked up,” he said.

The networks’s online sites will offer a combination of live streaming as well as TV episodes the day after their broadcast.

Clicker.com is an Internet TV guide that bills itself as “the only complete directory of TV, movies and Web series available online.” It helps you find shows and specific episodes, and even lets you record them for future use. It claims to have more than 1 million television episodes, 40,000 movies and 90,000 music videos.

Netflix offers unlimited access to almost 50,000 movies and TV shows for a nominal monthly fee, now at $8 a month. You can use it on a number of devices, ranging from game consoles to set-top boxes like Roku and Boxee, to iPads and mobile phones, Roettgers said.

Cord cutters and cable subscribers alike talk about Hulu, which airs recent episodes of current TV shows. Some shows are available within hours of broadcast while it could take more than a week for others.

There are other movie and television sites like Sidereel.com or Vudu.com that offer different degrees of shows. For Apple users, iTunes sells current-season episodes and thousands of movies, many of which will be available as soon as they go to DVD.

Amazon, which Roettgers calls a jack of all trades, offers a variety of services that trump Hulu in some cases. Its video-on-demand allows you to stream the latest Hollywood blockbusters and in-season episodes of cable and TV shows.

Increasingly, YouTube is becoming a go-to for Hollywood movies and live streams, including sports and music. It’s also launching original-content in comedy, sports, entertainment, news and political channels, Roettgers said.

“Most of these YouTube-exclusive shows still consist of clips that are just a few minutes long, but they’re starting to look more and more like professional television,” he said.

If you’re a big HBO fan, you’re mostly out of luck. “HBO keeps everything off the Internet and only makes it available if you subscribe,” Roettgers said. Your best bet is to find friends who get HBO and endear yourself to them.

Here’s another chunk of bad news for cord cutters: If you’re a sports junkie, cable TV is still your best friend. ESPN has very limited access online and while the big leagues like the NFL, the NBA and MLB do offer online subscriptions they tend to be pricey. Even then, you won’t be able to watch your local team play live because local broadcasters typically have exclusive TV rights and blackout those broadcasts to anyone else.

On ESPN you can’t watch live programs online unless you have access to so-called television providers, or Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon or Bright House Networks. You can download an app called ESPN3, but you must have the right service provider and even then it’s not a surefire way in.

Here’s a tiny bit of good news though. If you’ve moved and you’re still following your hometown team, you’re in luck with ESPN subscriptions because you can watch those games live. Unless, of course, your lifelong heroes are playing against the local team.

What’s more, if you’re a fan of such sports as tennis or biking, those big-time events like Wimbledon or the Tour de France can be found online.

You’ll need devices, of course, to see many of these programs on your TV. Think Blu-ray deck, a game console or connected TV set-top box, like Boxee Box or Roku,

You’ll find some combinations of the services on them, so make sure they’re what you want. And remember, that every service is not on every device, so you must research where the shows you want to see are streamed and buy the gear that works.

All devices connect over existing broadband connections, which, of course, will cost you, but considerably less than the movie and TV packages. You can also stream shows right over your laptop.

“Some people give up their TVs all together and watch everything on a laptop or iPad,” Roettgers said. “That’s tough if you want a lean-back experience to watch a movie on a Saturday night or to watch anything that’s a little longer than a half-hour show.”