According to this NY Times article, rabbit ears are making a come back! If you are too young to know what rabbit ears are then this might not make a lot of sense to you. Think about an antenna with two adjustable prongs protruding from the top of a base that, "back in the day" would sit on top of your television set and bring in two or three channels. Incredible as it might sound, this is how we consumed our Saturday morning cartoons and Hockey Night in Canada when I was growing up.
Of course today your television won't provide a stable resting place for the old rabbit ears but the primitive antennas are apparently still able to haul in digital TV signals and if you are willing to put up with the flakiness of the device you can save yourself a cable bill. While I've not tried it, I understand that subscribing to Internet service only via a cable provider will also provide a number of "free" channels if you connect the coaxial cable to your HDTV. Oddly enough the channels appear to be different than those offered via subscription, my guess is that they are otherwise filtered out by the provider with your normal subscription though this is only an assumption.
In these tough economic times, the cable providers might wish to take notice and price their services reasonably for the average consumer. Just a thought.
