i work for a cable service provider, in the call center i deal with sales and trouble shooting. you would be amazed by what you can do with your bill by just calling up and asking you should be able to get a high speed internet connection and basic cable for about 80.00 a month. cable company's usually offer several different tiers of service, like limited basic which would be you local broadcast chans. then an expanded basic service with around 70 chans or so, with the major net work chanls like espn tbs tnt and so on. Usually the lim basic and expanded basic requier no equipment so you dont have to pay 15 bucks or whatever for a dvr. Anouther option would be to call up your provider and say that your going to switch to dish and see what kind of retention offer they have to lower your bill for a while.