Paul Andrews

Preparing to leave town for three months recently, I called Comcast to reduce my TV (not my Internet) service. I was shocked at the conversation.

The rep on the other end apparently did not believe my story about being gone. Instead, he seemed to think I was making up an excuse to cut back my service, perhaps because of affordability. He said Comcast would nearly triple my broadband speed to 16 mbps. Then he said I qualified for a reduced billing rate, nearly halving my Internet tab. Finally he said I could get three times as many channels for the minimum TV package I was requesting. He didn't offer to detail my car and prune my hedges, but I was tempted to ask.

After years of suffering what I felt were inflated rates for mediocre content, I was puzzled by Comcast's sudden magnanimity. Then I moved temporarily to Silicon Valley, and it all became clear.

What's happening in the Cable TV world is what has been happening in publishing, only not as far progressed. The Internet is blowing up the monopolization of content and doing an end-around Big Media. We don't yet think in these terms for the TV networks, but they're headed where newspapers, magazines and books are right now. Which for them ain't pretty.

We house-exchanged in the valley in two homes, neither of which had what we were used to: DVR (TiVo or Comcast's own), all-you-can-eat channel access, music, HD and on down the line. So we had to make do. And what we discovered was that, with a little tweaking, we could emulate just about everything we watched in Seattle on our Macs, all via the Web. And remember, in a lot of places the Web is free via Wi-Fi. Which meant that compared to my admittedly complacent and "fat" Seattle media setup, I was saving myself well over $100 a month, an unexpected balm to Wall Street's knife attack on my retirement account.

The key was two little adapters, each costing around $25. One went from the Mac's headphone jack to the red and white pinned (RCA) audio inputs of the TV set. The other adapted our Macs' digital video to VGA for the TV set's corresponding input.

With this simple setup — you also may need extensions to stretch from your computer to the TV set; everything is available from an Apple Store or Radio Shack — you can display your computer screen on your digital TV set. Everything's there, from Jon Stewart's Daily Show to "Countdown" to Hulu to YouTube. The system works easiest with a wireless mouse or keyboard, but they're not crucial.

The video quality is not always great, of course. YouTube's general muddiness gets accentuated in spades on the big screen. But video quality is not what typically takes us to YouTube anyway. And it's amazing what you'll put up with when you're saving yourself a chunk of cash.

The revelation was Netflix. Its Instant Play feature, which makes available a growing bevy of titles for on-demand streaming, is a stunner. Click on "Full Screen" and it's like you're playing a DVD. Unlike YouTube, Vimeo, and numerous embedded video services on the Web, Netflix is not free. But its base subscription level of $9 a month gets you unlimited access to the Instant Play catalog. Not all movies are Instant Play, but the list keeps growing week by week. A friend showed us Netflix on his big screen running off an old Windows PC he almost had trashed (he did need to upgrade its video card).

It all made sense as soon as he demo'd it, even though it had never really occurred to me to try. As for HD, he showed me a host of free channels he gets over the air in suburban Sunnyvale with a simple indoor antenna. They were spectacular. HD pretty much needs line of sight, and it's digital of course, so you either get a jaw-dropping picture or nothing at all. (We have the same deal here but our channel selection is more limited.)

When I thought about it, I realized there's a reason Comcast, Netflix and various other purveyors fail to promote PC-as-TV. There's a lot of money behind keeping us in legacy TV. Vendors want to sell premium content and charge for converter boxes. Apple TV ($200 on up), Netflix ($100) and something called Personal TV systems ($150) all sell boxes that more or less "convert" the Web to your TV. And television makers are offering new widgets to put Web content on your screen; all you have to do is buy a new TV. These offer advantages over simply hooking up your computer to your TV, but they are mostly a matter of convenience.

Am I being too conspiratorial? Well, check the back of your big-screen LCD TV. Look at all those ports! Can you find one that matches the DVI (digital video) jack of your PC or Mac? Wouldn't that be the easiest way to transmit Web content to your set? Wouldn't it even be possible, say, to put your digital TV on your home's wireless network?

As I chatted about this with my Valley friends, I found a distinct theme. People, especially the Youth of Today on limited, credit card-sapped budgets, don't seem to want to pay for TV (sound familiar?). They either get the TV content they want on the Web, or they don't bother with network TV at all. YouTube et al are all the "TV" they want or need.

As we all pay more attention to our expenses, and cut back on non-essentials, Cable TV is undoubtedly in the crossfire not just for younguns but for the average American household as well.

Right now, industry forces are trying to thwart "free" through various technological impediments. They want your TV set to be so much better looking and more convenient that you'll stick with it over the Web.

Eventually, though, the tide will be too strong, and commercial providers will have to react. I'm actually optimistic about this, since I want to pay for good content — but only for the content I want to see. I don't want to pay for 50 cable channels just to be able to watch Comedy Central, for example (the lone channel I want that I don't get, but which would cost me a whopping $42 a month to add to my service).

If the TV industry can get people to pay for content, it hopefully will spread virally to other content on the Web. This is a nut all content providers have to crack — the news industry most urgently.

Admittedly, I'm working off anecdotal evidence here. If it exists, the movement is still low profile to the point of being underground. (Results from Comcast's most recent quarter were mixed.) If this trend is as real as I'm convinced it is, though, data should start rolling in within the next six months. We may not even hear about it at first, since it takes time to compile and study the evidence. I do know one thing. The Comcast rep's fears were correct. Since we returned home to Seattle, we haven't gone back to our former level of service.

Online journalist and blogger Paul Andrews, co-author of "Gates," wrote about technology for The Seattle Times and other publications beginning in the early 1980s. Read all of his TechFlash columns here.