I've never had cable. It's hard to find basic cable for under $40. I have definately looked into getting cable for the HD capability, but by the time you add HD, extra boxes, taxes, etc it ends up being about $100/month. I don't know anyone that is paying less than $50/month, and most people I know are paying $80 - $120/month.
Half of my concern with cable is not so much the money (although it is way too expensive), but the time. There is simply too much that I would like to watch on cable. And I don't have that kind of time to spare. With regular TV, there's nothing I need to watch on a regular basis. I might pick up a PBS show once a month. So it is a huge time savings.
For reception, I just use our antenna. It pulls in a half dozen stations clearly and another half dozen in various degrees of quality.
Responding to the points above: After the switch over to all digital, you will be able to buy a converter box (probably $50-100) and it will convert the signal you're getting off your antenna to digital.
For the person that's getting the $50 package for $15/month, I would worry that that will come back to haunt you. I have heard of cases like this where the cable company has come back to people and said, "oops, we made a billing error. You owe us $840." And they have won in these cases. Remember, cable companies are not known for having a friendly reputation.
There have been attempts over the years to force the cable companies to unbundle their packages. Basically, the sports programming costs much more than the other channels and people who buy packages subsidize ESPN and similar. If you had the option to drop the sports, your bill might fall to something reasonable, like $10/month. But as usual, our legislators like taking those campaign contributions from the cable companies so the consumer suffers in the end.
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