Next month our free six months of DirecTV will be running out. I’d say the chance of us paying for cable or satellite once it runs out is now at about 10%. Fortunately, there are several different IPTV options cropping up. Plus, we started a Hollywood Video unlimited monthly rental plan and have bought some DVDs to be watched. Add all this together plus our subscription to Vongo and other entertainment options on the TV like playing video games and this very well could be replacing cable and satellite.

This morning I checked out IM, Instant Media. I chose the custom install mode and unchecked the option to have it load (by default) when Windows starts. Seems like every program wants to liberate itself on startup these days. Bad, bad developers.

Once downloaded it’s time to look around and find some channels to add. There’s a healthy choice of channels to add with a mix of video blogs and podcasts with more traditional media content. IM starts with a brief tutorial on how to use it but one question that wasn’t answered was: how to start the downloading process? The menu atop is pretty sparse, offering very little configuration.

After running the program for a few minutes a small box appeared near the systray informing me that a download had completed. Ahh, a timer, I thought. I clicked over to the “cache” and saw it downloading as pictured above.

You can watch in full screen mode or partial screen. Someday I think we’ll be able to watch major networks this way like ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox and the reasons for keeping cable and satellite will diminish even further. ABC is starting to experiment with streaming some of their content to the web, capturing some three million viewers since the beginning of May. Definitely a market that want to receive TV content through the web.

Count me in. You?

• HBO On Demand deals with age old cable frustration
• Update on (maybe) ditching cable for satellite
• Live TV on the Xbox 360 an attractive proposition if priced sensibly
• Replace TiVo with Media Center PC?
• Cable moans and groans — switch from Satellite or not?
• A la carte Cable TV: which channels would you keep?