Media on My Own Terms

In the never ending quest to drive down fixed costs on the home front I have gotten to an impasse. The ideal I am striving towards is one pipe into my house (well, plus water and electricity, but one problem at a time) for all my media needs: television, music, phone and the rest of the internet. The issue for me is not the idea as a whole, but the details are slowing me down

My family home entertainment system is simple: LCD TV, Dishnetwork Satellite DVR and a Mac Mini for IP based television. Between the magic of Hulu, Boxee and the iTunes store I can get just about anything I want to see into the house without depending on cable/satellite with one exception: live sports. Let me be clear, I know I can get live sports via the internet. It's just I kinda want to do it legally with a high quality feed. I can get soccer via the MLSnet.com site, but the quality is not quite there yet. I have yet to find the place for the NFL. Worse yet, the Olympics and World Cup this year demand HD. No glory on the rest of the international soccer I would like to catch.

Right now the cheapest solution is to keep the Satellite.

Phone has me in a quandary as well. My local service is $35 a month (I do all my long distance on the cell phone). My Internet connection is $45 when bundled. When I break them out, my Internet goes up $10 bucks, negating an savings I would see with an IP phone.

I am close, but not quite there yet.