In late November, I was a guest on a Calgary radio talk show, answering questions about cutting the cable cord.
The show's host, who noted a recent study suggested the rate of cable cutters in Canada was tiny (less than four per cent), asked me what it was like to be "cable free."
My reply: Cheap, but aggravating.
As we enter 2014, the same still holds true and is unlikely to change soon. You'll save money and find new freedom in deciding when and how to watch TV and movies. You'll also find new ways to shout profanity at your computer. Maybe you'll just read more books.
I saved substantially in 2013 by not having cable, while still gaining access to just about everything I was interested in.
But my cord-cutting costs also increased this past year as my needs got more demanding.
In 2012, I paid $8 a month for Netflix, $4 a month for a commercial VPN to bypass geographical content boundaries, and $130 buying TV episodes from Xbox Video and iTunes.
My total cost for the year was less than $300.
In 2013, in addition to those costs I added a Hulu Plus subscription at $8 a month and experimented late in the year with a DNS redirect service for $5 a month.
My total cost to watch TV in 2013: Over $400.
That's much less than staying with Shaw or Telus, but nevertheless my costs rose significantly over the previous year. Why? The answer is simple: I want my TV on an actual television and I want current shows that Netflix lacks.
Most of the Canadian broadcast networks offer their current shows for free - heavily laden with repetitive advertising - either on their websites or through specialized apps on platforms like Windows 8 or the iPad.
But aside from digital stores like iTunes, which at $3.50 for a single episode of a TV show gets expensive fast, they do not offer their online content in a way that's easy to see on a proper television set.
You can hook up your laptop to your TV but it's not very convenient and the streaming quality of video on web-based sites looks terrible on a big screen.
In contrast to the media-rich world in the U.S., apps offering free or inexpensive TV content on gaming consoles or media boxes are non-existent in Canada.
There are a couple of exceptions. My Xbox 360 has Radio-Canada's decent Tou.TV app, which offers French language programming.
It also has the horrible Rogers Anyplace TV app, which is crippled unless you are a Rogers subscriber and pay for its specialty cable channels.
That's why some Canadian cord-cutters end up with Hulu Plus.
Hulu is an American-based portal for watching online TV and movies, and Hulu Plus is the name for its array of apps which stream in high definition on devices like the Apple TV, Xbox and PlayStation.
It's annoying in that it requires $8 a month and yet still interrupts your viewing with ads.
But it's also the cheapest, easiest and best looking legal way to get current programming on a real TV short of receiving cable. Getting Hulu Plus requires a bit of trickery in convincing Hulu that you are both American and physically watching from south of the 49th.
It's also why I started trying out DNS redirecting services (an extra cost) since my VPN service does not work directly on my gaming consoles, which are my primary Hulu Plus platforms.
Yes, that's getting techy. Most Canadian cord-cutters can happily get by with Netflix and a media box like the Apple TV or Xbox that provides an online digital video store.
Some might even use just a Roku box with Netflix and Roku's eccentric assortment of "channels."
But if you want current content for cheap while staying legal, techy is what you will face for the indefinite future.
.A side note: One nice discovery I made this year was CinemaNow, which is found on media boxes, on many TVs and through the web.
I've tried it out a few times this year for renting movies and like it. Its catalogue needs to be ramped up, but the prices are decent and it wins by being found on a bunch of different devices.
That means anything you rent or buy is not tied down to one ecosystem or media box, and a show you begin on one device can be paused and watched later on a different device if it has a CinemaNow app.
That's much closer to the kind of freedom Canadian consumers deserve.
Barry Link is the editor at the Vancouver Courier. Contact him at blink@vancourier. com or Twitter.com/trueblinkit
