This is a Steinbrenner poll, in that you must pick one. The scenario: you have a financial reversal and you have to cut back one or the other. For the purposes of this poll, they cost exactly the same. Which one and why?

High Speed Internet, easily. It's really not even close.

Cable is just TV. The Internet can be TV, and music, and movies, and games, and connecting with people, and work, and books, and comics, and more. All legal and legit.

Most of my at home time is spent not on the computer. The internet for me has some conviences but i dont NEED it. It's not my primary source of entertainment by any means, or my primary method of communication. I dont even have it set up for primary comfort. I dont like excessively using the computer in the same way like on a beautiful day it just feels wrong to be in front of the tv.

Also, when i get home the last thing i want to do is read on a computer screen. I am in front of one enohgh and it hurts mye eys (yes jeff i know).

and probably 95% of my at home time not having sex the tv is at least on. i dont listne to music, so the tv is the background music to my life. I always have to fuind something i coudl at least watch. not some show or thing i woudlnt watch, even if i am not watching. Whether cooking, eating, reading, whatever the tv is on.

Also, its more something i can do at the same time as my wife. Computer is solitary (for me). Tv allows me to enjoy experiencing something with my wife or whoever is over-to comment and talk about and laugh.

Psychologically, Cable tells me i made it. As a kid, when we got Cable, wow, not poor anymore. Then HBO-wow.

So i basiclaly have every channel now i can. when i cut back on movie channels, i always see a movie and be like "ah damn i could have watched that"

As long as they offer it, I'd never go w/o a substantial amount of cable unless i had to. although honestly i dont NEED the movie channels since i see most of them anyway when new.

*i dont torrent so the internet is not a source of old comics/movies/tv for me. I'd never sit there 30 minutes watching a tv show on acomputer. Having the biggest tv screen i can afford also tells me i made it and i dont egt people who watch on these postage size i-pods Although apparently my tv can be tied easily directly to my computer.

I also like randomly finding things on tv like as a kid. Just flipping and finding. DVR did not change the way i watch tv much.

I just dont like the computer. I dont enjoy playing games on it, watching tv, watching movies, faceboob is just amild interest, email i rarely do, i dont need to pay bill there, etc. It just is 90% meaningless to me.

If I didn't have high-speed Internet at home, I would have to spend more time at the physical office, or our Data Center. Almost all of my bills are paid on line. We keep one checkbook in the house, and it's been over a year since we had to order another one. I've got a media server set up that streams movies/music/tv to the rest of the house from my office. I can download any major TV show (no moral debate here, take it to the Pirate Bay thread). I control and monitor my security system from anywhere.

So, yeah. Cable/Satellite can stuff it. The only reason we have it is so the girls can watch Disney channel and the wife can watch the local news. Why the hell am I paying for that?

Keep the internet -- any shows I want to watch, I can watch through Hulu or the network websites or wait until they're out on DVD and rent them from Netflix.

What Taft said.

I have a computer hooked up to my HDTV. 99% of my TV comes over the Internet. My wife watches some shows on cable.

Wait. We're supposed to pick the one we're getting rid of or the one we're keeping?

The one we're keeping.

High-speed Internet, no contest. There is no IMWAN on cable TV.

High speed internet, no contest. I barely watch any shows anymore. And The broadcast stations would take care of news.

(In answering this question, I based it only on my own preference. I did not take on the difficult task of how it would affect the development of my children. There are lots of great shows for kids now, but also a lot of great things on the internet).

High speed internet, without blinking. I actually don't even have cable or satellite anymore, and haven't for about 4 years now. I watch ALL my television from the internet, streamed to my PS3 on our HDTV. Right now I'm watching a movie from Netflix, again, streamed from the internet to my TV.
I get all my news online, read my daily comic strips, sports headlines, and communicate with my friends, all online. Pay all our bills. Order merchandise, even food. Phone directory. Sometimes I work from home, thanks to VPN. You name it, if it can be done online instead of the luddite way, then that's for me. If I didn't have high speed internet it would be like cutting off an arm, and I'm barely exaggerating. It's baffling to me how anyone in this day and age could go without it, apart from the very old who simply never picked it up and don't care to try to learn now.

Torrents are far from the only source of online movies and tv. Yes, I agree completely about watching on a computer screen. I only started seriously watching video streams once I got it set up to do so on the TV/PS3.

Randomly finding stuff for me is browsing tv.com, hulu, or netflix and finding something interesting, adding it to my queue or just streaming it as the case may be, right then and there. It's easy to find something random, just different than clicking the remote up and down channels (I browse a queue instead, still with a remote).

Internet hands down. I don't think i could live with Dave if he didn't have his computers. Besides everything Taft said is spot on.

Just was interested

households with broadcast only (i.e., no cable or satellite service) TVs declined from 11.5 percent to 10.9 percent

while cable or satellite service has increased slightly from 88.5 percent to 89.1 percent. This increase may be related to the upcoming transition to digital television that was originally set to take place in February 2009.

Satellite service grew modestly as well, from 28.0 percent to 28.8 percent. Cable or satellite service with pay channels, such as HBO, Showtime and Cinemax, has grown steadily over the five quarters, from 47.0 percent to 49.4 percent.

Digital Video Recorders (DVR) have grown in popularity over the last five quarters, with 28.9 percent of households owning a device, up from 21.3 percent in Q4 2007

Internet all the way.

I can get all my tv shows on line.

Basicaly what taft said

Gah! I misunderstood!

I voted cable! I should have voted high speed internet because it's the one I'd keep. I don't even have cable TV - we don't watch much TV at my place.

Channel WAN is coming.

I want to be the first to make the "IMWAN was canceled?" joke.

What’s a Necessity?
Much of history is the tale of luxuries becoming necessities. I remember my surprise when I read that the discovery of America was partly caused by a desire to reach the Spice Islands, to get those luxuries for wealthy Europeans without having to use the existing trading systems.

Bur can things go the other way?

The Pew Research Center is out with a poll today that seems to say they can. Whether this is a brief, recession-induced pause, or a real change, is not easy to say.

The response that most impressed me was to the question of whether home air conditioning was a necessity. In 2006, 70 percent deemed it a necessity. This year the figure was down to 54 percent. Dishwashers, clothes dryers, microwave ovens and television sets are also seen as necessities by fewer people now than in 2006.

Overall, 52 percent think a television is a necessity. That is the lowest figure since that question was first asked in 1973.

The television breakdown is interesting. The older you are, the more likely you are to view it as a necessity. Among those over 65, 68 percent think a set is a necessity, compared to 38 percent of those age 18 to 29. But both those figures are down from three years ago.

Similarly, the young are more likely to view a cellphone as a necessity, and less likely to see a need for a landline.

There’s been no significant change in the number deeming a computer for home use to be a necessity (50 percent this year, 51 percent in 2006). But I am surprised it did not grow. The proportion who deem high-speed Internet service to be a necessity also showed no significant change (31 percent this year, 29 percent in 2006).

And appearances to the contrary, only 4 percent of Americans think an iPod is a necessity.

That 46 percent doesn't live in the south in August.