You buy into their offers. Then two months later, you look at your cable bill to see what you're paying for.

It goes something like this: Limited Basic $15. Expanded Basic $35. HDTV Cable Box Rental $6.25. Four Digital Channel Packages $9. Taxes and Surcharges about $6. Three extra HDTV cable box rentals $18.75. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz: about $50. Total monthly bill for four TV sets: about $140.

And what did I watch when I once had them for six months before I dropped the digital cable services and returned the boxes? Just ESPN, ESPN2, KFMB, KGTV, KNSD, KSWB, XETV, 4SD, Comedy Central, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, NFL Network, FSN, WGN, and TBS. Except for Boomerang and NFL Network, the rest of the list are on the expanded and limited basic tiers.

Sometimes I watched SoapNet on the digital tier until I discovered that since so many people are uploading them on youtube illegally, haven't bothered with it and watched them on youtube.

Some people probably pirated the NFL games on youtube, also illegally. Even watched a game from out of the market that wasn't broadcast locally due to NFL territorial restrictions. Forgot which one it was, but it was one of the must-see games.

So I got rid of all of the digital crap, and saved me $84 a month. It's just not worth that much just to watch two channels you really want to watch in every room of the house.

Cox Cable, get real. Your cable offers are full of hot air. They just inflate your bill and stuff your system with channels that you're paying for but never care to watch. Why pay for 100s of channels you never have time to watch? I only have 2-3 hours available for TV watching, with the rest for, well, sleeping, working, eating, exercising, listening to streaming radio full of music local stations don't bother playing, and watching TV on the net. Now Cox is trying to get me to return to spending $84 more a month for channels I just simply never have time for?

Time is a limited resource. You just can't increase the number of hours in a day. It just can't be done... unless you move to a planet that has 100 hour days.

I scanned the entire dial and sampled 100s of channels that were on the digital tier. Only found a few I watched, but most of them were reruns, old videos, reality shows, lifestyle crap, overcompressed channels (try watching the Mtn. for a minute without seeing pixelation, it's plain awful!), endless barking of pay per view channels you never watch, a very limited selection of music channels compared to the Internet, and paying more just to get the HDTV versions of the expanded basic channels that should have been included in the regular analog basic channel lineup.

What Cox cable is doing is plain out of greed. They just want more money.

Look at what happened to the newspaper industry a few years ago. The local paper wouldn't carry some syndicated features and often lacks the resources to give us locals straightforward informative unbiased news that you can now find elsewhere on the net. That gatekeeper has been demolished.

Look at what happened to the radio industry. Ad revenue is down. Many listeners have left for other live media alternatives. I'm listening to real music playlists that are foreign to any music programmer that works at Clear Channel or Citadel. People want real music, not crap like that stupid Black Eyed Peas song "Boom Boom Whatever." Radio as a gatekeeper is no more, thanks to the Internet. Local radio dropped Tom Leykis two years ago, so we said "Screw You Sophie FM" and listened to his live stream or podcasts. Many syndicated radio shows are offering podcasts and live streams, and some even on satellite radio such as Roger Hedgecock's barometer of Barrack Obama's administration doom.

Now, it's the TV industry that's going to suffer. It's not just the local broadcasters, but cable TV as well. Back in 1982, Cox dropped the popular KHJ from Los Angeles, angering fans of Elvira and the Los Angeles Lakers, as well as daily reruns of Eight is Enough. 27 years later, the consumers have their turn of revenge on cable companies as they begin to tear down the last major media gatekeeper of desired entertainment. It might not be long before we get to see streaming live Laker games in San Diego via the high speed Internet if it isn't happening already. Is it, anyone? I haven't heard about it yet.

Are you reading about this in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Nope. The TV revolution is not being televised in print. Power to the people!

The chokeholds of the cable companies are getting looser as more people wise up and ditch the extra digital channels they never watch just to get one channel they want for some ridiculous amount of money.

With the Internet, just like you can have unlimited radio channels, you have unlimited video channels as a potential. The free market will decide which ones stay in business and which ones die off. There will be no more consumer-funded bailouts for low-interest niche channels like it is with cable companies making us pay extra money for channels you never will watch. You're paying hundreds of dollars a year for unpopular channels that should have gone out of business years ago.

TV will be viewed on the computer, Internet-enabled TV sets, mobile device, portable computer, anywhere, via means of a high speed Internet connection. Cable TV will have to simply become a high speed Internet connection company delivering content.

To make things more fair, cable TV companies would no longer be allowed to own TV channels of any kind; broadcast, closed-curcuit, and satellite channels will be separately owned by other companies, giving the Internet companies less clout in promoting their own interests over others.

There is some of the content you'll have to pay for, via the originators of the programming. The studios, sports leagues, movie companies, and other business companies have the right to charge extra for their content, but the good thing about it is that there will be no middleman to pay between you and the program originator.

HBO could become a thing of the past as it is today with movie studios directly serving their viewers instead of dealing with HBO and the cable companies between it and the viewers.

You pay for what you watch, and don't pay for what you never watch, and that's fair. That's the fair market way.

The unfair market way is to pay to fund low interest niche channels that are unpopular, using up your money that could be used to pay for, say, HBO?

The only thing Internet companies can do is to meter bandwidth usage, charging viewers for the amount of bandwidth consumed to view programming, and a monthly charge to maintain an account. Heavy TV viewers should pay far more for the bandwidth than light TV viewers.

Streaming could be live or on-demand. On-demand movies can be charged from $1 to $10 based on popularity. The movie company can set the prices themselves.

Sports leagues won't have to worry about getting viewers to get the cable companies to get NFL Network on a basic tier. They can bypass them altogether and serve them direct. They can offer packages of games or single franchise team packages for a charge so viewers can watch their favorite teams. College Football teams such as the San Diego Aztecs can serve their viewers directly with their own channel so all of their games can be seen there insted of consulting a map to see what channel each game will appear on like it is today.

The best channels will survive. The worst will simply fade away and be replaced with new channels. That's the free market way.

We don't need a cable company to tell us what we can or can't watch. No more cable companies refusing to carry a channel not owned by their parent companies. We'll just watch that channel direct from the channel instead of dealing with the cable company.

Cable companies, phone companies, and others will become high speed Internet service providers with just one common commodity: Internet access to sell, and will compete with each other with lower prices and higher speeds.

ISPs can just build a video portal of their services and links to some online channels, but people can JFGI their favorite channels themselves, or find independent websites that list most of the channels or portals of video.

This could all be a reality in 10 years at the minimum...or I simply won't live to see it ever happen decades from now.

Time is running out. The TV revolution is on!