Technology Angst

This has been an angst ridden few days. My cable/internet/phone bill shot up $28 from its already expensive $150 so I went on a mission to see what my options are and quite frankly, trying to figure out the whole TV/internet option thing is mind boggling. Direct TV looked like it had a good price although a big reduction in the channels we are used to, plus I didn't like the part in the contract where it says "you are locked into a two year contract yet we can raise our prices at any time and there is nothing you can do about it." Lovely. Dish Network appears to be similar. Plus, if we switch to these TV service providers we still have to have internet with the cable company as it is the only option for high speed internet since I don't want the slower DSL option. This whole thing seems like a huge racket. I wish we could just drop cable all together but then we would have few if any stations where we live. Other people I know have dropped cable and just watch Netflix but I am not really into movies as I like my CNN and weekly sitcoms (NCIS, Bones, etc). So I ended up calling the cable company and telling them that I would be switching to a different provider because their prices were insane. The customer retention lady said she could give me back our old price for six months so I decided to stay with our $150 a month cable for another six months. Hopefully by then we will have all of our debts paid off and the value of homes will rise in our area and then we can sell our house and travel the world and not have to worry about a TV bill at all. Aargghh