Nobody says you have to hook up a TV, although to avoid odd experiences with the installers you may need to let them hook it up then disconnect it afterwards. Besides, basic cable only gets you a few channels other than your over-the-air channels. Of course, if you're the type that gets sucked into C-SPAN....

(My basic actually gets me Discovery Channel, but that's apparently rare. A friend in BOS area with Comcast also has basic, and it does not include Discovery. Otherwise I get C-SPAN, BET, WGN and Weather Channel in addition to my local over-the-air channels. That's it.)

EDIT: As for cable vs DSL, it all depends, but in general I would recommend the cable. At similar price points, cable will in all but a few rare cases be faster. Both products in their consumer form utilize bandwidth that is shared among other users. The speed quoted in the DSL or cable advertising is the maximum speed. The speed they guarantee is much lower in both cases. Comcast recently doubled the speed of their base product (in the process of rolling it out system-wide). This means the speed will be capped at 3Mbit (3000Kbit) per second downstream. That is twice the speed of a T-1 line. And while I typically can't max that out, I get speeds around 2.6Mbit/sec, which really isn't bad for $45/month or even $60/month considering the extra for basic TV or not having cable TV. Some DSL products do cost less, as little as half as much ($30/month) depending upon area, but DSL is also notably more distance-sensitive than cable. You have to be very close to your local phone switching office to get the best speeds.


[This message has been edited by CrazyOne (edited 10-06-2003).]