There's a new competitor for your television/VOIP/internet service in some areas of the country - AT&T's new U-Verse service.
We just had it installed - so far, so good - 3 Meg DSL, 240 channel TV -- much better deal than the cable company. AT&T installs (for now) for free - including CAT5 wiring, a 2-Wire TV/Voice/ADSL modem, and in my case a Netgear gigabit switch in the basement. The cost of the hardware is bundled into the cost of the service- unlike cable, they don't charge $10 for a DVR (one included, and it's addressable over the web, so if you forget to record something, you can log into your Yahoo account from any Internet connected PC/Mac with a browser and set it), plus two other set-top boxes. They do for now support one HDTV/receiver, which will expand shortly.
The DVR is single-station only but with a firmware upgrade coming in June or so, will allow broadcast on any TV in the house.
It's an evolving technology, but so far it works flawlessly - the picture is incredible on the TV and upload speeds are now up to about 1M/sec, which is much more than they were.
It's got some advantages over satellite - and others over cable (lower cost, for one) - plus voice is being added. It's part fiber (to service boxes 3000ft or less from your home) and part copper wire - interesting technology. Microsoft provides the software that operates the boxes.
If you have it (it's coming out slowly in locations, and AT&T is being cagey about their rollouts, partly no doubt to blunt "discount" offers from the cable companies that might be targeted at potential customers) - you might want to give it a look.
I took a look for my area, and not surprisingly it is not available. Since we live slightly in the sticks I doubt that our schmuck town is anywhere near the top of their to-do list. Still, it looks promising.
I still depend on Sprint Broadband (http://www.sprintbroadband.com) wireless for my Internet access. For $39.95 monthly, I get fantastic download speeds that sometimes tops out at over 7,000 Kbps. Unfortunately my upload speeds leave much to be desired, normally hovering around 150 Kbps.