Of course cable companies will raise rates next year. Raising rates is what cable companies DO.

Isn't Dish/Blockbuster free for a year with a certain level of Dish service?

News: Google Reader. Weather... Well, I still have a TV with an antenna, though I almost never watch it. I wrote a script to fetch Weather alerts from NOAA and post them to GoogleClalendar, and have WeatherBug and MyWeather.com apps on my ipod touch that signal alerts, but that's pretty much it. I probably should acquire a weather radio.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror. "When sexy model Nathalie (Whitney Moore) and software guru Rod (Alan Bagh) head to a motel for an afternoon tryst, they are attacked by a flock of savage exploding eagles and other birds of prey in the first wave of an all-out avian war against humanity. As the lovers scramble to find food, water and safety, they team up with gun-toting campers to rescue a pair of orphaned kids. James Nguyen directs this low-budget indie thriller." http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Birdemic_Shock_and_Terror/70135299?trkid=2361637 Looks like it's available for streaming now, so you have nothing to lose except time, and a small piece of your soul. Also, by the same director is "Julie and Jack". "In this love story with Hitchcockian overtones, a computer chip salesman meets the perfect girl (a brilliant software developer) -- and then she disappears. After Jack Livingston (Justin Kunkle) finds Julie Romanov (Jenn Gotzon) through an Internet dating service, he's convinced life is perfect. But when she vanishes, he's left distraught and confused. Turning to Julie's mother (Hitchcock vet Tippi Hedren), he learns a startling revelation." http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Julie_Jack/70050035?trkid=2361637 While Birdemic tends to be terrible enough to be entertaining, Julie and Jack is just terrible.

I've got a CR-48. I use it regularly, but given how it chokes on Hulu, I don't expect it to be able to handle Netflix. The retail products presumably will perform better.

Even though I primarily watch streaming video, I generally think of my netflix plan as a two-DVD plan with free streaming for $14 . It's irrational, I know. With the price of two DVDs + streaming going to $19.98, it doesn't really feel worth it. I'll probably drop to one DVD on the September Bill Date, and feel slightly fleeced at $16. I'll also probably churn through as many DVDs as I can before the hammer comes down.

You can send and receive email at dialup speeds, or over cellular or satellite internet. Dialup is way too slow to stream Netflix, and cellular and satellite tend to be slower than wireline, as well as having data caps that make streaming video extremely undesirable, and there are still many places in the US where the only option is one of those three.