Give up cable TV for Internet TV? A couple shows how.

Brandt Malone and his wife, Ashley, recently bought their first house. Like many Americans, the Detroit couple looked for ways to reduce their expenses, but they were uncertain whether they'd be happy without cable TV.

Five of every nine U.S. adults say they would make the switch from cable to Internet-fed shows if it met their viewing requirements and they could figure out how to connect their big-screen TV to the Net, according to a recent Harris poll.

Rather than a swift snip, the 20-something Malones made the transition to Internet TV in small steps over several months before they moved in.

"It's a change in media consumption. You go from having a cable company or television company dictate your viewing habits to actively choosing what you want to watch," Malone told TechNewsDaily.

While that may sound good in theory, it also involves more work.

"It's difficult sometimes, because you actively have to select what you want to watch instead of getting home and tuning into your local television affiliate to watch a random episode of 'Seinfeld,'" he said.

What to do before you cancel cable

You could buy an Internet-connected TV, but an easier, cheaper alternative is available to most people.

"At one point I was poking my head behind our TV and noticed there was a VGA jack, similar to what we have on our computer," Malone said. "I brought the desktop out and hooked it up to the TV, and magically we had turned our 1080p 46-inch flat screen into a huge computer monitor."

"I fed the audio jack into our Craigslist-special surround sound, and just like that we had a media center," he said.

After Malone made the connection between the computer and TV, he and his wife began watching YouTube, Hulu, ABC.com, and movies Malone had downloaded to the computer's hard drive. Still, they missed their favorite shows, such as AMC's "Mad Men," which was available only for purchase on iTunes and Amazon ― an additional expense that they feared could easily get out of hand.

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