Christopher Lawton

Amid tighter budgets, more people are trying to save money by cutting their cable cords. In response, cable companies are beginning to experiment with new Internet services. In what's shaping up as the home-entertainment equivalent of severing a landline phone service, more people are joining the ranks of "cord cutters" by forgoing cable subscriptions that can run $60 or more a month.

Sales of inexpensive converter boxes that allow older televisions to receive digital signals have been strong this year -- a bad omen for sales of new televisions heading into the holidays.