I recently came to this realization myself. We have AT&T's U-Verse "service," and it costs us about $85/month. The basic landline phone is another $40. I built two MythTV boxes, bought some cheap Pinnacle USB HDTV Sticks (800se, they were $29.99 on buy.com), and we should be getting rid of AT&T services in the next few weeks.

Apart from a few annoyances with setup (getting dvb drivers working with these HDTV sticks, antenna issues) things are going very well thus far.

If his idea works as well stated in the article, the guy deserves more than "a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development." The fact that it's a seventh grader makes it even more astounding.