not to hijack this thread.......just dropped dtv ourselves at the 1st of the year. got really tired of the pricing games they play. plus, we found ourselves in front of the tv too much. just have antenna tv right now - and guess what - we are surviving!
directv - were charging us something like $80+ a month. after they finally let us cancel (if you've ever tried to cancel with them, you'd understand), they offered $24 for the same service (that was the day after we cancelled - their final offer when they finally realized we were cancelling was more than that). i wasn't about to reward that behavior.
Here is a very detailed write up made bye a member of one of the other forums. I can verify it works VERY well. I would however recommend that if you watch game this way, you may want to close all other applications, to give as much power as possible to vlc.