Kill Your Television

Well, don't kill it. That would be rude - but you certainly should stop paying for cable.

2 months ago, for grins, we attached our old bunny ears to the antenna port on the tv and discovered that we were getting all four local network stations over the air in HD. I sat and processed this fact for a few minutes, and then went to look at the most recent invoice that we had received from DirecTv, and blinked at the $83 i had sent them last month.

Hmm.

So, since 1 + 1 = 2, water is wet, and $83 is a ridiculous monthly fee for HD ESPN, i took a spin through the internet to see the state of the Home Theatre Personal Computer (HTPC). Guess what? I discovered it was even easier than ever to complete a homebrew solution to feed TV programming to our little LCD along with a free and functional DVR via the Vista Media Center. We had a desktop PC upstairs running vista (up until this moment, to my discontent) that wasn't getting much use, and already had a hole in the ceiling to run the Ethernet cabling to the living room. One video card and long range wireless keyboard later, (and more RAM, a new Terabyte hard drive, etc etc etc) the 'ol DirecTv receiver has been replaced by our (less sleek) computer.

But this isn't a rant against TV per say, but against the culture required to get that content. Though most of the content is trash (my coworkers all know to not bother bringing up American Idol in my presence. And if you do in the comments, i will fight you.) there are some things that are worth watching - as well as some really good playoff sports. But in order to get it, you have to sign ridiculous contracts for waaay too much money for 90% of the channels you do not ever watch. We watched ESPN, the Food Network and Comedy Central. We had over 250 channels, and that was all we bothered with.

But with the advent of the digital age, all the network channels are moving to a new signal that is more consistent and much sharper. After the 12th, the country's transition will be complete, and we'll all be better for it. Add that to websites like Hulu and most major networks homepages, you do not have to pay the ransom that used to be required to get LOST in HD. In fact, Hulu just launched a new desktop flash based client that can interface via a PC remote instead of using a keyboard or mouse at all! Brilliant!

The one article that is not free, though, is that we have become Netflix people. For $9 a month (roughly 10% of the old cable bill) we get unlimited dvd's in the mail (albeit 1 disc at a time) and unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows through their website. Even better, Netflix has just released a widget that works within the Vista Media Center that allows us to see these streaming movies alongside the same place we watch our live TV. Hopefully this will lead to some more movie-review posts as we actually catch up on all of the movies that we haven't watched for fear of paying $10 per movie ticket.

So, if you're curious about ditching dish, and telling Comcast that you hope they go bankrupt, take a look at the government's DTV website that will tell you what kind of signal from local channels you get. Once you do that, you can very easily turn an old desktop into a DVR, or even build one from scratch relatively on the cheap. There are numerous set-top boxes that are being sold that deliver online content as well, without the need for a full computer. And if you already own an XBOX 360 or PS3, more and more strides are being made to make these useful media extenders to your living room. Like most home projects, it's not as simple as letting the cable companies come in and install in in an hour, but when you think about the $1000 annual budget that you were giving them, suddenly two weekends of time seems worth it. Viva La Revolucion!