Cable Free

 

I’ve now been (somewhat) cable free for a few weeks and I am happy to report that it is working out great. Here is how it’s all come together.

Internet

I currently get my internet from Comcast. I got a special rate of $29.99 for 22Mb for 12 months, which is pretty good. When I switched I initially tried to use a 4G wireless service offered in my area called Clear, but unfortunately the signal strength wasn’t good enough. Hopefully it gets better by the time my 12 months is up.

TV

I built the antenna so that I could get broadcast TV, but Comcast includes super basic channels with the Internet package. It’s essentially what I would get from my antenna so I use it instead (for now).

Living Room

In my living room I have a Dell PC hooked up to my TV. I use three applications to get my content; Windows Media Center, Boxee, and Hulu desktop. I originally only planned to use WMC and Boxee but the picture quality you get from Hulu desktop can’t be beat. It is as good as an HD signal. I use WMC to watch TV from the tuner. If I was able to run a coax cable directly to my TV I might consider bypassing WMC since it’s a little clunky (but it adds nice features like DVR and a guide). I am able to switch between these application pretty easily using plugins for WMC that adds links to the other applications.

Bedroom

In the bedroom I have a TV with an Xbox connected. The cable runs directly to the TV for broadcast viewing and the Xbox is used to view media files on my network and recorded TV from the WMC in the living room.

I was concerned about the sacrifice of giving up cable but to my surprise I don’t miss a thing, and the extra ~$100 a month in my pocket doesn’t hurt either.

I pulled the trigger

It’s done, I cancelled cable.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. A couple months ago I had a false start when I signed up for Comcast’s bare bones internet plan for $25/month. The bandwidth was so slow I couldn’t even watch any TV online. The next higher bandwidth plan was $50/month, but at the time I was paying $80/month for internet AND cable. Getting rid of Cable was going to be a pretty big sacrifice and if I was only going to save $30/month I questioned if I was making the right move. But then a coworker found a deal where you could get high speed internet from Comcast for $30/month. That coupled with a rate increase pushed me over the edge.

So right now I am in the transition and I don’t have anything but a signal from my antenna, so I don’t have much to report. But as I work out the kinks over the next couple of weeks I’ll let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck.

She’s a beaut Clark

Stayed home with my eternally sick child yesterday and while he was napping I managed to finally finish up my HD antenna.

Since I am farther away from the city, all of the broadcast antenna’s are in the same general direction, so one directional antenna should suffice. I went from zero channels to 25 (out of 27 available)! Unfortunately approximately 21 of those are either Spanish or religious The good thing is I now get the big three and a few PBS’s for the kid shows, so it was worth it.

No, I don’t watch the Rachael Ray show, it’s just what happened to be on. Promise!

Of course, I tested this on my deck. I will still need to see how it performs in my attic over my existing wiring.

Antenna almost complete

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve been a little busy trying to wrap up my Tiny House.

I did manage to get my antenna almost complete. Just need to get an adapter so that I can hook it up to a coax cable and complete the stand. Then I will be able to test it out.

Also, the Boxee beta is now available from the Boxee.tv website if you want to try it out. Lifehacker did a really good write up of it here.

Dude, I got a Dell!

My new Dell Zino arrived and I must say it is a nice little box. I also downloaded (via a torrent) the beta version of Boxee. The official release of Boxee isn’t out until mid January when they will also be releasing a Boxee box. The Boxee box is basically a piece of hardware (made by DLink) that runs the new Boxee app. It’s for those that don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up a separate computer with a remote. It like the Roku device that does about the same thing. I chose to go the route of a computer instead for the added DVR and DVD capability.

If you are familiar with the alpha version of Boxee I think you will be much happier with the beta version. With the alpha version you had to use Apps (small applications that delivered content within Boxee) to get to any content. In the beta version there are still Apps but there is also content built in. For the built in content there are several different providers including Netflix (which is a pay service). Boxee puts a little dollar sign next to those Movies/Shows so that you know in advance that it’s provided via a pay service before you click on it. Since I plan on getting a subscription to Netflix having it incorporated doesn’t bother me. Also, if you select an item that is available from different providers Boxee allows you to select which provider you want to use, which is nice since some providers make you install a proprietary player to view the content.

The Zino itself performed pretty well, much better than the Revo. I still managed to find some shows that where pretty choppy. I need to run some test to determine what the issue is though. I’m not sure I have the computer configured 100% correctly since I wiped it and installed Windows 7 as soon as it arrived.  I know this thing has much better specs than the Boxee box and the Roku, which play content flawlessly, however, they’re running linux and not Windows 7. I could always fall back to Ubuntu (since Boxee is available for that as well) if I absolutely had too but that will only be if nothing else works.

I also love my Logitech DiNovo keyboard. Sitting on the couch and operating a computer has never been easier. I was able to open, find, and watch a show on Hulu with no more effort than if I was watching it on my laptop.

No more work on the antenna but I should have it done shortly after Christmas. Seeing all the content that is online I don’t think we’ll watch too much broadcast TV but I know Beth will kill me if she can’t watch American Idol live

Antenna direction

I found a cool sight that tells me what direction I should be facing my antenna (when it’s complete). I had planned on figuring this out through experimentation but this is a little faster.

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

Computer and Antenna

Antenna

I started construction of my HDTV antenna this weekend. I’m following some instruction I found on instructables.com:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Large-DB8-HDTV-Antenna-Big-Bertha/

I thought by doing it myself I would be saving a lot of money, turn out, not so much. Best Buy (probably even cheaper elsewhere) has one that is about the same size as mine for $120. While I expect mine to be much more durable than the one they are selling mine is going to cost me about $95 (not to mention the time). While the durability is nice, I don’t think it is that important since it is going to be in my attic.

I should have it completed by the end of the week.

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Computer

I purchased a computer about a month ago with the idea of using it for this project. I wanted something somewhat inexpensive both in initial cost and to operate (since it is going to be on most of the time). So I bought a Acer Revo 1600. It was only $200 and runs on an atom CPU which requires very little energy to run (think light bulb). The problem is the atom processor is a little underpowered for this job. The computer also has an ION GPU which helps with some tasks (like High Def DVD playback), but it’s just not enough. So for the time being I’ve turned it into a desktop computer for my girlfriend.

So my next attempt at a suitable computer arrives today. It is a dell Zino. I happened to catch this thing when they had a two hour sale and got it for about $170!!!. That’s a stronger CPU than the Revo and includes a DVD drive.

I also bought a Logitech Bluetooth remote (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keyboards/keyboard/devices/3848&cl=us,en) to control it and a TV tuner (http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=100-U2-IDTV-A1&family=inDtube) to receive the antenna signal.

I organized my media cabinet for the new hardware. It gets a little hot in there so I’ll be adding some ventilation soon.

So here’s what I’ve got into this:

Dell Zino – $185
Logitech DiNovo – $95
EVGA tuner – $35
Antenna  – $95

Total $410 (not counting the $200 on the Revo)

I expect to be ready to do a trial run in January if the antenna gets a good signal.

Getting Started

Recently I decided to trim back on some of my spending. An expense that I have been interested in reducing for some time is my cable bill. The problem is that my fiancé and I watch about 2-3 hours of TV per day, so I will need something to replace it. There are many different ways to deliver content to your home but none are as convenient as simply switching on the TV and it just being there.

While I am willing to do a little upfront work to replace cable the final solution has to be pretty simple for the family. So what I am thinking is getting content from three different places; over air (broadcast), internet TV, and Netflix.

• Broadcast – This will involve me building and installing a large HD antenna in my attic. I will then plug that into my existing coax cable runs to deliver the signal to all my existing TV’s. I will also set up Windows Media Center to act as a DVR.
• Internet TV – There are several different providers of internet TV including the WEB, Media Center, BOXEE, etc. Since I will be using Media Center as my DVR, it would be preferable to using is to get internet TV, however, I don’t think they are there yet. The best thing I have come across for this is BOXEE, and with their new release on January 7th I think it will only get better. We’ll see.
• Netflix – This will provide on-demand movies. While this option has a cost associated with it, it is still substantially less than cable and is better than a premium channel (HBO, etc.) in many ways.

I plan to incrementally build up this alternative and slowly (over a couple of months) wean off of cable. Once we have not needed to switch over to cable for 21 straight days I will cancel it.

My desire is to keep the costs of this project to under $700 (approx. 1 year of cable).