buckytom
Chef Extraordinaire
are you married, vit?
JoAnn, my Steve when he lived in England used to love watching The Last Of The Summer Wine
Tomorrow, May 1st, we are turning off cable TV, for a total savings of $120 a month!...We have windows 7 on the TV computer, and it has a built in media center with DVR ready to go. I put a good sized antenna in the attic and connected it to the existing coax, all 4 TVs get signal from that. We also have rokus in the bedrooms. Setting all of this up, the system paid for itself in 6 months, the computer was brand new, I built it.
I decided on windows media center because of ease of setup, and a built in Netflix app. All controlled with a Logitech remote. We have a wireless keyboard with a track pad for surfing, also Logitech. This setup works well.
Tomorrow, May 1st, we are turning off cable TV, for a total savings of $120 a month!...
Ha ha... yes. I like that idea!Time to celebrate! Didn't you say you lived 5 minutes from a Penzeys?
Tomorrow, May 1st, we are turning off cable TV, for a total savings of $120 a month!
We went with the same type of setup you describe. I put up a nice outdoor HD antenna the weekend before last, and connected it to 4 tuners that are visible on our wireless network. In addition to my media server setup (from eBay), two of the cable boxes have been replaced with "nettop" computers running Windows 7 and Media Center, plus all of the TVs in the house have Roku boxes. Anyone in the house can watch over-the-air TV, or Roku, or they can pull out the wireless keyboard and just surf the net. I also put up a shared partition on the main server that contains all of our movies, photos, music, etc. As an added bonus, if I want to sit outside on the deck and watch a game, all I have to do is take the laptop with me, since it's also running media center.
I thought I would have a hard time getting my wife to give up her cable, but after setting up the prototype in the family room and showing her everything it could do, she was like "Why are we waiting to do this?"
I feel absolutely liberated!
Tomorrow, May 1st, we are turning off cable TV, for a total savings of $120 a month!
We went with the same type of setup you describe. I put up a nice outdoor HD antenna the weekend before last, and connected it to 4 tuners that are visible on our wireless network. In addition to my media server setup (from eBay), two of the cable boxes have been replaced with "nettop" computers running Windows 7 and Media Center, plus all of the TVs in the house have Roku boxes. Anyone in the house can watch over-the-air TV, or Roku, or they can pull out the wireless keyboard and just surf the net. I also put up a shared partition on the main server that contains all of our movies, photos, music, etc. As an added bonus, if I want to sit outside on the deck and watch a game, all I have to do is take the laptop with me, since it's also running media center.
I thought I would have a hard time getting my wife to give up her cable, but after setting up the prototype in the family room and showing her everything it could do, she was like "Why are we waiting to do this?"
I feel absolutely liberated!
$105... that's great!That's awesome! Did you get HD home run tuners? I have a dual tuner HD home run on the network and it is a great quality unit, plugged it in over 2 years ago and haven't had to do anything with it since, it just works!
I love the idea of the net top computers, that way you have your recorded TV in every room. That wasn't in my budget at the time. I'm fairly content with roku and plex.
My homemade system works better and is so much more flexible than the cable boxes.
My savings is $105 per month!
BT, do you work for a cable company? We're still using it for internet. I can see cable going more that route in the future.shhh, more people might try this. itw illl be the end of cable, but continue "free" (advertised) tv, and it's online counterpart, which we're ready for.