Buying and Off-the-Shelf Computer for a Media Center

Before I decided to stick my desktop in my living room, I was looking at buying a cheap PC from Best Buy and throwing that in my living room.  There are a lot of nice computers for under $500 that are in pretty tiny cases.

If you don't have any computer equipment that you can dedicate to this purpose, in my mind, this is the best way to go.  While building a machine might be another great option, I often find that with low price equipment, you can't always beat the major manufactures.

So here is what I think you should look for in an off the shelf computer.

• Running Vista Home Premium - You wouldn't want to get it home to find it running Vista Home Basic and not being able to use Windows Media Canter. *Bonus Points if it has Vista Ultimate Edition*
• One Free PCI Express Slot - This will be used to hook up an optional TV Tuner Card.  While the older PCI standard will work with some of the older TV Tuners, I would strongly suggest PCIe.  *Bonus Points if it also has a PCI Express 16x slot*
• The Proper Video Connection - This one is a little ambiguous, it really depends on what your TV has.  If your set is Standard Definition, then you will want to look for S-Video.  If you have a High Def Set, then it depends on what your HD set accepts.  I would suggest DVI or HDMI and then VGA in that order.  DVI can easily be converted into HDMI.  Those two cannot be turned into VGA as easily.
• A Bunch of USB ports - Just always handy.
• At least 2GB of RAM and 2 Cores on the CPU.

The one machine that caught my eye was the Acer AX1700-U3700A.  I cannot comment directly about the hardware, but if it is all of the pieces I was looking for in a media center.

Good Luck!

All I am Really Looking for is Options

This blog was started with the goal of helping other people quit cable by creating a source of what works and doesn't work.  That being said, I don't want to be completely villainous towards the cable companies.  Quitting cable in the way laid out in this blog won't be for everyone.  If you enjoy the service and think it is worth the cost, that is awesome.

I however, didn't like the price and really didn't enjoy the service.  What I am looking for is options.  Currently my local cable company can't provide me with the options that work with my life.

Lets take a step back and look at the music industry.  Being 26, I grew up at the height of Napster's popularity.  Music to me wasn't really about albums anymore, but about finding all these rad artists, making mix CDs, and then going to their concerts.  This was clearly a terrible model for record industry.  Their customers can now just go online and have anything they like at their finger tips, rather than going into the CD shop and spending upwards of twenty bucks.

Moving forward a few years, services like the iTunes Music Store and later amazon.com/mp3 (my personal favorite) came around.  What these services allowed the customer to do was get the song or two they wanted at a reasonable price.  They are proving to be a hit, iTunes alone has sold more then 6 billion songs.  The big thing now is that the consumer has plenty of options to get the music they want.  Stores still sell CDs, you can subscribe to music services, or pay per track.

I've never had a problem with paying for media, just as long as I don't feel like I am getting bent over in the deal.  This is why I went looking for options when it came to the television shows I watch.  I don't want to be shoehorned into one model of delivery simply because it is what works for most people.  As a consumer I have the option to let my dollar (or my eyes - when it comes to ads) do my talking.

As technology advanced more and more playback devices are going to be in the living rooms and palms of consumers.  They are going to look at their Apple TV or iPhone and say, "Why do I have to pay $2 to get the latest episode of 'The Office' on my iPhone and also pay $60 a month to the cable company, why don't I just pay the $2?"

If a cable company could provide me with an a la carte option, I would be a subscriber again.  But to charge me for channels that I simply won't watch seems insane.  I would rather rely on over the air service and the iTunes Store, amazon.com/vod, and Netflix to fill in the rest.

In the end, I am simply a consumer and will always be looking for cheaper options that allow me more flexibility.

My Issues with Cable

It might be a good idea to take a step back and explain some of my reasons for wanting to quit cable.

• Cost - There was a high cost associated with cable.  For the few services I was getting, my bill would easily be $140 without any discounts.  I got that down to $60 for basic and internet.
• Discounts - They only way to qualify for their discounts is to be a new costumer.  Sure, sometimes you can call and argue your way into a cheaper price plan, but it doesn't always work.  Essentially what the cable companies are supporting is hidden pricing tiers.  Make the price low to attract the customer, but then stick it to them after they've been a customer.  Rather than supporting customer loyalty, they are supporting customer disloyalty.
• New Options - Many networks are trying to allow customers to access content over the internet.  Some of them are doing it for a free/ad-supported model.  You go to a website and stream the show you want to watch.  The other model is paying $2/$3 for an episode, downloading it locally.  Both of these models give you on demand entertainment to watch at your leisure.  With a combination of the models, you can cheaply and legally get most of the content you would normally be able to watch with cable (there are some exceptions to this rule, that is when you need to sit down and see if you can live without those shows).
• Rise of the Videocast (or Podcast) - Companies like Revision3 are cranking out really good content on the web.  Shows like Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show, and iFanboy are right up my alley.  They cater to my geekiness in a way that cable never could.

Those were the major factors that contributed to me switching away from cable and towards internet based media.  

Addressing mcuban re: Internet TV - #1

"How many people have really given up cable or satellite for internet only delivery of content? 100k at the most? Based on company reports, it seems like people are giving up their wired telephone lines at home long before they give up their cable/sat/telco TV" --Mark Cuban via http://blogmaverick.com

I was curious of these numbers myself, so I did a little bit of "back of the napkin" type estimating:

I couldn't find any exact numbers for boxee users.  A quick glance at the forum stats at boxee claim over 18k users.  Since most users will not bother to take the extra steps necessary to create the extra account, we can guess that there might be 8-10x as many "regular" users of boxee who haven't signed up for the forums.  This puts the number of boxee users at around 162k (maybe Boxee can enlighten us, I feel like this must be under the actual number).  

At the "Big Green Button" website, a simple forum for users of windows media center, they currently have 126,312 users.  Again, there are probably many more people (frequently or infrequently) browsing the forums that don't take the time to register, maybe we could put that number at 500k.

Since these numbers might not actually fit into reality, let's take a company that has released some hard data for us to digest.  Through http://bit.ly/gAmR, we see that in December, Apple reported that its AppleTV sales were up almost 300%, year over year.  Analysts predicted that Apple would sell over 2 million units in 2009, but if Apple keeps up its growth at the same pace, it's on line to sell 6.6 million units.  I think this is pretty impressive for a company that doesn't really promote the TV unit as hard as its other products.  

So you end up with maybe  7-8 million people with media centers and AppleTVs.  This doesn't include the other self contained media centers (HP put one out, some other brand had one at Best Buy).  Of course, only some portion of all of these millions of users will not pay cable television subscription fees.  I would guess anywhere from 25-50% of the users don't pay fees (remember that a lot of these users will be using an antenna to get *free*, HD network TV over the internet).  Another interesting statistic to know would be the growth of antenna purchases, but it's hard to get an accurate number for that.  Regardless, that would put the number of antenna + internet TV users at around 3-4 million.  I think we can all agree that this number is much less important that how fast the segment grows.

For what it's worth, since my buddy cancelled cable (along with my wife and me), there are probably 15 people that are seriously considering reducing their cable services.  In the end, at least a handful of them will take the plunge.  It seems like it is something that people are genuinely interested in.

I would also guess that Mark is right about the phone service.  I think it's just another example of the trend though, where end users don't want to pay for services that they don't use, especially when those services are expensive.  As soon as a viable alternative emerges, customers will switch.

I'll end this post with a disclaimer that I am not an expert on the economics of the existing television models.  The whole argument seems to be between advertising based internet-delivered shows versus the traditional cable delivery model.  I'm curious how much revenue shows are seeing from the iTunes and Amazon video on demand model, where users pay $2 per show.  What sort of per-viewer revenue does a show see on network television from advertising?

Mark Cuban's Argument

Mark Cuban and Boxee debate over at their blog: http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/03/21/a-lively-debate-with-mark-cuban/ I commented on the exchange, I'm re-posting here. There are lots of words but this is an important debate. Most of what I say below will make more sense if you read the full exchange over at Boxee.

Cuban offers a few good points, some better than others. I don't understand the outright dismissal yet, because if you go oint by point, there is validity to both sides here.  

There is no reason why something like Boxee couldn't convert a significant portion of cable subscribers. What you have right now is cable television providers charging consumer a lot of money for a ton of services, most of which go unused. The main reason why I switched to using a central media center instead of continuing to pay $230 per month for television is because I can get the vast majority of my content online. There are some shows that are on channels like HGTV, where I can't get them from their website or purchase them on an episode by episode basis on Amazon.com/vod or iTunes, but we basically decided to stop watching them.  

Cuban raises an interesting point here: "The concept of “users always want choice” really really sounds nice. It makes for a great panel argument. But the reality is that its not true. Ultimate choice requires work. Consumers like to think they have choice, but their consumption habits say they prefer easy." He goes on to use youtube as an example, which doesn't really apply. I think the core problem is that there are end users who sit down on the couch and flip through the channels or read through the guide. With an antenna you pick up a handful of broadcast channels who offer a bunch of content, but it's not that much. It takes some effort to go to hulu and search for shows. The advantage that Boxee has here is that they can simply implement that functionality and deliver content to the user in a passive manner. They can do this faster than the cable company can. 

Another concern that I share with Cuban is the saturation of bandwidth because we're going to be watching so much television. While I think it will be awhile before we reach this point, consumers who want to go this route will need to be prepared to spend more money on a higher bandwidth line, if it's available.  

What we have here is two extremes (one free, one expensive). After people start switching to a central media center and watching these shows on a web browser or through Boxee, the providers of that content will monetize it by sticking in advertisements. Boxee and other media center software providers will probably need to charge users (monthly or a licensing agreement) in order to facilitate the deals with the content providers. Cable companies will be forced to reduce their fees to stay competitive and both will implement the features that end users want.  

An example here is when the RIAA was able to make their CD prices stick, simply because there weren't really alternatives. When CD burners were cheap enough, consumers stopped purchasing CDs (despite the legality). Now that iTunes provides a fairly priced song, more and more people are purchasing those and the CD prices have come down since the 90s. I think we'll see more and more content being offered through amazon video on demand and iTunes. When the revenue falls enough, cable companies will be forced to change their offering. The challenge for them is to make sure they can still pick up the $22 billion per year in subscriber fees.

What I am Watching These Days

I want to give a run down of what I am using my new cable-less setup to watch.  Everything on the list is available for online (free and legally).  I also thought it would be a good idea to go over what I will be missing.

What I am Watching:

• 24
• 30 Rock
• American Dad
• Better Off Ted (first episode was pretty funny)
• Chuck
• Colbert Report
• The Daily Show
• Family Guy
• Heroes (though I am behind)
• House
• How I Met Your Mother
• LOST
• My Name is Earl
• The Office
• Scrubs (starting watching again with the move to ABC)
• The Simpsons
• South Park

... that seems like a lot of TV ...

What I am Going to Miss:

• Good Eats (I love this show so much, but it isn't worth, if they had it on Amazon VOD or iTunes I would buy it in a heart beat)
• Ace of Cakes (see comment on Good Eats)

That is all I can really think of ... I will miss not being able to turn on Food Network or Discovery and just having it on for background noise, but that isn't worth 40 bucks a month.

First Impressions of the Cable Alternative

The first night worked out pretty good overall.  We took to the guide and set up series recordings for our favorite Thursday night shows (30 Rock, The Office, Hell's Kitchen) and my wife wanted to record Grey's Anatomy (which I am not watching).  Since we have a dual tv-tuner, we could record two shows at once, in high-definition.  

We still had a conflict for an hour of prime time TV during the 30 Rock / Office hour, so we opted to not record those two shows and watch them later on Hulu.  Hulu is an awesome service.  I'm on the Boxee windows alpha list right now, awaiting a build, so in the meantime I have to actually bring up a browser and go to http://www.hulu.com.

Hulu has been great for two reasons so far.  First, my wife can find full length shows (supported by advertising) to put on as noise, where before, she would have picked some random cable channel.  I think there is enough content there to keep her satisfied on that front.  Secondly, I started watching the Daily show regularly over the last week, where I had basically stopped watching it over the last year.  

As a side note, if you are thinking there are some channels that you can't live without (CNBC being an example), shows like "Mad Money" have full length, advertising free video podcasts posted.  As another example, we had HBO and all the shows we were watching had ended the new episode runs, except for Bill Maher's show.  I found out he also has a podcast with full length audio only episodes, which suits me just fine.

Pulling up the video podcast section of iTunes, I can wander through the "News & Politics" section and find full length episodes of "Meet the Press", MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow" show and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". 

Dealing with Sports and No Cable

I was going to put off writing this post for a while, but the more I thought about it, the better it will be to get a discussion going sooner than later.

When I was talking to my friends about my crazy plan to quit cable, a lot of them asked me how I will handle not being able to watch a lot of sports.  Now, I consider myself a sports fan, but when I stepped back and really thought about it, it was easy for me.

I am not the type that has to watch Sports Center on a daily basis.  I like to think that I watch Wild and Twins games at home, but in reality, I maybe only watch a handful of them.  Both of those teams have occasional games broadcasted over the air.  As for the Vikings, I get FOX and CBS, so watch them won't be a problem.

Golden Gopher Sports though is a whole new problem.  They are not broadcasted and require channels like FSN-North or the Big Ten Network.  But again, I seldom watched those games at my house.  I was more likely to go to the bar or to a friends house to watch them.  Additionally, with the money I am saving, maybe I can put some of that towards tickets for these teams I like.

My best advice for casual sports fans is that life will probably be OK without cable.  The big thing is to look at what is broadcast locally.

If you are a rabid, gotta watch Sports Center daily, kind of sports fan.  My best advice at this point is to stick with cable, there really isn't a good alternative that I can come up with at this point...

But don't give up hope.  I am looking into services like MLB.TV, NHL Gamecenter Live, and others to see if we can cheaply get all the sports we want while also freeing ourself from the high prices of cable TV.

(P.S. Can you tell I am from Minnesota :P)

Converting a Desktop Computer into a Media Center

The computer I currently have hooked up to my TV is my old desktop.  I built it about a year ago for gaming, but have since replaced it with a gaming laptop.  Because of this, the specs on the machine are still really good and made it a good candidate for a media center PC.

The PC was running Windows Vista Home Premium which gave me access to the awesome Windows Media Center.  When I originally built it, I put a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a NVidia 8800GT Video Card into it.  These specs are more than enough for what I want to do with media.

One thing about turning this PC into a media center, is that when I built it, I really didn't care about how loud it was, but more importantly, how cool it stayed.  Because of this I picked a pretty open case and threw a lot of fans into it.  When I first put it out in my living room, it was pretty loud.  Because it had so many fans, I was able to unhook a few of them and quiet the beast down a little bit while still letting it stay cool.

It is still a little too loud for my taste, but it will work for now and allows me to recycle a machine that I already had.

With the machine creating less noise, it was time to focus on a TV Tuner Card to allow my machine to record TV.  I did some searching on Newegg and found the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250.  This card allowed me to record two streams of HDTV, beautiful.  Setup was a snap, instead of using the Driver CD, I went to Hauppauge's website and downloaded the latest drivers.  A reboot later and Windows Media Center was able to pickup channels.

I currently have the machine hooked up with HDMI, which is what I would strongly recommend.  However, because I only have two HDMI ports, I will be switching it to component so I can have my 360 and PS3 hooked up.

The two HD DVR's in my trunk are being returned today.  Ian's idea to replicate the Office Space copier scene was tough to deny.

Replacing cable television

After getting a basic media center set up and doing a trial run for about a week, my wife and I figured that we were ready to make the jump and cancel the cable television service.  Total savings per month comes out to just over $170 per month.

Almost two years ago, we signed up for the "triple play" package, which included high speed internet, phone service (and long distance) and a ton of cable television.  We opted for the phone because it cut back on cell phone minutes and the bundling of services gave us a sweet discount.  The bill was about $125 per month and included two HD DVRs for both of the televisions along with some things like HBO and other movie channels.  After twelve months, the deals expired and there were a few price hikes along the way and our bill had ballooned to almost $230 per month!

I called this morning and was quickly routed to a local account specialist (their voicemail was local anyway), who detailed a few options for reducing the monthly bill.  I went into this call knowing that I could get almost all of the content that I've been watching over the past year with an antenna and the internet, which comes to about $58 per month if I stay with Comcast internet.  The next highest package that the rep offered came to around $90, but didn't add too much in terms of content, just the next set of cable channels.  I believe ESPN is included in this package, but not the HD versions (this has not been verified).  There were several packages that included almost all of the current content for $118-$160 per month, which would still be a savings of around $1200 per year.  

In the end, I decided that it wasn't yet worth it to even pay for the extra channels.  Part of this is because the rep was 45 late in returning a phone call and I was forced to call them back.  Apparently they are extremely busy right now, handing out deals to existing customers.  If you're not ready to try out cable alternatives, at least call your cable provider and try to bring your bill down!

Follow us on Twitter

I setup a twitter account for this blog today.  Follow us at twitter.com/howtoquitcable.  Feel free to ask us questions or let us know your story about quitting cable.

My Current Setup (3/18/2009)

I did it, this morning I called up my cable provider and told them I was no longer interested.

So, I figured now would be a good time to give a run down of my current setup.  I will go in much more detail about each individual component in future posts, today I am give a short example of how they helped me quit cable.  

Home Built PC running Vista Home Premium - This is a year old desktop that I haven't been using much.  I built it for gaming, so it has some horsepower, all I needed to add was a HDTV tuner card so I can record TV.  I am currently using a mix between Windows Media Center and Boxee to get the content I am interested in.

XBOX 360 - Prior to hooking this machine up, I was using my 360 to stream content from my MacBook (using a wonderful program called Connect360).  I will continue using this machine for streaming movies off of Netflix, though Boxee does offer the ability, I am a fan of the XBOX interface (for now).

That is pretty much it for TV content devices, I have them hooked up to my 50" Toshiba DLP HDTV and life is good.

Picking Out an Antenna

I had a hell of a time picking out an antenna to work in my apartment.  I live on the ground floor of a ancient apartment building and have never had much luck with many wireless devices.  Until AT&T made some upgrades in my area, my cell phone rarely worked in my apartment.

Knowing that my apartment is goofy, I went out and got an amplified indoor antenna.  I was able to pull in decent signal, but anytime I moved around the apartment my picture would cut in and out (digital interference).

I went back to the store and picked out the following antenna - RCA ANT1400.  It wasn't amplified, but its unique shape helped out with the interference.  I spent some time placing around my living room till I realized it worked best propped up in the window.  I wasn't able to get every channel available in my area, but I was able to get the ones I truly cared about.  I see that they make an amplified model of this antenna, which would probably help me get those other channels.

Normally I like shopping online for the money savings, but when it comes to antennas I really like shopping at the stores.  It is easy to bring one home, try it out, and if you don't have any luck - returning it to the store.

Tomorrow I Quit Cable

My cable and internet bill is roughly $100 a month, in a couple months that will be going to $140, if not more.  For a single guy in an apartment, this isn't really small change, I could be using the money for something a little more fun .... like beer.

I sat down and looked at what I was watching, I realized that most of it was being broadcasted for free in HD.  The rest of it (the one of two shows that are not broadcasted) I can easily get from iTunes or Amazon Video on Demand.

If I drop cable, my bill will end up being just south of $60.  Today that is a $40 dollar savings and in the comings months will be $80.  That is close to $1000 a year!  That is a lot of beer money!

I hope to be posting about my experience on this blog, hoping to help others out as they look to save money.  Some of the coming topics include:

• Building a Media Center PC
• Streaming TV (free, and yes legal)
• Dealing with no ESPN
• And more ...

In addition to my findings while quitting cable, my good friend is going through the same process and will also be documenting his experience on this blog.