MythTV Step 2: Digital Cable Deprivation
So I realize that it has been a few months since I started this thread of posts, and it is my goal to get them finished up soon.
The first hurdle we had to get over was life without digital cable, having been in that mode now for a few months I am here to tell you that digital cable is not all it is cracked up to be. I am getting ahead of myself though, what did this change mean to us?
- No Pay channels - We had them all, Showtime, HBO, Cinemax, even Starz, Encore, and TMC. My original plan was that I would get Netflix to offset losing these channels and the hole it would undoubtedly leave in my life. Honestly though, it hasn’t bothered me enough yet to warrant that. The nice thing is, it is always an option once winter rolls around.
- No HD - This was surprisingly easy for me to live without, I hit a few quality issues (that I will talk about later), but all-in-all tv is tv and none of it’s entertainment value comes from it’s quality. The flip side here is that HD is always an option on the MythTV Box, so if I start to miss it I can always put it there.
- No Upper Channels - This was really easy, didn’t change my life at all….good riddance.
- No On-Screen Guide in Bedroom - The Moxi still attached in the living room, we didn’t have this problem, but in the bedroom were we went from a cable-box to nothing, this was an unexpected adjustment. It kind of brought me back to being a kid and just organically memorizing channels and basic schedules. The nice part is that because it is in the bedroom there are only a few thing we normally watch anyway.
- Channel Surfing - The one absolute positive. Digital cable is great, but God bless you if you have the patience to channel surf with the infuriating delay between channels. Take away the Digital Cable, I get my channel surfing back
This simple change dropped a little over a third off our cable bill (cost of the MOXI went up when I dropped digital cable) and we survived just fine. Now onto the fun stuff!
Colin wrote:
I think I’m suffering from project envy. Another suggestion if you haven’t seen them, mini-atx boards. Granted most of the lightweight ones aren’t suitable for the backend recording box but they would be ideal for set top boxes at each of your TVs. There is also a “pico-atx” format that’s going to be released soon but the inital tests didn’t fare well for high def video playback. I personally just like the idea of having a very small device that has enough power to do the job and doesn’t look like a computer tower sitting next to your TV.
Check out http://www.mini-itx.com/ if you’re interested in any of that stuff. They’ve got reviews, a store for pricing reference and *lots* of projects where people built the boards in to neat cases. (I think that’s the fun part).
Posted on 10-Jun-07 at 1:36 pm | Permalink
Adam wrote:
I am planning on discussing it more when I start talking about the hardware, but I ended up going with a very non-htpc looking setup. Basically going full atx and a full tower (to support all the cards and disks). Basically I did it as a cost saving measure, but I do agree that the mini and pico boards make a much more home theater component looking box. There are going to be many posts coming up going over all my hardware decisions, I will be interested to hear your opinion on my choices.
Posted on 10-Jun-07 at 9:29 pm | Permalink