Ditching the cable tv, anyone else do it?
- Thread starter Agent2
- Start date
I ordered this box and 30 feet of HDMI cable for a total of $57 - free shipping and no tax (sorry, spend happy politicians of California). 30 feet of HDMI cable (anything under 50 feet will not degenerate signal strength from what I have read) means the laptop can be right next to the easy chair. An outdoor antenna I bought for $30 (for local channels) brings me to a total of about $87, what Directv jacked my monthly bill up to. So, one month worth of cable has paid (I hope) for endless free tv.
Will report set up and picture quality when the stuff arrives.
Here is a link that shows different ports, if you are computer illiterate, like me. - http://www.vektanova.com/2009/12/connect-computer-to-tv.html
Report?
Do I understand the situation correctly?
- Laptop in easy chair in living room,
- presumably connected to AC so it can run for a while,
- also an internet connection to the laptop (possibly wireless),
- and also a long HDMI cable to the TV?
Then start up a hulu / youtube (for example) video, go to full screen while watching the video, then possibly set the laptop on a table/floor so it does not get your lap hot?
(Yes my Dish Network bill just went up)
Not planning on ditching the cable system yet however I am really disapointed at the unit we were given to use. It is suppose to be an "upgrade" from what we had that died not too long ago. That units remote was easy to use, quick, etc. recording capabilties were easy, you could spell out what you wanted to find rather than search for ever trying to find a show. This new thing sucks, whe nyou pause the dvr and start back up it's always alittle ahead so you may have missed something. You have to know the name and/or channel of a show you want to record otehrwise your SOL...HATE IT...friends of our have a dish... I'm not too keen on that idea either...too many channels (if there is such a thing)! 
That's pretty much what my setup was, except I'd "hardwired" my desktop to the TV.
Thanks.
I've never used any external monitor before, yes I am low tech in many ways, I finally figured out the basics. This link helped me to enable my s-video output on my laptop.
http://www.svideo.com/displayvideo.html
Looks decent enough, now I need to fine tune the resolution and decide how to handle audio.
A LONG time ago I bought this laptop because it was the last one I could find from Fujitsu with XP on it, turns out it is XP Media edition and found a remote control in the box I'd forgotten about. I'll spend more time later to dig into the details.
I remember when cable TV was supposed to be free of ads. Now they have so many fricken ads it drives me nuts.It is a rip off but yet i still keep in around only so we can watch some more ads.
I wonder when they will come up with Sirius XM television.
I dumped Sirius/XM at the first of the year due to commercials and it costs too damn much. Had it in both vehicles.
Roku.
Do you have one? I see the upper 2 models list "Enhanced remote with Instant Replay" - does that mean the show could be paused, if so, how long? (I may be thinking incorrectly because I am used to 40 minutes of content / 20 minutes of commercials every hour, perhaps no commercials?)
http://www.roku.com/roku-products#2
Does it even make sense to have a dvr for these types of things? I've just started looking at these types of things today.
Yes. They are IPTV boxes. They have apps ie Netflix
, hulu, amazon etc etc...IMO they are hands down the best no monkeying around lets just watch content box on the market for several reasons. Dead simple to use, wide variety of apps for content, content providers that have apps are high quality.
The Enhanced remote with Instant Replay is basically a button that skips back 10 seconds at a time in the stream. Show can be paused indefinitely technically because the device will bookmark the stream position. As long as the app doesn't crash...
DVR would be redundant, you can access the content at anytime. If the service (Hulu Plus) has commercials yes you would be forced to watch them. I am only intimately familiar
with one of the services for certain reasons but I have/use Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon on a Roku.
James
Staff member
Another reason that DVR's are nice, about the only time I actually watch TV LIVE (with ads) is for live sports. All my favorite shows are set to record automatically and are patiently waiting for me to watch them when I get a chance to.I remember when cable TV was supposed to be free of ads. Now they have so many fricken ads it drives me nuts.
I have been searching for IPTV and my head is spinning with all the information.. I will look into that more later.
I have also searched what would be involved in taking a few shows I have recorded off my vip722 dish network dvr/receiver - can I assume there is no easy way to do that? I noticed some people are opening up the boxes, removing the hard drive, booting up in Koppix/linux, copying data from the EXT3 formatted Dish network drive to their ntfs drive to their computers, then using a special program off the internet to read those files -- at least that seemed the most reasonable approach, but sounds like far too much work to me.
Apparently connecting to the usb port and moving the shows to the external drive will encrypt the data by tying it to the dish account number?
soooo confused.
I have also searched what would be involved in taking a few shows I have recorded off my vip722 dish network dvr/receiver - can I assume there is no easy way to do that? I noticed some people are opening up the boxes, removing the hard drive, booting up in Koppix/linux, copying data from the EXT3 formatted Dish network drive to their ntfs drive to their computers, then using a special program off the internet to read those files -- at least that seemed the most reasonable approach, but sounds like far too much work to me.
Apparently connecting to the usb port and moving the shows to the external drive will encrypt the data by tying it to the dish account number?
soooo confused.
Oh, and in case someone else is not aware, this is a good place to buy cheap cables. Quick delivery and they work well.
http://www.monoprice.com/home/index.asp
http://www.monoprice.com/home/index.asp