Back to paying for cable

Back to paying for cable

Its been a while since I've written a post about our home media usage.  As a quick recap, we ditched DirecTV about 2 years ago and switched to 100% internet based TV.  We primarily used Boxee for Windows, HD OTA with Media Center, PlayON, Hulu, Netflix, and NHL GameCenter Live.  Sure, that means I'm paying for NHL and Netflix, but the total cost of those is way less than the $100+ I was paying DirecTV for service on 3 TV's.  Aside from saving money, the freedom and power of choice has been a great experience -- we can watch about 90-95% of what we want to watch, when and where we want to watch it.  At home, on the road, doesn't matter as long as we have internet (3G and WiFi included).

Why we liked it (aside from just saving money)

The kids don't just sit down and watch whatever Disney or Nickelodeon happens to be playing on TV at any given moment.  They look for interesting shows which usually are much more intellectually worthwhile than the latest pre-teen shenanigans of twins who's mom is a singer on a cruise ship.  They learn about history and science from shows like American Pickers and Mythbusters.  They learn about survival skills on Man vs Wild.  And they choose what they want to seek out and watch.  Sure Bart and Lisa show up on the TV sometimes, along with Jimmy Neutron and others, but as a choice because that's how they want to spend that 20 mins.

So why go back to cable? 

Reason #1 -- Boxee for Windows just doesn't work as well as it needs to. It doesn't have Hulu (or HuluPlus) or Netflix (boxee removed Netflix from the latest and final release) and the NHL app in Boxee doesn't work very well either.  It also doesn't always play network based shows corectly (History Channel is especially problematic).  If you download content to your PC, it works great.  Streaming with it just isn't as reliable as it needs to be, so we end up clicking around with the mouse going to different broadcasters websites, Hulu.com, and netflix.com to watch stuff.

Reason #2 -- PlayON and TubeCore (the software that lets PlayON work in Media Center on an XBox) don't play nicely together anymore.

Reason #3 -- My OTA antenna sometimes doesn't work as well as it needs to (yeah, that's lame on my part but I'm just tired of climbing the ladder to attempt readjusting the thing).

Reason #4 -- The biggest limitation has been live sports.  Even though we subscribe to NHL GameCenter Live, we can't watch games broadcast on NBC Sports (formerly Versus) or on the NHL Network.  Hank (our 6 year old) was at a local Buffalo Wing restaurant recently and (since he was wearing an NHL jersey i suppose) they sat us near a big screen playing the NHL network.  He was in awe that there was a channel on TV that was 100% hockey, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Mixed with his awe was a little bit of disbelief -- "how come we don't get this channel"?  With the Stanley Cup playoffs coming up, and with the summer Olympics this year, I really want the kids to be able to watch the sports they are interested in watching.

What's this going to cost me?

I wasn't about to spend $100+ per month again just for TV.  We gotta' have NBC Sports and NHL network.  AT&T U-Verse doesn't have NHL.  DirecTV and Dish both require a contract and I'm not convinced I'll stick with paying for TV again for 2 years, so those options are out.  This leaves Time Warner Cable as the only way to "try it out" again.  Unfortunately, to get the channels we want on all 3 TV's looks like its going to cost $73 plus tax just for TV.  Not gonna happen in my house -- just not worth it.

Cable Card to the rescue!

After digging around Time Warner's website and talking to them (and being escalated to supervisors more than once to get better information) I was able to determine that (contrary to a couple of representatives' initial responses), a Cable Card will give us access to all of the channels we want.  "But you won't have on-demand" (I don't want on-demand -- I can use Hulu or my own recorded shows).  "But you won't have our DVR service" (I don't need your DVR service using Cable Card on my computer).  Best of all, a Cable Card costs $2.00 per month instead of $27 per month to rent 3 cable boxes, meaning with my special $7.00 per month intro (6 month) discount, my cable TV will cost me about $40 per month (before taxes) and my internet (15 MB turbo road runner) will cost about $33 per month (instead of the $63 I had been paying for it) with a net increase per month of only about $10.00 -- not bad!

How does Cable Card work?

Cable Card is a technology that gives you an electronic "access card" that you can plug into some TV's, TiVo's, and computers that "descrambles" the channels you subscribe to and pay for.  In my case, I just ordered a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime (from Amazon.com) for about $200.00 (including shipping).  This device has 3 tuners built-in, plugs into the cable service, and plugs into your home network.  This effectively creates the equivalent of 3 shared cable boxes on your home network that can be shared by computers running Windows Media Center and XBox 360 consoles linked to a Media Center computer (Media Center is included with Windows Vista and Windows 7 so you probably already have it).  Media Center is like a cable-box on steroids -- it can record shows, play local content, has a beautiful user interface, plays your local music, and even lets you play photo slideshows.  In our case, we have the main computer attached to the main TV in the living room, plus we have 2 XBoxes attached to 2 other TV's, totaling 3 TV's all with access to the SiliconDust HD HomeRun's 3 tuners.  Since the tuners are dynamically allocated, this means we can record 3 different shows, watch 3 different shows, or any combination from any TV at any given time.  Pretty slick!

What about the Apple stuff in the house?

There are a few ways to get TV onto the apple computer and iOS devices.  Two ways come straight from Time Warner -- the TWC TV app works on iPods, iPhones, iPads (and some Android devices) and allows you to watch about 200 of the channels directly to your device while you're in your home.  Time Warner also provides a web page for computers allowing the same cahnnels (http://video.timewarnercable.com).  The other option is EyeTV for the mac.  Its a third-party software package that can used the SiliconDust HDHomeRun network tuners.  I may also dust-off my old "Orb Live" software that I tried ages ago which allows you to stream Media Center content from your PC to an iOS device.  More on that once I get everything installed and working.

So here's to a new adventure in our house -- wish us luck, and as always, I can guarantee you that I won't be bored (either making all this stuff work how I want it or being entertained with all of the new viewing options we will have)!