So I have been working on my home theatre PC (HTPC) for a few months now and I have finally hit the sweet spot a couple months ago. I am now satellite and cable TV free.
How did I do it? Well it seems like a lot of things are coming together at the same time. What are they? Well it’s a mixture of the past (antennas) and the future (internet).
Part 1: Back to the Future
I live in Canada, so the digital conversion from analog to digital is scheduled for August 31, 2011. Still a long way off. But I am also lucky enough to live in the center of the universe (Toronto) and all the stations in Toronto are sending out there signal digitally already. Some not really strongly yet, but they all are. Also, we are close enough to Buffalo to get all the US stations as well. This means I am able to pick up about 14 station in full HDTV glory. How do I get this? Simply with a cheap UHF antenna. So get more info about setting up your antenna, the best website is the Digital Home OTA forum. This site has all the information you would ever need. I have bought a channel Master UHF antenna, but I have also built them out of coat hangers and PVC tubing, chicken wire and copper…. and they all work well.
Most TVs now have an ATSC tuner (this means it is capable to receive and decode the free TV signals) built into them, but I decided to take it a step further and build HDTV PVR out of my HTPC. Now I went a little overboard and bought 3 ATSC capable TV tuner cards (From Hauppauge), but this allowed me to tape 3 different shows at once which on certain nights of the week is actually something I need to do. I doubt most people need 3 tuners, I’m sure one would be sufficient.
Now the next thing I did was buy PVR software. There are lots of choices for PVR software and a lot of them are free. Windows Media Center is an option, but for some reason Microsoft has disabled ATSC capability in Canada. There are ways to work around this, but I found I was always having issues with the built in TV listings afterward. After doing some research (and a recommendation from a co-worker) I decided to purchase Beyond TV from Snapstream. It has a really easy to use interface, the TV listing are always spot on and the descriptions are great as well. Also, if you feel you will need more than 3 tuners… it can handle it. I am unsure how many but I have read online of someone who had 7 tuners working. There are tons of features with this product and for $99 it is worth it. Especially since my wife likes it!
Part 2: The Future of Television over the Internet
This is really the future of TV. TV Streamed over your PC. Some of the networks are now streaming shows at a really great quality. CTV, CityTV and CBC all are doing this. The quality on CBC is awesome! I watch Little Mosque and Being Erica on my 40″ Sony all the time.
But what about the American shows? Well the Canadian stations are streaming some of this, but the US stations are as well. Also there is Hulu, which is the best website out there for watching TV. Hulu is a website that offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox and many other networks and studios.
Now Hulu (and many of the US networks) don’t allow users outside the USA to access their videos. So if you are in Canada… u are out of luck….. or are you?
The solution is that you need to appear to be in the USA. There are many VPN solutions, some are even free. Hotspot Shield in a free option. BUT if you use Windows Vista I would say this is absolutely not an option. This product will make Vista unstable and it will cause it to crash on you all the time. After I installed this product it worked great for accessing Hulu, but my machine was crashing all the time. After a Google search I discovered the issue was that Hotspot does not play well with Vista. But if you run XP, it will probably work fine.
So I did some research and I decided I liked Hulu so much it was worth paying for a VPN solution. The product I settled on is Witopia The solution costs $39.99 for one year, but I looked for a promo discount code and got it for $34.99.The install was simple and after using it for a month I am extremely happy with it. I figured I pay over $60 a month for cable, so $40/year for this was a good trade off.
This also gives you the added benefits of helping protect your identity and keeping you safe from the bad guys… as well as keeping your own ISP from tracking your activities.
What I like about Hulu (and streaming TV is general) is that it is like having a PVR, without having to store it on your PC and you don’t need a huge hard drive to download everything. It’s true TV on Demand! Hulu has commercials, but they are only 30 seconds long and they are usually pretty good. Also 30 secs is so short it doesn’t break “the flow” of watching a show.
As for the quality, streaming video has come a long way. Hulu offers low res and high res options and high res on my 40″ TV looks great. While I am watching I don’t even think about the fact I am watching TV over the internet…. its just TV.
Conclusion
So there it is - there is really no need to pay your cable/satellite provider for TV anymore. There are lots of options, including HD options. It’s the future of TV and it’s here now!
Not all people will need to use both OTA and the internet to watch TV, maybe just one of these options will be sufficient for them. There is so much content on either option it would satisfy most people.
But if you make the extra effort and buy/build an HTPC and connect it to an antenna and the internet and then your Big Screen TV, I think you will be quickly convinced there is no reason to pay for TV anymore.
