just an asterisk

Cable TV and I have had a pretty rocky relationship. I live in NYC, where “outages reported in your area” is seemly the permanent recording on the cable company phone line. What kills me about these events is that it’s always my responsibility to call out the cable company for time lost. I never see a credit on my bill for the time when service was out, unless I call and complain.  Moreover, my wife and I just don’t watch that much TV.  It’s hard to justify the $150 price for HBO twice a week and the real housewives series a few times a week. Oh and did I mention the service stinks?

My counter attack!

So what did I do to stick it to the man? I cancelled cable. This may sound brash but it’s not as crazy as you might think. Here is a breakdown of my thought process:

• Hulu and Netflix came with my TV – I have a Samsung TV that has “apps” and an internet connection.  It wasn’t that much more expensive and I have access to my Hulu and Netflix content (which is 99% of what I watch).  Both Hulu and Netflix require a paid account, but each is less than $10 per month.
• Apple TV streams all my media from my home computer – The Apple TV was a one time $100.  I can use it to rent movies and TV shows, like pay-per-view on steroids.
• I don’t watch sports – I think this is worth mentioning, as my solution would be hard on a sports fanatic.  Sports are a bit harder to find via the web, but not impossible.  I’d be curious to hear solutions for this in the comments…

Thoughts so far…

It has been 2 days and everything is great! I feel like I pick what I want to watch and I only see a commercial or two on Hulu.  All in all, the conversion went without a hitch.  When I want to watch a TV show, I use Hulu on my TV or the Apple TV to rent/buy the episode.  For older movies, I use Netflix and for more recent titles, I can use Apple TV as a pay-per-view outlet. Finally, I stream pictures, music and movies from my home computer over my wireless network to the Apple TV.  A – MAZING.

Here are some pointers if you plan on doing this yourself:

1. Use wires when possible: When you can, keep everything wired together.  Wireless is great, but the speed is much faster via cables.  If you can’t use wires, try to minimize the distance between your TV and your WIFI router.
2. Invest a few extra bucks in faster internet: You can pay a little more (an extra $10 in my case) and get 50% faster internet.  That burst of speed could be the difference between HD quality streaming and blurry junk, so investigate your options.
3. Learn how to use iTunes Home Sharing: Maybe this will be the topic of a future post, but you can share your iTunes libraries between computers and to your Apple TV. It’s fairly simple to set up, but can get a bit finicky. Try out this link to get you started.

I’ll try to put another post together in the future describing my whole setup, but hopefully this gives you a glimpse of what is possible.  The kicker here is that it’s all pretty easy!  I didn’t code or fiddle with complicated hardware. For the most part, it was as simple as plugging things in.

Good luck!

~ab

PS: I’m aware that the large cable company isn’t going to care much about my rebellion… but just wait comrades – the revolution is coming…

This isn’t news, but I’ve been having fun with it (and I’m a bit strapped for time these days).  My new TV came with streaming Netflix built in (as I mentioned in my last post).  But what does this really mean???  Well I’ll tell you – I can watch Netflix from my television, streaming it over the web on my home network.  The network setup was a pain in the butt, but once I got it working, I couldn’t believe that I’d lived without for so long.  To think of all the times I ordered pay-per-view when I could have just watched something for free!

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