Tag Archives: Technology

can Internet/Broadband replace cable/Sat. TV?

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How many of you out there pay a metric crap ton on your cable tv or Sat. tv service? Currently just for the tv side of my Comcast bill I pay roughly $97/month. I have no movie channels, no extra sports packages (which sucks because thats where they have the speed channel) don’t pay extra for upgraded service. I’ve got the expanded digital package which basically gets me a few more SD channels(99 – 199), the local channels in HD, and a few select HD channels like ESPN, Discovery Theater, History HD, National Geographic HD, A&E HD, and Mojo HD (some comcrap channel).

The only real reason I have the expanded package is for the so called HD channels, which I barely watch, also the select few times when the Twins or the Wild games are in HD. More and more recently I’ve been contemplating “why the fuck do I still pay all of this money for tv shows/channels I barely ever watch?” about 95% of my TV viewing between the months of September and April are spent on the local channels which I can basically get for free and on top of that they are in HD! If you’ve been reading any of my post you would know that I run a HTPC in my basement Home Theater room, which consists of 4 ATSC (OTA digital tuners) and 2 NTSC (analog cable tv tuners). I mostly record the local channels for the prime time tv shows that are on every night, so basically the major of my HD comes from OTA HD broadcasts.

There are a few tv shows I watch on basic cable tv like American Chopper, Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Cash Cab, and other misc shows here and there, but I start to look, are the shows I am watching really worth all that money? I have two HDTV’s in my home, first in my bedroom I have a 32″ LCD display, that has a built in ATSC tuner, and that is is, so I “rent” an HD DVR from comcrap and pay a huge monthly rental fee for that box, $13/month. Because the tv in my bedroom doesn’t have a cable tv tuner in it I have to have a cable box, and because of the way comcrap sets up their network it would cost me more a month to have a regular HD box vs. the HD DVR.

In my basement I’ve got a ceiling mount front projection setup, again which has no tuner so I need to rent a second HD DVR from comcrap to feed cable tv to my projector, which again leaves me to get the HD DVR because it ends up being cheaper than the regular HD box.

So that is two HD DVR’s I pay for a month, but thats not all, I’ve also got a SD cable box for the TV in the Dining room/Kitchen because for some weird reason the wife (Jody) likes to see the tv guide, and also frequently listens to the music channels on the tv, then she also discovered Video On Demand (VOD) so that she can pull up any of her shows at any time and doesn’t need the dvr. Yes that an awesome feature but is it honestly worth the money? So that third cable box costs me $5.99/month, so $13 + $13 + $6 = $32/month just in hardware rental fee’s.

So my cable tv just for the service is around $65/month + $32/month for hardware and thats where you come to the $97/month I pay just for TV service in my home, and frankly are shit channels compared to what I can get with DirectTV or Dish each of which have 70+ HD channels vs. the measly 10 – 15 HD channels I get with Comcrap. After really looking at my monthly expenses and seeing what I pay a month for TV I started looking at DirectTV and Dish Network to see if I could save some money and get better TV at the same time. So I did a Comparison chart showing the cost of service, hardware rental fee’s, ect… between comcrap, D* and E*. What I came up with is that in the end because I use comcrap’s cable internet service is that if I were to drop the TV side of my cable bill I would be charged $15/month extra just to keep the internet. In the end it would be a wash but I would have gained that many more HD channels and regular tv channels, however that would limit my DVRing on my HTPC as I would need two additional SD sat box’s for my two NTSC tuners. So I would have two HD sat box’s and 4 NTSC sat box’s in my home however in the end that really wouldn’t work out too well because of costs. D* and E* charge and up front fee to get their equipment, and I wasn’t willing to pay $250 – $400 just to change my tv services.

Finally I started thinking, why couldn’t I just drop cable tv all together and just use my broadband connection to get all of my tv shows. Between Bit Torrent, Newsgroups and other sources I could get a plethora of content and fill that void that cable tv filled. So I set out to do just that (well sorta) I didn’t cancel my tv service but I took my HTPC to the next step to see if I could use my HTPC 100% and never once touch the cable box for my tv addiction.

In that past I was extremely addicted to TechTV, and the shows that were on there. After comcrap bought it out, merged G4 (crappy comcrap channel) with TechTV and created G4Techtv and then disbanded all the shows I loved to see. After the disbanding of those shows, the heart of them, the hosts, started doing their own thing but online. Some started doing audio podcasts, while others started doing video podcasts. Some of those video podcasts eventually formed into an online TV network called Revision3, where you can find quite a few internet TV shows, a few of them in HD even. There are many other Video Podcasts other than just Revision3 content, I was just giving you an example of who is putting that content out there.

Now that more and more content is showing up online, I started to see if I could put together a list of the content available out there, the technology/software used to download and watch said content and the methods for getting the content easily. First thing I wanted was to be able to seamlessly download the content without manually downloading it via Bit torrent or Newsgroups. I would rather have a download start while I am sleeping and be ready to go when I sit down to watch tv the next day.

The first and simples, easy way to go about it was with iTunes. With iTunes you can easily subscribe to video and audio podcasts (for free) and haven them auto download whenever there is a new episode. With iTunes you an also purchase complete seasons of your favorite tv show. The only downside is that most podcasts and tv shows are not high quality, granted more and more are turning HD but still a majority are still low quality ipod resolution, so in the end it is not great for big screen viewing.

Next I started researching about RSS feed based torrents. and I stumbled upon this article on Cnet, Cnet Article, The article talked about using Miro to auto download RSS based torrent feeds for tv shows using www.tvrss.net which allows you to make RSS feeds based off of torrent feeds for tv shows so that when a new show is released on the torrent sites you can set Miro or any other Torrent program that supports RSS to auto download said tv shows. Now we’re getting somewhere, the only downside is the legality and slow downloads of torrents specially since comcrap is traffic shaping torrent streams.

The next, but manual process, is Newsgroups, it costs money and need the right accounts and access to newsbin sites but in the end the speeds are phenomenal, and you pretty much get what you need. Now if only you could setup an RSS based newsreader/nzb grabber. Currently I use newsgroups to download British tv as we don’t get much of British tv over here in the states. As of late I’ve been hooked on Top Gear and Fifth Gear. Both shows are great, love the cars, and the hosts are just plain funny as hell to watch and to top it off you’ve got the weird ass British humor.

After you find a way to get the content downloaded to your pc you need to find a way to play it back on your TV. First again I can use my HTPC on my projector, but what about the rest of the TV’s in my home? I really don’t feel like building PC’s for each and every tv in my home, that would be too expensive and use up way more electricity than is needed. What I first started out with was a Modded first gen xbox. With a modded xbox you pretty much can play back any content you can think of, the only down side is HD. Modded xbox’s don’t handle hd very well so I started looking at other devices. Next I was looking at the Dlink DSM-520, Netgear EVA-8000, Hacked Apple TV, and finally Divx Connected.

Right around the same time I was working on finding a solution, I was contacted by Divx corp, and some how found myself beta Testing the Divx Connected device. I’ve been using it for several months now and I have to say I am pretty impressed with it. It allows me to download high quality divx and xvid videos, mainly pod casts and downloaded tv shows, and stream them wirelessly to any tv in my home. So between the two modded xbox’s and the Divx connected device I have found a way to stream downloaded tv shows, and podcasts to pretty much any tv in my home.

Next you have video streaming software like Joost, TV Tonic, Hulu, Vuze, Veoh TV, Miro, and Bable Gum.

You also have Movie sites like Movie Link and Vongo

With all of those streaming applications your pretty much could give up live broadcast tv entirely. You can get streaming news, sports, tv, cartoons, movies, ect… but agian the down side, video and audio quality. From most of what I have tested out so far is that the audio is ok, most not that great, maybe 96 – 128k audio and the video is easily just ipod quality. The upside though is more and more video podcasts like Diggnation, and Tekzilla can be found in HD which is surprisingly good quality and definitely worth checking out.

Next if you are an Xbox 360 owner you also can download tv shows, movies, videos, music, and pictures via Xbox Live. Whats great is you can download HD tv shows, and HD movies. The only huge downside is cost. It is pretty expensive to be purchasing movie rentals and tv shows that you can’t keep. None the less I have taken advantage of Xbox Live market place and rented a few HD movies as was as watched a few HD TV shows and I have to say I am extremely impressed with it, the only other downside is hard drive space, you can get 120gig hdd, but for HD video even that 120gig hdd will fill up fast. Microsoft was also talking about launching an IPTV service and havening actual live streaming tv on the xbox similar to what ATT does with Uverse. That right there would be huge. If you could get tv on the xbox there would no longer be the need for cable or sat, just get what you watch and thats it. Also I run my HTPC with Windows Media Center 2005 and I can use my xbox 360 as a media center extender with my HTPC so I can stream live and recorded tv straight to my 360. Another cool thing that I saw coming out were a set of HP HDTV’s with the media center extender functionality built into the tv’s, thus removing the need for a STB device, more info about the HP HDTV’s.

Microsoft Also announced a partnership with ESPN to provide games, sports footage and other videos on XBL as well, see Announcement HERE. More XBL Marketplace info can be found HERE.

Netflix and Blockbuster can also replace the need for live tv. You can rent entire seasons of tv shows on dvd, so better quality and better audio, only downside is you’ll always be a year behind.

Youtube and Stage6 (can be used with Divx connected devices) are also great sources of video entertainment, may not always be what you want to watch but fills the void of tv.

In the end you honestly could get away with never having live cable tv or sat. tv and just use the internet to download and/or stream your video content into your home. The only downside is finding devices to take that video and play it back on your big screen tv, but if your like me and have a HTPC then its not really that big of a deal, but if you don’t then there are things like Divx Connected, media extenders, media steaming devices, modded first gen xbox’s, and many others. No matter what not everything is a perfect solution, and get away from the manual process of having to initiate the downloads but with programs like Miro and TVrss.net you are getting extremely close to getting way from that, now if and only if the content was better quality with 5.1 surround sound audio and live sporting events where online I would be 100% content, but until then I think I’ll be stuck taking it up the ars and paying ass loads of money to Comcrap.

Here’s a quick review of software I was talking about:

- iTunes, Miro, TVTonic, Joost, Vuze, Veoh TV, Hulu

Quick list of content:

- TVrss.net, Revsion3, Channel Flip, Mahalo, Webb Alert, Geek Brief TV, Attack of the Show, X-Play, Cheat, CommandN

Hardware:

-HTPC, Divx Connected, D-Link DSM-720 network media steamer, Linksys Media Center Extender, Xbox 360, First Gen Xbox, Apple TV

Building My Basement Home Theater

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As you all are aware, I have a huge obsession with home theater, A/V, or anything related to the topic. Two years ago around this same time I found out I was going to be a father. That meant that the current spare bedroom being used as a tv room would have to be turned into the nursery. Which basically forced me to get off my ass and start finishing off my basement. At the time my secondary mortgage was an adjustable interest loan, though we hadn’t known that right away until the monthly payments started fluctuating. I then arranged to have the loan re-financed into a 15 year fixed and pulled out some extra money to finish off the basement.

I wasn’t planning on going all out on my basement, I just wanted a nice, clean, dry, comfortable space to sit down, hang out and enjoy some tv. That didn’t last to long after I spent time in the home theater construction area of AVS Forum. After looking at what other AVS members have done with their spaces I wanted to to the same but maybe not quite up to their budget.

What I basically started out with was a clean slate. I started out researching on everything I needed to do, what tools I would need, how I would go about starting a job like this, and how I would setup the space. In high school I took several CAD drawing classes and since I needed some floor plans for the city permits showing the work I was going to do. I decided I would do them up “semi-professional” and draw them up in CAD. Thankfully I still had a copy of CAD from back when I was taking the classes. I installed it and I was good to go. So with CAD I was able to draw up some “poor mans” drawing of the floor plan layout, electrical, and mechanical locations. Below is the ugly floor plans I made: Basement Floor Plans

The far right corner where it juts out was originally just going to be a closet for storage, but after doing some research and seeing what other folks did with there spaces I saw one guys setup where he had a nice custom AV rack built into the wall. After I saw that I said I had to have that. After explaining to Jody (The Wife) my idea and how I can hide all of the wires and equipment in this space and in the walls, she was on board with the idea right away.

The next part was figuring out how to deal with the storage space under the stairs, and how to access it from the hallway and not from within the bathroom. As you can see with the bathroom finished off and the location of the sink there would be no easy way to access the under the stairs storage. I then decided to brace up the studded walls and cut a hole in the hallway where I needed to access under the stairs. Once I was done with this it was just a matter of getting the rest of studded walls up.

Here is the space I started out with, before any walls were made: What I started out with

As you can see the basement was just poured cement walls with insulation glued to them. So I was basically working with a blank Canvas. Day one I got my neighbors together to help me unload all the lumber into my garage and basement. I believe my first load of lumber was upwards of 200 boards, not including the huge box of nails, air compressor, air gun, and other misc tools I either bought or rented.

One week down and the majority of the basement was framed in and half way with the electrical wiring. After week one: Week One I was able to get nearly 90% of the basement framed in. I still had the ceiling to frame in around the HVAC duct work, as well as to frame off the bathroom.

After the initial rush of the first week/month I slacked off and didn’t really work too much on the basement. I worked on my basement maybe a few hours (if that) a week after that first initial rush. Doing odd cable pulls, and electrical runs. I ended up running CAT5 from my basement up through the garage, through the floor into my office, that way I didn’t have to do wireless in my office. I also ran CAT5 to my garage, to my kitchen, and also to several area’s in my basement. I just wanted to make sure it was over done, rather than under done. Once all the wiring was done I didn’t pick up working on my basement until after the holiday season. I started on my basement in August/September found out I was having a kid in October and didn’t pick back up on the basement until February.

February came, my motivation kicked in and I start going like gang busters on my basement. I finished up all the odds and ends, I get my basement inspected (both City and State), and get the sign off to start dry walling my basement. In less than 3 days I get my basement wiring finished, the electrical inspection completed, get the rough in signed off and I was off drywalling. I go to home depot, rent a dry wall lift, pick up 20 sheets of drywall and head back home.

In one night between my brother and myself we were able to hang all of the drywall on the ceiling: Pics of the progress.

That was Feb. 8th. On the 11th My father in law, my father and myself finished drywalling the rest of the basement. For those of you that don’t know my father in law, when he gets working on something he doesn’t stop until its completed. We started at 11am, and didn’t finish until 4:30, but in that 5 1/2 hours we worked, we hung 25 sheets of drywall, cutting about 100 holes for all of the outlets and such and was able to clean up a bit as well.

Here’s the Feb. 11th Progress: Pics of the basement progress.

Man was it exciting to see the quick progress of the basement, now that I look back at it, I probably could have gotten the basement done in way less time than what I did it in, there really wasn’t that much work that was involved going from bare walls to framed walls to sheet rocked walls. Note to self (and others), next time rent out the air nailer for more than a weekend, building walls by hand takes way too long. Also, note to self, rotozip/dremel for cutting holes for can lights, goes really fast, but messy as hell, I think I am still cleaning out drywall dust out of various cracks ;)

I spend the next few days finishing up on small areas, getting wiring cleaned up in the closet area, and finished drywalling the closet as my last step. I then spent the day after on Craig’s List and the Anoka County Shopper trying to find someone to come in a mud and tape my walls. I ended up finding a guy who was semi retired and did side jobs for extra money. I called him on Monday morning, he showed up to the house that afternoon to price out the job, quoted me at $550 and said he could start first thing Tuesday morning. I then hired him and he was there at the ass crack of dawn, which was 7am for me. I left for work, and came home to him having done both coats of mud that day. He then showed up again Wednesday to spray the ceiling, and finished up on Thursday cleaning up and making sure the mud was dry, paid him and I now had a basement that was ready for paint.

Progress after the mud/tape was finished: Basement progress.

Now we were ready to start painting the basement. I had a general idea of what I wanted to the basement to look like and the color scheme, I just had to convince the wife of the paint choices. After some heavy negotiating, I was able to convince her to stick with what I had plans for and to just trust me. Specially since she was pregnant, and hormonal it was a huge feat getting her to do that. We got our paint and headed back home, Jody helped me primer the walls that night, man was she a trooper, pregnant, and standing on that hard concrete floor painting, don’t think if I was in her shoes (though I couldn’t even if I wanted) I’d be able to even remotely do that.

Two days of primer and paint and we had what actually started to look like a real, livable, basement, minus the carpet. The basement now painted just waiting for trim: Basement Painted.

After the basement got painted I contacted my cousin’s fiance who does cabinetry for a living. I had him build me a wet bar as well as the built in entertainment center rack. It took him a little longer than I had hoped for but come April he had both completed and and installed. I also got the chance to do some tile work around the wet bar and I have to say I didn’t do too bad of a job. I also got more wiring done, added the face plates and terminated all the coax and cat5 in the basement.

Here’s some pictures with the base board trim work and doors completed: Trim Work and doors completed.

I then got the remaining of the trim work purchased (fucking expensive shit) and then Jody helped me stain and varnish all the trim work as well as helped me install the trim work. Got all of the trim work up, and we were finally ready for carpet. Now I am not an expert on carpet or where the best deals are and such but by the time we got ready for carpet we were a little short on funds and Empire was running adds for Zero interest Zero payments for 18 months so we said why not. Called up Empire, got the quote, and they where there a couple days later installing the carpet. We ended up getting the more expensive “Frieze” modern day shag carpet. It actually looks pretty damn good, and comfortable as well. We also went with an upgraded pad so it doesn’t feel like we’re on a cement floor. All in all I was pretty happy with the carpet.

After the carpet was installed It was actually time to start hooking up all of my equipment in the basement. The big screen tv, surround sound, receiver, dvd changer, ect…. it didn’t take me long before I was in the basement enjoying the new space. It was sooo much more relaxing watching tv down there. The only down side was I was sitting about 6 feet from the tv and now I was sitting nearly 11 feet from the tv. that 5 feet made a huge difference in the tv expereince, and I hated it, the picture was too small. So then started my quest on researching projectors and screens to replace the tv.

Pictures of basement progress, trim work completed, carpet installed, equipment now setup: Basement Progress, nearly complete.

Eventually I was able to upgrade to a projector, just needed to wait for the right time (basically when the wife was gone) I sold the old HDTV, and ordered a new 720p Panasonic AE-900U projector, with a 106″ screen. Going from a 42″ screen to a 106″ screen made a HUGE difference. At first it gets over whelming, you just don’t know where to look on the screen, but eventually you get used to it and you almost think it’s too small. So here are some updated pictures of what the setup looks like after going from a tv to the front projection setup.

Basement progress pictures with new projector setup:Basement Projector setup.

Since the projector setup, I’ve added and upgraded my HTPC, also added a Comcast HD DVR, 5 disc DVD changer, Logitech Harmony 680 remote, and upgraded the rear surround sound speakers. The rear surround sound speakers are the Best Buy specialty speakers, Insignia 6-1/2″ shelf speakers. I did a few modifications to them, that are pretty common for DIYers, like using water putty to stiffen up the speaker case, then went a little further and modified the internal cross over to help the bass response of the speakers, common mods for the speakers: Mod 1 Mod 2 Mod 3 So with those mods and the price point of those speakers you can’t go wrong with them. They are a great bang for your buck speaker.

I hope you enjoyed the time line of my home theater build as much as I did. Again until next time.

- Josh