Technogasms

So just a little over a year ago my family moved into our new home and made the decision that we wouldn’t be shelling out the cash for a cable subscription anymore. I gave a brief rundown of my intentions on this blog at the time and I’ll confess right off the bat that almost none of that happened. I am however still without cable and have rarely missed it so I guess that’s a modicum of success. I’m going to do an update on what I’ve been doing and where I hope to go with it in 2012.

The Best Intentions

Alright so I had some detailed, if not exactly lofty goals when I started out. I was going to build an HTPC and then serve content to a media extender like the Xbox 360. I also planned to add a larger antenna to my setup to pull in our local over-the-air (OTA) channels. Hardly the most elaborate or inventive setup, but one that I’ve seen implemented countless times to great success.

Reality

Alright so in a nutshell that’s what I thought I was going to do. Now lets take a look at what I actually ended up using.

Hardware

Sony PlayStation 3
I’d made the switch to a PS3 about 6 months prior to our move as my Xbox 360 had red ringed and was still under warranty with Best Buy so I was able to replace it with whatever I wanted. Between my then 2-year-old, my wife being in school and my trying to write more for Android and Me I realized that I basically didn’t have time for gaming anymore and at that point anyway the PS3 was a more compelling media option to me. At the time I had the Blockbuster DVD-by-mail plan which didn’t up-charge for BluRay so I enjoyed being able to watch everything in quality HD. I’m not sure if I would make the same decision today as streaming is a much more plausible option and the Xbox 360 has made further strides towards being a media hub.

Logitech Revue with Google TV
The Revue was somewhat accidentally slotted into my lineup due to the fact that I won it while I was at CES last year. While I’ve enjoyed using it for the last year it definitely would not have made the cut back when it was going for $279. Particularly at the time it was a device that was far more useful to someone with a cable subscription. I am infinitely more excited by its prospects now that it’s been updated to Honeycomb and is able to run apps from the Android Market. The biggest problem with the Revue then and now though is that it just isn’t spouse friendly enough, that darn keyboard might as well be a skull and crossbones to my wife. Hopefully the next round of Google TV finds a way to be a little more accessible to the general consumer, that LG controller certain shows some promise.

Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700
I’m not going to cover this in too much depth as I didn’t really stretch the capabilities of my router to the limit. It’s a nice dual-band router which features DLNA and ReadyShare USB which are the only more advanced features I’ve used. The highest praise I can probably give this router is that I haven’t noticed it. It just sits there quietly working and hasn’t cause any problems for me. If I were in the market today I would probably get its slightly bigger brother the Netgear WNDR3800 as they added a few new features to improve HD streaming among other things and the price difference is negligible.

Software and Services

Netflix
For the time being Netflix is probably the backbone of most (definitely not all) cord cutters plans. I know the streaming library is largely outdated, but even after the price hike the value proposition of having access to thousands of movies and TV shows for just $7.99 a month is too good to pass up. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also available on almost any device you could possibly own.

Hulu Plus
At $7.99 a month Hulu Plus was a tough sell for me, as it probably is for many users. It just doesn’t offer the same breadth of content that Netflix provides at the same cost. With that said I have had a subscription for the majority of the year as there are a few programs on there that my wife and I really enjoy and the convenience of being able to just flip on the PS3 and have them there has trumped the fact that I could get them for free via other means. With that said it is certainly not for everyone and you should give their show lineup a careful look before giving it a shot.

Amazon Video
I’ve rarely used Amazon Video, but this is mostly attributable to the PS3 being my dominant media device and it doesn’t support access to Amazon’s content. While the free content that comes with Prime isn’t mind-blowing yet it is improving and the ability to rent more recent tittles is nice at times and is made more palatable by Amazon running pretty regular deals on recent streaming content.

Over the Air
I fell quite short of my goals with what I was going to do as far as OTA. I blame this somewhat on the largely solid OTA signal that we get at our home. There are about 9 channels that come in clearly via this small antenna that I happened to have laying around from some long forgotten project. The real culprit here though was streaming though as I quickly found that I just don’t need OTA that often and definitely not frequently enough to invest time or money into it. I get all of my local news channels and I was able to watch all of the Packer games, what more do I need?

Satisfaction

Overall I’ve been quite pleased with the simple setup that I put together. My total bill (including internet) per month was about $65, which is a 50% reduction from what I was paying for cable and internet previously. I don’t have the breadth of programming I had with my previous cable package, however most of that was stuff that I never watched anyway. If you are a casual TV watcher there is more than enough out there for you now via the streaming options I’ve listed, but if you watch a lot of TV and particularly premium channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. you will probably be better served by sticking with a cable or satellite option for now.

One other word of warning I can offer is that if you are someone that doesn’t often know what you want to watch then cutting the cord could be a real challenge for you. There isn’t really anything that simulates flipping channels and if you can’t make up your mind while looking at a list of programs you are going to end up just paging through Netflix on a regular basis. I think someone needs to make a Google TV app to deal with this that lets you input a few parameters and then just spins a wheel and selects something for you.

Future Plans?

I realized I’ve spiraled a bit out of control on this post as I just moved past 1,200 words so I’m going to save my upcoming plans for my next post which should be in the next day or two.

In the meantime if you have any questions or suggestions based on your setup I’d love to hear them.

Related posts:

1. Cutting cable and joining the over the air and over the top revolution