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But I must say, I am not missing it. At all. I’ve watched
every single thing I’ve wanted to—and, if you read this blog, you know I watch copious
amounts of television.
How did we do it? Basically, we hooked up a computer, HD antenna, and Roku to our TV.
If you are ready to take the red pill, here are some steps you can take.
Determine what you watch where
Start by listing the shows and programs you watch and note
whether they were broadcast or cable channels; if they are cable channels, note
which channels they are on.
Broadcast channels are easy; they can be received
by an HD antenna. The cable channels are a little trickier. To access them for
free, you can pick up many of them the day after they broadcast on Hulu or the
channel’s website. But others (like CBS and FX, for example) will be accessible
only on channel’s website (and some as long as a week later). If you don’t mind
paying $2 per show, almost everything shows up on Amazon Instant or iTunes the
next day.
Now if you are a sports watcher, you will have to do a little
more research. We watch the Super Bowl and an occasional baseball game, so this
wasn’t an issue for us. If you watch more than that, you will want to figure
out what’s available online, through services like Roku, or simply by Googling “how
to watch sports without cable.”
Hook up an HD antenna
Before you get an antenna, figure out how close the
television stations are to you. Sites like tvfool.com or antennaweb.org are
good places to start. We live relatively close to most of the stations, so we
have an indoor HD antenna that we tacked up on our wall (behind a large plant, heh). You may need a larger
one that you can place in your attic or on top of your house. You can then
access all the broadcast channels (who knew there were so many!) directly
through your television—or you can do what we did: access them through a
computer.
Get your TV a PC
You don’t have to do this. You could access your broadcast
channels through your TV and watch the rest of your media through services like
Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant via devices like a Roku, Xbox, or smart Blu-ray player. However, if you want to record a show, see a show you missed
online, watch shows not available on Hulu, watch sports services, etc., you
will probably need a computer.
You could simply hook up your laptop in most cases, but we decided
we wanted to embrace a new way of approaching our media and managing our
viewing. We wanted to consolidate and access all of our media—films,
recordings, television, music, photos, home movies, etc.—in one place.
We were fortunate to have a good friend who’d already done
this, and he built us a computer specifically for this purpose. He gave us a
choice between Linux and Windows based operating systems; we chose Windows
because that is what we are most familiar with. (If you are interested in the equipment
we used, see the note at the bottom of this post.*)
So, basically, we have a Windows desktop computer into which is
plugged our TV and HD antenna (and a few other devices, see section below).
There is a lot of software (much of it free) to help you organize, access and play the media you want. For
example, we use WinTV to watch live broadcast TV. You could use XBMC or Windows Media Center to access almost everything
else—from recorded shows to movies and music you own to live streaming
music to local weather to cable shows and other content available
on the internet.
There are a lot of options and software out there—but be
careful. Some software will access content illegally. It was important to us
that all content we watch is legally obtained. So, do your research.
Other stuff to think about
Think about whether you will want to incorporate equipment
you already own into or want to purchase new equipment for your media system. We
plugged our Blu-ray, Roku and receiver into our TVPC. If you are buying or
adapting a computer for your TV, you’ll need to consider if it is able to
handle these devices.
Also, think about services you already use or might want to
subscribe to. We already subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime, so we access
these services either through the Roku or the TVPC. We are waiting on subscribing
to HuluPlus simply because we haven’t seen the need for it yet.
Also, you will need to think about how you want to control
the TVPC and your other equipment. We are currently experimenting with a
Harmony remote (a kind of “smart” remote) and a mini wireless keyboard/mouse
board. Still up in the air on which we will use the most. Again, lots of
options out there.
Unplugged and loving it
There are still some glitches and bugs we are working
through, and we are still getting used to accessing our media this way.
If a program is on cable, I may have to wait 24 hours after it airs
to watch it, but then we usually did that anyway. Sometimes, I miss a show,
forget to record it, or find it’s not easily accessible on the internet. But I can
easily work into our budget $2 to watch the season finale of Justified or a forgot-to-record
episode of Bones; these are drops in a bucket compared to the $100+ a month we
were paying.
While I stopped watching cable news awhile back, I must admit
that I was a little concerned to be without it in case of a breaking news
story. But that turned out not to be an issue. During the Boston Marathon
bombing, the network coverage was more than enough.
Bottom line? Every time I turn on the TV, I can't help but grin. The red pill was worth it--and I can have my steak and eat it too.
There's lots of information and articles out there about how to do this. Read them. Find what works for you. Then cut the cord.
I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.
*Basically we have a STATA 3TB internal drive, STATA Solid State Drive, 4GB desktop memory, an AMD A4-3400 APU with AMD
Radeon 6510 HD Graphics Processor, ASRock Socket Motherboard, Hauppauge 1213
Win TV-HVR-2250 PCI-E x1 Dual TV Tuner (to allow us to DVR more than one show),
and a DVD/RW drive all squished into a small boxy tower.