My wife and I decided to kick the crack dealer out of our house. The simple fact is that we can get whatever we want to watch on the web (with HD sports being the only real challenge). I assume there are other Strutteurs who have abandoned cable television and I was curious to see what your media setup is.
tl;dr:I'm a goddamn nerd. If you are a nerd too, I'd love to hear what your setup is for saying 'fuck you' to cable tv. Here is mine.
1 - 5 year old 47" HP Mediasmart flatscreen mounted above the mantle of a brick fireplace (with power and a/v wires run through the molding for total concealment of ugly cable/cords/etc. The TV was cheap bitd and still serves it's purpose now. I use NONE of the media smart capabilities of the TV because the wireless NIC card is a piece of shit.
2 - Old Toshiba laptop connected to my TV via VGA and 8th inch audio cables (which are tastefully hidden) this is controlled by a really cheap and functional wireless media keyboard and a built in mouse. I use this to surf the web on the TV, play chess games, old NES games, etc and watch shows directly from the channel's site (60 minutes, PBS shit, the occasional nefariously obtained movie, etc).
2(a) - XBMC (http://xbmc.org/) installed on my laptop. It's a great and free media player that does more than just play movies. From what I can tell it's kind of like a media aggregator that finds media on different sites and subdivides them like channels. Documentaries, sports, lectures (LOTS of dope lectures you could probably teach yourself anything via the lectures that are available), etc. There are alots of add on's you can use to customize it. I've heard of people using this to watch pretty much anything they want....with various levels of legality and media quality involved.
3 - Xbox 360 with an Xbox live account. This has paid off in spades. I use it to browse youtube (VICE chanel FTW), watch netflix, watch ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U, ESPN 360 via the ESPN app, cut heads in StreetFighterIV, play FEZ hella stoned, purchase UFC fights via the super cool interactive UFC app, etc.
4 - Microsoft SmartGlass app on my phone which allows you to control your xbox via your phone....no more using the annoying controller to select letters off a keyboard one by one...this makes the whole Xbox media experience a lot easier.
5 - Old Dell Optiplex 620 running Ubuntu Server. I hardly use it honestly. I thought I'd want to keep lots of movies on it and use it to stream to any other computer on my home network. It's there and it works but I rarely find myself using it.
NOTE: In order to pull this off, I moved my cable modem (from my office) to my living room and have a cheap linksys/cisco router connected so that I can hardwire both my laptop and my xbox.
Lemme know what you're working with Strut geeks. And if you'd need any help doing any one of the above methods, hit me up.
tl;dr:I'm a goddamn nerd. If you are a nerd too, I'd love to hear what your setup is for saying 'fuck you' to cable tv. Here is mine.
1 - 5 year old 47" HP Mediasmart flatscreen mounted above the mantle of a brick fireplace (with power and a/v wires run through the molding for total concealment of ugly cable/cords/etc. The TV was cheap bitd and still serves it's purpose now. I use NONE of the media smart capabilities of the TV because the wireless NIC card is a piece of shit.
2 - Old Toshiba laptop connected to my TV via VGA and 8th inch audio cables (which are tastefully hidden) this is controlled by a really cheap and functional wireless media keyboard and a built in mouse. I use this to surf the web on the TV, play chess games, old NES games, etc and watch shows directly from the channel's site (60 minutes, PBS shit, the occasional nefariously obtained movie, etc).
2(a) - XBMC (http://xbmc.org/) installed on my laptop. It's a great and free media player that does more than just play movies. From what I can tell it's kind of like a media aggregator that finds media on different sites and subdivides them like channels. Documentaries, sports, lectures (LOTS of dope lectures you could probably teach yourself anything via the lectures that are available), etc. There are alots of add on's you can use to customize it. I've heard of people using this to watch pretty much anything they want....with various levels of legality and media quality involved.
3 - Xbox 360 with an Xbox live account. This has paid off in spades. I use it to browse youtube (VICE chanel FTW), watch netflix, watch ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U, ESPN 360 via the ESPN app, cut heads in StreetFighterIV, play FEZ hella stoned, purchase UFC fights via the super cool interactive UFC app, etc.
4 - Microsoft SmartGlass app on my phone which allows you to control your xbox via your phone....no more using the annoying controller to select letters off a keyboard one by one...this makes the whole Xbox media experience a lot easier.
5 - Old Dell Optiplex 620 running Ubuntu Server. I hardly use it honestly. I thought I'd want to keep lots of movies on it and use it to stream to any other computer on my home network. It's there and it works but I rarely find myself using it.
NOTE: In order to pull this off, I moved my cable modem (from my office) to my living room and have a cheap linksys/cisco router connected so that I can hardwire both my laptop and my xbox.
Lemme know what you're working with Strut geeks. And if you'd need any help doing any one of the above methods, hit me up.
