cable replacement meet the grandparents
for the most part i've gotten my soon to be life without cable video figured out, and a funny thing, or perhaps not so funny thing happened since then.
comcast cable company provided a basic cable service for around 10-15$ a month. for awhile this wasn't half bad, including the major networks (antenna service over cable) along with some other good cable staple channels. well it seems that comcast is discontinuing their analog cable except for the bare minimum of rebroadcasting the major networks. this aggravates my grandparents and mother who aren't going to spend 50$+ on cable video to get things like discovery + a&e which they enjoy.
so the concept of using the internet connection there for video streaming to the tv is a good one, with a 8$ a month netflix charge for more premium content it seems to be a good deal. of course, some hardware is needed, and i'll probably end up using the xbox 360, so add in the cost of an arcade system with no hdd.
299$ up front hardware cost (360/ps3)
40$ playon server software
8$ netflix recurring
now with playon server you can watch netflix without a live account. i've also heard rumors that since the ps3 is now supporting netflix (for free) that the 360 may be forced to provide netflix without gold live subscriptions. this however won't matter if playon is used to access that content.
i'm going to wait for the ps3 disc in the mail to see how the ps3 support is. provided its no better than the xbox 360, the xbox will probably win out for the user interface that my grandparents will probably understand and see the best.
playon will allow me to stream any content i manage to find that the household will want to watch. since i've already played with this and gotten a friend or two to get into it as well, it should work out quite well. the only thing needed is a computer with enough balls to transcode things (for the streaming contents) otherwise things can be automated downloaded/encoded and provided up for streaming/consumption when the data/conversion is completed.
so i never thought i'd say it.. but my grandparents are getting an xbox for christmas. priceless.
comcast cable company provided a basic cable service for around 10-15$ a month. for awhile this wasn't half bad, including the major networks (antenna service over cable) along with some other good cable staple channels. well it seems that comcast is discontinuing their analog cable except for the bare minimum of rebroadcasting the major networks. this aggravates my grandparents and mother who aren't going to spend 50$+ on cable video to get things like discovery + a&e which they enjoy.
so the concept of using the internet connection there for video streaming to the tv is a good one, with a 8$ a month netflix charge for more premium content it seems to be a good deal. of course, some hardware is needed, and i'll probably end up using the xbox 360, so add in the cost of an arcade system with no hdd.
299$ up front hardware cost (360/ps3)
40$ playon server software
8$ netflix recurring
now with playon server you can watch netflix without a live account. i've also heard rumors that since the ps3 is now supporting netflix (for free) that the 360 may be forced to provide netflix without gold live subscriptions. this however won't matter if playon is used to access that content.
i'm going to wait for the ps3 disc in the mail to see how the ps3 support is. provided its no better than the xbox 360, the xbox will probably win out for the user interface that my grandparents will probably understand and see the best.
playon will allow me to stream any content i manage to find that the household will want to watch. since i've already played with this and gotten a friend or two to get into it as well, it should work out quite well. the only thing needed is a computer with enough balls to transcode things (for the streaming contents) otherwise things can be automated downloaded/encoded and provided up for streaming/consumption when the data/conversion is completed.
so i never thought i'd say it.. but my grandparents are getting an xbox for christmas. priceless.
posted by brander at 2:42 PM
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