Ditching cable TV.

[Kaido]

My wife and I are playing with the idea of ditching cable tv. We only watch a few shows and all of them are available on the internet via legal means (itunes, hulu, fancast, amazon video on demand, etc). We realized that we pay around 80.00 a month for TV service. Our plan was to replace our tv service with something that can let us get our content from the internet.

We have two tv's (one downstairs and one in the bedroom) and both are 1080p, so having high def content is important. I've been playing with this idea for a few days and just wanted some feedback on how others may have done this. So far I've broken this idea down into a few possible configurations.

1) 2 appletv's. Jailbroken so I can stream my movie collection from upstairs (or I guess I could convert it all to itunes compatible formats) and buying season passes to shows we want to watch from itunes. Netflix possibly as a backup for 'background' content.

2) Buy another xbox360 (or 2 ps3's) and get netflix, hulu (it's coming to the 360), and streaming from my computer.

3) Roku box - It not only has hulu, amazon on demand, and netflix, but apparently can stream the UFC's live with a UFC channel. That would be nice as I sometimes don't feel like heading to the bar to watch the fights. Only downside is no streaming from my computer.

4) mac mini (or build my own variant). This let's me have full access to any content. Only problem is how to handle the second computer. I guess I could stream to a appletv or some other device. It's not really feasible to buy 2 mini's to accomplish this task. However with a dedicated mini I could host all my movies there and re-encode them to itunes compatible format. I could also throw a tuner card on there and record ova channels.

In any case, I'm looking for input from anyone who has done this or is thinking of doing it. If it helps our favorite shows are mostly on USA/Comedy central/over the air tv (nbc, cbs, etc) and the history channel.

I could have sworn I already replied to this thread...anyway

If you're not looking to do crazy things with TV recording, then imo a Mac Mini is the best way to go. Plex has the best integration of any player out there - it's XBMC with more of a focus on Web Apps. If you are looking to replace your Cable TV with online content, then it's really the way to go, I think. It has 150+ plugins for everything from CNN to Hulu to Netflix to PBS to Youtube to Vimeo to Food Network to Sesame Street, plus plays back all of your ripped movies.

The only downside is that it's a full computer and your family might need a bit of training in order to use it properly. You also have to decide how you want to handle the inputs. I would recommend a good physical remote control (i.e. with buttons) for when you just want to veg. The iPhone or iPod Touch makes a great remote as well. I would also recommend a wireless keyboard with a built-in touchpad. If you have a nice HDTV, you can surf the web on a huge screen, which is nice. Plus you'll need a keyboard/mouse for doing computer setup anyway; I recommend an RF model since they act like a USB keyboard and don't require setup or get dropped like Bluetooth keyboards do.

I've been all over the HTPC game - Windows Media Center, Plex, XBMC on modded Xbox's, hacked AppleTV's, dedicated players like the Asus O'Play, etc. There's no one perfect solution quite yet. Windows Media Center is probably the closest (Tivo + Web Apps + File Player), but it never seems to work quite like you want it to. If you want a full-on PVR, imo Tivo is the best route to go (although I don't care for the cruddy GUI on the new models).

Right now I am primarily using my hacked AppleTV 2. I use it for iTunes content (mainly music), Netflix, Youtube, and XBMC to play back files from my file server. It's super easy for my family to use. Ideally, I'd like Plex to support streaming instead of transcoding, since they built Plex into the native AppleTV menu, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. The ATV2 is easy for my family to use and only requires one tiny little remote. No program to accidentally minimize or crash, no computer system to get messed up on, no physical keyboard to deal with. If Apple opened up plugins for web apps like Hulu and whatnot, they'd really have a killer box. That plus a Tivo and you'd have just about everything you need!

My parents have a Sony 470 Bluray player which is working out pretty well for them. It plays Bluray discs, plus has Web Apps - Netflix, Hulu+, Amazon Unbox (they love that one - especially with the free streaming via a Prime account), although you can't search on Netflix. But that's a nice solution if you want to play actual discs.

I ran into the same problem as you - it's not feasible right now to buy 2 Mac Mini's. I could build a couple Hackintoshes, but even the small ones take up a fair amount of space, power, setup time, money, etc. If you do get into that situation at some point, Plex has a powerful Media Server built-in, so you can stream to other Mac Minis as well as AppleTV's, iPads, iPhones, etc. It's a really slick system. You can slap a 750gb hard drive in Minis these days, or get the dual-drive model and amp that up even more.

Lots of options

 

[Kaido]

I am another that replaced cable with Netflix and am extremely happy with their service. I think it is only $8 per month for unlimited downloads of movies and TV shows in their library. It is quite a large library, although is still missing many things, particularly current tV. I chose to pay $18 per month to be able to also get 3 DVDs at a time - and you can cycle them very quicly and get the latest movies soon after they come out on DVD. I just watch it on my computer monitor and quality is great.

Comcast did lure me back with a 1 year offer of basic digital plus HBO for less than $10 per month. Not sure what I will do when the year runs out.

I'm surprisingly happy with the $7.99 streaming-only plan from Netflix, despite the lack of selection. My goal when I watch TV is to find interesting content, turn off my brain, and veg out - and even though Netflix doesn't have everything in the universe, there's enough selection that it beats channel surfing most of the time I also got a Hulu+ account recently (also $7.99) and I'm testing that out - between Netflix and Hulu, there's a pretty good selection if you just want something to watch while you're chilling out.