Getting rid of Cable or Satellite TV

I set out on a mission to provide entertainment for my family without having to pay the high monthly fees for specialized programming. I was paying almost $90/month for Satellite TV. In talking my wife, we talked about ways to cut costs in our monthly budget. Sure we watch TV and to be quite honest we enjoy some of the programming, But we do realize that with a 2 year old we watch more on our DVR than we do any live programming. This is where I started looking into streaming media. We have a television capable of streaming video so I thought what can I do? With the help of some very intense Google searching I found a variety of articles on ways to stream media from the internet. With a NetFlix (www.netflix.com) account in hand and a old computer I set off on my mission.

I started with looking at PlayOn media streaming application. While this application is great it had it's limitations. My television could not decode the format it was playing. Yes there were times that I could play the streaming content but I would have to retry over and over again. Well this wouldn't work for my family. It was more frustrating than worth the time. So since I do work as a Systems Engineer integrating software and hardware I took my training to work. I looked at my pile of computer parts. Hmmm... what can I use to make this all happen? I had an older desktop system that was not being used. I had a video card with a HDMI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI) output. 

Now this computer is about 4-5 year old tecnology but with the right software and setup this would work. Searching on the internet I was able to find the additional components I would need for cheap. A bluetooth usb dongle and a inexpensive bluetooth keyboard with a tracking ball (ie.. mouse) and I was all set. I set my computer up with XP Pro, although I would like to use Ubuntu or Windows 7 but in my searching I found some pros and cons with both and besides I already had XP Pro and I wanted to make this user friendly for my wife. With XP Pro all set up I optimized it to turn off a few non essentials apps that would be running in the background. I installed HULU desptop (www.hulu.com) and Silverlight plugin from Microsoft (http://silverlight.net/). Hulu is desktop is great but to elimenate and stuttering you need to install Flash 10.1 beta. With Hulu desktop you can find a variety of show and movies in SD and HD formats, in order for them to keep this service availble for free you have to watch a few brief advertisements from time to time. I personally thought these looked great on my 46" LCD, Netflix does not have HD streaming availble as of this writing but it gets me the movies I want to see. I will be looking forward to getting HD content when availble.

The benefit of this setup is that I can not only watch streaming on my TV but I can browse the Internet with my wife when we are looking up vacation plans or information on the internet as well as view pictures or video from our digital cameras.

I will update this as I dive into my project of streaming media to my television.

Duel core desktop with 2 GB ram and 160GB HD

PNY GeForce GT 220

Mini Bluetooth dongle

Mini Bluetooth keybord with built in trackball

Wireless card (g/n)