Dump CableTV

This page describes how I dumped CableTV and improved my home entertainment 🙂

There are lots of articles and new products coming out on the market that do IPTV – (internet protocol TV) – examples are set top boxes from AppleTV, BoxeeTV and Google TV. They are good cheap players for getting internet content on your TV. Unfortunately, some ppl also just wanna watch network TV broadcasts- like the latest local NFL game. So what we have at our house is a hybrid that you can only currently get from a home theater TV (HTPC) – we have:

1. IPTV – great for hulu.com, youtube.com, NBC.com, Boxee – end even email 🙂
2. LIVE tv – good old TV
3. TIVO replacement- use ur HTPC to record and replay live TV -skipping stuff u don’t want … like commercials
4. NetFlix – streaming movies
5. DVD/BlueRay – from the PC’s hooked up to the TV’s

1. To get IPTV, I recommend a good old PC hooked up to the TV. Rather than a traditional PC, I recommend a PC built to reduce power consumption heat and space. I tried out many types until I found 2 IPTV’s that get the job done. The Dell Zino – must have a DEDICATED video card, win7 and a quad core intel processor. Sometimes these are available in the Dell outlet store <$300- I like the dell outlet store ’cause they are cheap, ship fast and their units come with 12month warranties. If you get the dell, get a good wireless keyboard – for $39 the IOGear with built in mouse is a good choice. Even smaller is the Acer Revo 3610. ~$350 including wireless mouse & keyboard. Both of these machines have VGA & HDMI out, I highly recommend a remote. I just use a cheap remote $8 free shipping on amazon. The remote can turn off the PC and the TV senses the PC is off and shuts off as well! So nice when ur going to sleep.

2. LiveTV: Any TV sold in the US since 2007 is required to have a built in digital tuner. All u need is a digital antenna and a newer TV to get great free over the air TV. If you have an older TV, you can buy a digital receiver – but I’ve found that LCD TV’s are so cheap and energy efficient it’s a good time to consider a new one. I do have one older TV that is hooked directly to the TV and using the AverTV as the receiver. It’s just like the good ‘ole days of an antenna on the roof except the picture is amazing, and the antenna’s are smaller and kewler looking 🙂 There is even a simple government web site called antennaweb that tells you how many digital stations you’ll get free and advises what type of antenna to get. When the website says you get ABC, you really get all 3 stations that ABC broadcasts. I live about 20 miles from broadcasters, and they said I would get a dozen stations, instead I have 24. For an antenna I spent $40 on the Wingard GS-2200 it had a great deserved reviews- it works at over 40miles to the broadcasters. I’ve got perfect reception at ~20miles. I have it pointing out of my attic window, would be much better on the roof. I have it split to 3 TV’s and 2 PC’s with no signal degradation – the antenna came with it’s own digital amplifier allowing you to split it. You can use your existing cable wiring- I added new cable- to do so I spent $20 on a brand new water proof compression kit: Zenith ZDS-5060. If you need additional fittings these cost $0.50 each (Thomas & Betts Snap & Seal SNS1P6)

3.TIVO replacement- Windows 7 has media center built into it. It is pretty good for recording live tv. It is also really easy to delete stations you don’t watch. Remotes even do 30 second advance to skip commercials. To get the signal in you will need a TV tuner. I got the $50 Avertv Hybrid Volar.

4. NetFlix- $10/month They have lots of movies on demand. So much unlike cable they recommend movies they think you’ll like and you can cancel any time with no penalty.There are some people that download movies using nefarious sources like utorrent. It’s much easier with NetFlix, and you can start watching immediately rather than waiting ’till the whole thing downloads.

5. DVD’s/ BlueRay- play it right from your HTPC.

Not a bad setup that costs only $10/ month  🙂

NOTE on alternatives- As I mentioned in the beginning of this page, the popular commercial alternative set top boxes do not currently support direct over the air TV broadcasts. When they do, the need for this page goes away  🙂 Here are some more specific observations about alternatives:

Apple TV- tried the old one and it got wayyyyy hot and I was afraid it was going to burn up… of course it couldn’t handle high def and couldn’t do live TV or TIVO functionality.The new Apple TV released Sep ’10 is even worse… it has no hard drive so no matter what u do to hack it, it cannot play any local content and can never replace a TIVO (no DVR – digital video recorder). No AppleTV does 1080p- they have 1/2 the resolution putting out only 720p.

The BoxeeTV is closer to a killer HTPC – it’s a purpose built linux box for playing video and the remote has a keyboard built into it. It can be found under $200- Though it comes with no harddrive, you can plug one into the USB port, and it does 1080p. Another kewl feature is their two-sided RF remote, with 4-way navigation and a full QWERTY keypad on the back. If you want to record live tv or play what you’ve recorded on another DVR you’re out of luck with this box. http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/D-Link-Boxee-Box-to-Finally-Ship-in-November.shtml

Google TV. At this writing not enough is known about their set top box offerings to know if it will be the ideal HTPC. Like the Boxee- it comes with no hard drive so whatever the price, plan on adding on the price of a hard drive. Also, they don’t claim to be building in their own DVR, but claim to be able to play content from your DVR. So MAYBE they’ll be able to play content from a Win7 PC like I recommended above. The thing I really love about the way Google operates, they make their operating systems open and available to developers to put their own hardware on top of it. So although I haven’t heard of any Google TV set top box that supports its own DVR I would bet you one will be coming!

If you have a triple play you won’t save much money UNLESS you turn off 2 services 🙂 That’s another reason I replaced my phone service with nearly free google VOIP service at the same time. See the page here.

Hulu offers a $10 subscription to get lots of additional content… if you find yourself using them alot that can be a good deal.

Also, there is a directory of online content they recommended called clicker. It’s great if there’s a particular movie you want to see.

Wired story:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_howto_watchtv/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Soon I’m going to make a personalized media portal page that links to the stuff we like… It’ll come up by default in the browser when we turn the PC on. In the interim here’s a like to a whole bunch of content: http://sites.google.com/site/tvinternetmovies

If you live in an apt or some other place where a big antenna is impracticle, here’s a cnet article about an indoor antenna: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11249_7-6264597-1.html?tag=rb_mtx;wp_body

Avertv Hybrid Volar

A Slacker’s Greener Pastures Guide to Regular Lawn Maintenance

Some of my train buddies (especially SC – special thanks!) have been talking about simple lawncare required to have a pretty yet low maintenance lawn. We are in north/central NJ, but simple substitutions will make this applicable just about anywhere in the US. You know it’s time to cut your lawn when it’s 1/3 the normal height. Watering is needed when the lawn starts to turn color- do not overwater- it kills me to see people that leave their lawn sprinklers on overnight. Once the ground is wet, the grass has had enough. I usually don’t water more than 90 minutes.

Put the following schedule into your calendar since lawncare is the easiest and most effective when you do it at the right time:

1. 2nd Weekend in March: (St. Patrick’s Day weekend) Clean up branches leftover leaves and debris, and then fertilize
2. 1st Weekend in April (a week or two after Fertilizing) broadcast a light sprinkling of seed
3. 2nd Weekend in Aug: Grub killer – May not be necessary if the summer is particularly hot and/or dry Spread as directed and water in for at least an hour. Let completely dry, and keep the kids off for a couple of days. If they get it rubbed into their skin it could cause a rash or itching.
4. 1st Weekend in Sept: Labor day Weekend. First fall feeding.
5. 2nd Weekend in Sept (weekend after Labor day). Get a custom grass seed blend from a local nursery like Blue Ribbon sun/shade seed mix from Ambergs or Bartells. Hand-cast some fresh seed in bare or thinning spots, and water. The soil will be safe and sweet for the new seed to germinate. As the mornings get cooler the dew will keep the soil moist enough.This will keep your grass strong and healthy, so it can spread its roots during the fall and winter. The healthy dense roots will keep weeds from getting hold in the spring.
6. 2nd Weekend in Oct: Lime test (pelletized lime from Home Depot): Put a soil sample from your front and back yard in a glass container and Bartell’s will test it for free.  Usually areas that get full rain, that are fertilized regularly, and have organic matter decomposing in them (like roots, dead leaves and grass) prove to have high acid content, as well as a loss of minerals, and should be limed. Why October? It takes several months for the lime to change your soil’s pH, so if you do it during October, it will be pH balanced for the spring growing season. Lime spread during a hot sunny period will burn your grass, and lime spread during a frost will stick to the blades and not get down into the soil. This weekend will neutralize in time for the spring growing season.
7. 1st Weekend in Nov (at least two weeks after the lime) 2nd fertilize so the roots can feed during winter. Grass roots will spread during the winter months. Do this after the leaves and thatch have been all raked up for the winter.

Use Google voice as your FREE home number

I switched my home phone over to google voice! I am using all the same old phones we are used to and we are paying as low as $0/month! – We only pay for actual phone minutes we use making calls – <$4 for 80 mins. The keys are:

1. voice.google.com
2. www.IPkall.com
3. linksys voice router ~$40 that converts the home network into the good old phone signal.
4. voxalot.com,

I’m Blogging this so others can follow along… If you have suggestions on making my setup better, please comment below.

1. Sign up for the google voice number in your area code. As of this writing it takes a few months to get the number emailed to you. If you know of someone who has a google voice number they may be able to send you an invite. ~Oct 2009 google acquired Gizmo5… when they relaunch this Gizmo most of this process gets SOOOO much easier.  NOTE: if 911 service is important or you want to keep your existing phone number you can sign up for SIP VOIP phone service with CallCentric for a modest monthly fee- your setup can be simplier than what I outlined here- with those guys, you can even keep your existing number rather than creating a new phone number as in step 3. I didn’t do this cause I wanted the native functions of google voice and I didn’t want to be tied to a single provider – my wife would say I was too cheap to pay a monthly fee – maybe a little true  : )
2. Sign up for a free account with Voxalot.com This account allows you to set up rules to direct your calls to various VOIP providers. It also allows you to switch providers over the web without being home and logging into your phone router. There is a great walkthru in their forum that clarifies lots of VOIP issues.
3. New Number message: I didn’t want callers to my old number to get a horrible ‘disconnect’ message- I signed up for a service whereby our own voice informs the caller to call our google voice number. The service costs $5/month: http://parkmyphone.com/plans-rates.php The thing to keep in mind is that it took nearly one month for this company to get possession of our phone number from Verizon- so plan in advance.
4. Sign up for a free phone number with http://www.IPkall.com The actual number doesn’t matter very much because you’ll never be giving anyone this phone number. Direct your IPkall number to direct calls to Voxalot account from step 2.
5. Buy a phone router. This is key if you want to use ur existing phone equipment like I did. There are a couple you could chose. I chose one that was overkill for what I needed: SPA3102 Voice Gateway ~$50. A more popular choice is the PAP2T-NA. Configure the router to work with voxalot. Directions for most popular routers are on the voxalot site. They have step by step directions for Linksys SPA routers here, but the official directions were here. http://faq.voxalot.com/action/view/Setting_Up_SPA3102
6. Sign up for SIP VOIP provider(s). This is the company that will provide your inbound and outbound phone service. If you go to voxalot – from step 2, they have a great service where they rate various providers. You are looking for the ‘SIP’ providers. Signing up for 2 is a good idea- that way if one provider doesn’t work well or has an outage voxalot will switch to the other provider. I signed up for service with voip.ms and callcentric. I’ve used them for about 2 months- both are adequate- although Voip.ms seems to sometimes get unclear on longer calls.
7. Direct Google voice to forward calls to your IPKall number- you will have to confirm the forwarding number. I LOVE getting text transcripts of voicemail messages. Thanks google voice  🙂
8. I turned off the DHCP server on the phone router so it wouldn’t interfere with the rest of my home network. Also if your router has QOS, you may want to give priority to your telephone router so that calls are extra clear.
9. Test your setup and then do the NO PHONE BILL dance.

I also shut off cableTV at the same time and have better service so we ended up saving about $70/month over our ‘triple play deal’. Sorry Verizon, Comcast, and DirectTV 🙂 Here’s how I shut off Cable TV and got better entertainment.

Other useful link- this is a similar telephone setup: http://whynotbyzero7.blogspot.com/

Danroonie’s Home page

Hey don’t have much time to Blog, but did have a couple helpful tips I wanted to tell ppl about. Check out my pages dumping cableTV and using google voice as a free home phone number.