I bet the cable-TV people weren’t happy to read this in The New York Times, where today it’s the most e-mailed story on the site.
But as usual, the press is a day late and a dollar short as regards the inexorable march of cheapskate technology. My man Charles Pelkey canceled his landline and cable TV six weeks ago — he and the family rely on cell phones and computer-delivered video from Hulu, Freeonlineepisodes.net, Netflix and elsewhere.
Like me, Charles is something of a hoarder, so he didn’t need to buy a Mini like the pioneers profiled in the NYT. He simply hooked up a 4-year-old Dell laptop to the tube via analog RGB cable and instantly saved himself something like $90 per month.
I had tried a variant of this some months back, using Herself’s MacBook and a set of composite video/audio cables, but the results were disappointing, as in heavy wine consumption, much profanity and very little watchable TV. So the other day I invested in a Mini-DVI-to-DVI adapter and a DVI-to-HDMI cable and hey presto! Instant streaming video on the 42-inch Toshiba. Audio comes from the headphone jack via a splitter plugged into red-and-white audio cables attached to the Sony home theater. A simple 3.5mm PC audio cable run straight to the TV works, too.
Like Charles, I’m not hurting for hardware, so our investment is minimal. Buying a new Mac for work will let me dedicate my 3-year-old MacBook to streaming video, so we won’t have to be booting Herself’s ’puter up and shutting it down all the time, connecting and disconnecting cables, so she can manage her various social-media obligations. I would prefer to use one of my retired G3s, either the 500MHz PowerBook or 800MHz iBook, but their video cards ain’t got the stuff.
And we can probably do without the nifty wireless mouse, too. Our living room is so tiny that it’s no trouble to walk the four paces from couch to computer for switching video sources. Besides, I’m a great fat bastard and need the exercise.
Mad Blog Media 
Fortunately, I haven’t watched a TEEVEE (with the exception of bike races and the odd severe storm report) since the first year of Bushie’s first term. Hopefully this will reduce funds going to global fascist Rupert Murdoch.
Looks interesting.
We ditched cable (sort of since they were the only ones who could supply a high-speed internet connection in the deprived, or perhaps depraved, neighborhood we live in) and get digital channels just fine with the antenna. We hooked up an old laptop that besides a dead video display screen works fine to the flat screen boob tube to get most everything worth watching that isn’t free over the air. We hope to be living in Italy for most of 2010 and might even live there without TV! The nice weather and roads there provide no excuse for not riding my bicycle so much that there’s no time for Berlusconi’s TV empire anyway.
Ooo, Italia. Beats the snot out of streaming Internet video. Unless, of course, you’re watching streaming Internet video in Italy, right after a nice ride and during a nice glass of vino.
I did this myself just last weekend. Then again, I’ve had no TV at all for over a year.
The big blue box store carries what they refer to as a “nettop” from Acer (Aspire R1600). Basically a netbook with no display, but it has an HDMI output. Added a USB wireless N adapter, and for convenience sake, a wireless mouse and keyboard, also USB, both of which I purchased at that store with the bullseye on it. For about $250 total, I’m pretty well set. I would recommend that if possible, you use a wired connection, though. It may simply be that I need a better adapter, but at times the video does lag a bit. I’m going to try a dual band and see if that helps. For movies, I download them onto a flash drive using my desktop, and then plug it into the Acer for viewing on the TV.
My lapper have an HDMI output, so my set up is the same as Patrick’s. Funny, just a few minutes ago, Netflix sent me an e-mail survey on the quality of a recent Anthony Bourdain episode I had streamed. It was very good, better than some of the earlier stuff I had streamed. So they must be ramping up the quality for the video wars on the horizon. Some how, some bastards are holed up in their ivory tower plotting how to get there grubby paws in the pie and really mess things up. Lawyers at ten paces.
Todd- I run my lap top wireless and it’s great quality.
I discovered TIVO earlier this year and it’s great, does a lot of streaming, but free sounds even better.
a bit off topic here… I thought disc brakes were not allowed in ‘cross. http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/usa-cycling-cyclo-cross-national-championships-cn/singlespeed/photos/97999
We haven’t had cable during the seven years we’ve lived in this house, barring a short stretch in 2006 when I wanted to watch the Tour for some strange reason. I jerked it right out of the wall after that debacle and never looked back.
For most of that seven-year stretch we had an ancient JVC TV, a DVD player and rabbit ears that brought in PBS, ABC and CBS, period. NBC has always been tough to get over the air here for some reason. Mostly we watched DVDs, though I’d sample the free TV, mostly the NewsHour on PBS and presidential addresses, whenever I wanted to get righteously pissed off.
We gave ourselves the 42-inch Samsung LCD for solstice last year, and I briefly entertained the notion of getting cable again, but every time I spent a night channel-surfing in some motel during a road trip it made me crazy. People actually watch this shit?
Hence the streaming video. It lets us watch what we want (which ain’t much), when we want. No surrendering to a cable company whose basic package is my idea of cruel and unusual punishment; no more Blockbuster DVDs that look like someone took ’em skeet shooting. I had almost everything I needed to make it happen, barring a couple of cables. Seemed like a no-brainer.
Doesn’t mean I’m gonna watch the sumbitch all the time, though. The noise-to-signal ratio is still way out of balance.
Hmmm… If I can figure out how to get F1 and le Tour de Dopage, maybe.
Have lived TV free for almost 12 years. No cable. No rabbit ears. None of that new fangled ‘digital receiver’ crap either. Most of the people that find this out act like I’m the freak. “Whatcha mean you don’t have TV? Whatcha do for fun?”
Irony is obviously lost on these people since I usually go on about the 450+ channels of nothing, bluthering idiots, and ‘reality shows’ that are not. Doesn’t sound too “fun” to me, so I kissed it good-bye.
But like any good heathen I do go back every once in a while. There are times when I’ve offered to house or dog sit just to rot my brain on what passes for “entertainment” via the boob tube. I can literally feel myself geting fatter by watching some of that crap on the cable/satellite channels. Not that it is not “entertaining” at times…but I just can’t see that much need for it. I’ll read a book, magazine or pamphlet before I’ll watch whatever show is numero uno in the weekly ratings.
The one nice thing about Verizon is that I can get all that I might “need” right on my cellphone. I just have to deal with the joy of watching it on a 2″ screen. As for streaming off the net…no thanks, I’m still using Ma Bell to park this piece of prose on the net. So ‘streaming video’ is about as useful to me right now as a square wheel.
Again, not that I don’t miss the “entertainment.” It is just that I would rather spend my down time NOT watching has-been NFLers dancing with ballerinas.
Damn right, PO’G. These are tough times all around and I thought it was pretty stupid to waste $90/month on a cable TV package, especially since all I watched on a regular basis was that great (and quite sick) series on Showtime, “Dexter.”
My problem is that I have kids and I thought they’d freak. Well, when we pulled the plug and the kids figured they could watch pretty much anything they wanted on the web (well, except all of those snarky pre-teen “comedies” on the Disney Channel, which I had blocked anyway), they were totally cool with it. I threw in a wireless keyboard and mouse and scored a BluRay DVD for about the price of a month’s cable and we’re golden. As for me, I found ol’ “Dexter” on the ‘net and haven’t missed an episode.
The ‘net has allowed us to get rid of our telephone land line and our cable, so we ended up saving about $115 a month, relying on the broadband ($40/month) which we would have to have anyway, since it’s the only way I could get away with working from home.
The only downside of this jump is that I actually watch MORE TV than I did before, because it’s basically all on-demand and I often pull up something interesting on one of the three screens I have attached to my desktop in my home office.
Like James, I have never seen some of the worst shit that apparently defines our “culture” these days. Ain’t never seen “Dancing with the stars,” or been caught up with the contrived “drama” of “reality” TV, but I would guess that it’s out there on the ‘net if someone wants it. You gotta wonder how long it will be before people start dumping cable TV en masse.