View Single Post
Old 26-Jan-2012, 1:10 AM   #21
elmo
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 232
Is it bad to light up an old thread?! Hope not, as I think this one that GUM has started is pretty darn good. I thought that maybe I could add a little to it, sharing my experiences in getting my OTA setup tweaked, as I've done similar, going in a slightly different direction.

Those HDHR's are sweet and really made my setup fly. I got a refurb direct from SD for half price and scored another deal on a new one some time soon after. Both are dual tuners, so I have 4 signals coming in, one HDHR connected to a single antenna. They are in my office closet, jacked into my 8-port router. Wife and I both have laptops, so now we can have TV anywhere we take the laptops, thanks to wi-fi. We get all the big networks; ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX & PBS. Mix in all the subchannels and a couple of other networks and it's a pretty decent selection.

Ok, so the next best thing to the microwave is the DVR, right? I think so! That was the next step. Being that I already had a Home Theater PC previously....or at least a sad attempt at one, it was time to revisit. This time I build a shoebox version; it's dead quiet and can playback 1080p BluRay. Scoring deals, I had about $300 in it. It's running Windows 7. Windows Media Center is included and that's what handles the the DVR management duties. Once I loaded the HDHR drivers, WMC found the tuners and scanned for the stations. Then it downloaded the necessary TV guide. WMC records locally and has a function to archive to a server. (Yes, I have a Windows Home Server in a closet with plenty of disk space.) There, the recorded content can be shared with other WMC PC's, if you want to watch elsewhere. The DVR functionality is the best I've seen compared to the dish companies.

Outside of that, I have an app called Media Browser that is customized to present our movie collection. I've diced that up into kids movies and uhm, PG+ for the adults...not to be confused with adult movies! For a year or so, we also used the Netflix app for some streaming movies, but have since unsubscribed from that. But my point is that everything runs under a seamless interface that is pretty wife and kid friendly. My 6 yr old can take our Harmony One remote and dial up about anything, from PBS to a Disney flick.

Yes, I spent a little money on some hardware, but I haven't spent any for a while now. Not paying $75/mth for sat service makes that pretty easy though. I did build my own PC's, but for not much more, a person could buy comparable plug-n-play devices to do the same. If you're reading GUM's post and considering cutting the cable for OTA, you're probably a little smarter than the rest anyway!

Last edited by elmo; 26-Jan-2012 at 2:22 AM. Reason: typo
elmo is offline   Reply With Quote