For one who watches little television, I’m strangely obsessive about media. I think this stems from watching my grandfather over 40 years ago, who (in the days before remote controls) had a long, wired control that allowed him to turn off TV volume during commercials. I find commercials as much an affront as he did, but I have more technology tools at my disposal to fight the advertisers.
By far the best way to control the experience is to use Windows 7 Media Center, which I’m happy to say is no longer solely the purview of geeks like me: You can use any Win7 box (such as the gorgeous, small and quiet Mac Mini I found on eBay and BootCamp'ed to Win7) feed it a TV signal and you’re off to the races. It’s no more difficult than setting up a Tivo or Apple TV and it is way more powerful: Because it is a Windows computer underneath the beautiful 10’ UI, there is literally no media type it cannot play.
Using Media Center was certainly not “turnkey” in previous versions. Prior to Win7, it was error-prone and only for hobbyists. I remember watching the US-Italy game of the 2006 World Cup in Copenhagen on my XP Media Center with some American, English and Italian friends. A few minutes after the game started, the screen froze. The Italians were having heart attacks! Where was the game? I had to reboot my PC to resume the in-progress game.
My guests were puzzled by this. “You’re… rebooting your television?”. Sigh, yes. That’s the way it was a few years ago. Not ready for prime time. That was then.
But this is now. Win7 Media Center is head-and-shoulders better, faster and more beautiful than its predecessors, and usable by virtually anyone. It is better-looking, less expensive and more powerful than Tivo HD and considerably more polished and powerful than Apple’s FrontRow or Apple TV (we’ve owned Tivo Series 3 and I’ve tried FrontRow). My seven year-old drives it w/o problem, and unlike earlier versions my wife doesn’t hate it because it never flakes out.
It is cheaper than Tivo because there is no charge for the monthly guide, and (assuming you watch more than 1-2 shows per month) it is cheaper than the Apple “ala carte” purchase of programs through iTunes. I use a Silicon Dust HD Homerun tuner which takes the cable signal and sends it over the network in our house, so any PC or laptop anywhere in the house can be a Media Center (which is considerably cheaper than multiple cable boxes).
I hate paying high premiums for cable (and especially paying for commercials as we do in the US… there are so f*(*in many of them) so I get the cheapest service ($13/mo) which includes all the HD locals such as PBS and Discovery. Netflix is seamlessly integrated. I’ve found these plus ala carte shows from Hulu (or Amazon, or iTunes, or Boxee, or other) is more than enough and doesn’t cost much money, and most of it is beautiful HD quality. Hulu can be integrated into Media Center via an add-in.
Movies can be integrataed into Media Center using MyMovies, so our blu-ray and DVD movies are fully-integrated. All of my music is available via the same interface, and there are plug-ins for Flickr photos and lots more. This starts to get into the geeky end of the spectrum I know, but Media Center can be successfully used without any of the add-ins.
I don’t really want some noisy PC in the TV room, so the Mac Mini fits the bill really well as a small and silent Media Center machine. I found one for not much money on eBay and it works great (I’m watching an HD channel right now while recording another and it isn’t even warm). I can dual-boot it into Mac OS, but I don’t have any need for that (more on Mac OS v Win7 in another post).
It is also a cheaper solution than a box from the cable company as there’s no monthly charge for a box (although you’ll need a PC). Frankly the Comcast etc. boxes are so crap I haven’t even included it in the comparision here. I really dislike Comcast. Cable is a massive rip-off, really.
And of course, there’s the original motivation: Getting away from the damned commercials. Out of box, the media center remote does the 30-second commercial skip just like the Tivo does, and there are third-party tools that will automatically strip out commercials from recorded shows. Granddad would have approved.
Yeah I know it sounds like I'm shillin' for the man here (I do work for MS after all... not the MediaCenter team) but it is worth pointing out that there are good, relatively cheap and easy ways to enjoy television without all the adverts and without forking over too much money to cable operators.
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