Another non-cycling blog post! What's up with me lately? I have not been on the bike in a couple of weeks. Maybe I just need a few weeks off, a mini-vacation, before getting back on the bike again. Knowing in the back of my head that I need to start the training to prepare me for next year and racing as a Cat 4 makes me feel even worse about not riding. But I need the time off I think I was getting a bit burnt out. I have November 3rd marked on the calendar as the official first day of training. A Spinnervals DVD and the torture device (trainer) are setup and waiting in the garage to start rolling at 5:45. Anyone that wants to "ride along" is more than welcome to join in!
While off the bike in the evenings I have been working on a "project" at home that involves weaning us off of our dependency on cable TV. No more Cox Communications and the $83 a month cable bill! We started with re-purposing my wife's "old" Macbook as the hub for our media center. I say "old" but it's not really old we have only had it for about 2 years. It has been attached to the 42" Samsung Plasma TV by way of a mini-DVI to VGA adapter and the receiver by a mini to RCA wire. I also added a USB 2.0 hub to simplify the connection of the various receivers for the wireless keyboard, mouse, and other stuff. This was the easy part of the process. As for the software side of things we are starting off with only the basics. A web browser, VLC Player, and Apple's Front Row. Without a cable coming in there was no real need for me to install and configure any elablorate HTPC applications to record programs for us.
One of the reasons we have felt so tied to cable is the DVR functionality and online guide. Long ago we became hooked on recording shows and watching them at our convenience without having to sit through commericals. Streamlined TV! That functionality is available from TIVO, but we would still be required to have cable and the monthly savings would only be around $20 a month. We wanted to cut as much of the bill as possible. So, the first step was to find ways to view our favorite shows when we wanted to with only a minimal amount of effort. For this we found that there are numerous options.
The first places we turned to find our shows were the network websites. The four major networks ABC, CBS, NBC,
and Fox have made it very easy to watch their popular shows through their websites using special viewer plug-ins that allow full screen viewing. The quality of video is great, better than the standard definition broadcasts available on cable, and they only have minimal commericals. Most of the times the commericals are only 15 seconds long. This is most likely how most of our viewing will be done. As the economy continues it would be no surprise to see more broadcasters follow the lead of the major networks to combat the use of bit-torrent downloads.
Bit Torrents are another way we have found to watch our TV. Through the use of only two sites, piratebay.org and mininova.com we have been able to find most anything that we want to watch in a quality that is on par with Cox's HD service. The downside to the bit-torrents is the time required to download the video. Unlike the network sites with instant availability we have to wait for our programs to fully download. Another difficulty with the bit torrent option was my wife and son. They aren't going to search for the torrent file for their favorite program, download it, copy it to the network attached storage, then try to navigate to the "TV" directory on the NAS to watch it. This left me with the challenge of automating the process.
That is where a neat application called "TED" (Torrent Episode Downloader) and Apple's Front Row come
in to play. TED is a cross platform application that automates the search and downloading of television episode torrent. You set up all of your favorite episodes in the TED application then it goes out to several torrent files and downloads torrent files for what episodes based on search criteria you setup. It will also automatically download new episodes as they become available. Once the torrent file is downloaded the Macbook is setup to open Transmission to download the file. Once the download is complete it is moved to a directory on the Buffalo Linkstation NAS. At first this is where I ran in to a problem with using Front Row for viewing our downloaded videos. By default Front Row will only "find" files that are stored locally. To work around this I created an alias, the Mac version of a Windows short cut, in the Movie directory stored locally on the Macbook. Now when Front Row is opened anything that is saved on the NAS is displayed in the Front Row application for viewing. TED, Bittorrents, and the network sites too care of the popular programs we watch, but what about the lazy sunday afternoon viewing? That was another hurdle to over come.
In doing my research I found a bunch of places to catch up on old episodes, educational programs, "vintage" TV, and lots of other stuff. Hulu.com and Joost.com were two of the best that I found and they both have a wide variety of programs that are available to stream instantly. I even found some of my old favorite cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkly and Speed Racer! The other night my son was introduced to one of the original episodes of The Addams Family in black and white! He loved it!
I see the process of moving from cable coming along and think in the end we will probably end up watching less TV which will mean more time spent as a family. That alone would make the process worth while!
While off the bike in the evenings I have been working on a "project" at home that involves weaning us off of our dependency on cable TV. No more Cox Communications and the $83 a month cable bill! We started with re-purposing my wife's "old" Macbook as the hub for our media center. I say "old" but it's not really old we have only had it for about 2 years. It has been attached to the 42" Samsung Plasma TV by way of a mini-DVI to VGA adapter and the receiver by a mini to RCA wire. I also added a USB 2.0 hub to simplify the connection of the various receivers for the wireless keyboard, mouse, and other stuff. This was the easy part of the process. As for the software side of things we are starting off with only the basics. A web browser, VLC Player, and Apple's Front Row. Without a cable coming in there was no real need for me to install and configure any elablorate HTPC applications to record programs for us.One of the reasons we have felt so tied to cable is the DVR functionality and online guide. Long ago we became hooked on recording shows and watching them at our convenience without having to sit through commericals. Streamlined TV! That functionality is available from TIVO, but we would still be required to have cable and the monthly savings would only be around $20 a month. We wanted to cut as much of the bill as possible. So, the first step was to find ways to view our favorite shows when we wanted to with only a minimal amount of effort. For this we found that there are numerous options.
The first places we turned to find our shows were the network websites. The four major networks ABC, CBS, NBC,
and Fox have made it very easy to watch their popular shows through their websites using special viewer plug-ins that allow full screen viewing. The quality of video is great, better than the standard definition broadcasts available on cable, and they only have minimal commericals. Most of the times the commericals are only 15 seconds long. This is most likely how most of our viewing will be done. As the economy continues it would be no surprise to see more broadcasters follow the lead of the major networks to combat the use of bit-torrent downloads.Bit Torrents are another way we have found to watch our TV. Through the use of only two sites, piratebay.org and mininova.com we have been able to find most anything that we want to watch in a quality that is on par with Cox's HD service. The downside to the bit-torrents is the time required to download the video. Unlike the network sites with instant availability we have to wait for our programs to fully download. Another difficulty with the bit torrent option was my wife and son. They aren't going to search for the torrent file for their favorite program, download it, copy it to the network attached storage, then try to navigate to the "TV" directory on the NAS to watch it. This left me with the challenge of automating the process.
That is where a neat application called "TED" (Torrent Episode Downloader) and Apple's Front Row come in to play. TED is a cross platform application that automates the search and downloading of television episode torrent. You set up all of your favorite episodes in the TED application then it goes out to several torrent files and downloads torrent files for what episodes based on search criteria you setup. It will also automatically download new episodes as they become available. Once the torrent file is downloaded the Macbook is setup to open Transmission to download the file. Once the download is complete it is moved to a directory on the Buffalo Linkstation NAS. At first this is where I ran in to a problem with using Front Row for viewing our downloaded videos. By default Front Row will only "find" files that are stored locally. To work around this I created an alias, the Mac version of a Windows short cut, in the Movie directory stored locally on the Macbook. Now when Front Row is opened anything that is saved on the NAS is displayed in the Front Row application for viewing. TED, Bittorrents, and the network sites too care of the popular programs we watch, but what about the lazy sunday afternoon viewing? That was another hurdle to over come.In doing my research I found a bunch of places to catch up on old episodes, educational programs, "vintage" TV, and lots of other stuff. Hulu.com and Joost.com were two of the best that I found and they both have a wide variety of programs that are available to stream instantly. I even found some of my old favorite cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkly and Speed Racer! The other night my son was introduced to one of the original episodes of The Addams Family in black and white! He loved it!
I see the process of moving from cable coming along and think in the end we will probably end up watching less TV which will mean more time spent as a family. That alone would make the process worth while!
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