Cutting the Cable Part II: Choosing My Solutions

My ongoing quest for freedom from cable TV has been a fascinating adventure the entire time. I have read and researched a lot of products and services, tested a bunch of software and actually really enjoyed the process. For starters, I have been moving away from TV for quite some time now. More focused on music, movies and the ever growing genre of video and audio podcasts. That is not to say there are not TV shows I would like to watch. Programming has been increasing in volume at a ridiculous pace, but also the quality of programming has been getting better. You can afford to be choosy these days. Not like the old days when I remember having 3 VHF channels and 4 UHF ones. We watched whatever was on at that time, until the VHS tape came out, and with that that, the video rental store. So now I am ready to cut the cable. I want what I want, when I want it, yet don’t want to pay Comcast and absurd amount of money every month for a bunch of channels that I could care less about. Six home shopping channels? Really, I am paying for this crap? No not acceptable.

Here was my overall goal to get done and then free myself from the shackles of Cable TV:

• Access my own local DVD Collection online

• Listen to my Own CDs online

• Use some type of online music system where I could listen to albums or just genres. 

• Get some live TV, most specifically for live sports

• Watch previously aired shows that were run through the Internet

• Watch internet based shows, Video Blogs, news etc

WD Live HUB

A lot of that was already handled via my Live HUB, the first four issues are completely solved by my Western Digital devices. I started with a Western Digital Live Plus a few years back. One of the greatest devices I could even imagine. I’ll write a specific article and review on that product, as I could go on for days singing its praises. I have heard enough people complain about what it can’t do, but it has always seemed to me that those folks wanted a perfect device that does everything for $100. I had no such expectations. But I digress from the original conversation. 

The WD Live Plus was able to play media in almost any format. It did not have a drive, but did have two USB slots so I connected two 2TB drives to it, and ripped all my DVDs (800 movies and 60 or so TV series) and all my CDs (around 1000). It is/was also able to read media on other machines on your network. So at this point I was already off to a good start, I had more than enough local media to support myself, and the Live Plus also could access some internet services at that time, like “TuneIn” to get all the radio stations I wanted, Youtube, Pandora etc. Not bad and I found myself not watching too much TV anyways once I had all that stuff ripped to my drives.

Then a year later WD came out with the Live HUB, which has a much nicer interface that can be modified with themes, and has an onboard 1TB Drive. Even better than the LivePlus, and buying one allowed me to put the older device into my bedroom while the LiveHub ran in my living room. 

Hulu& Netflix

So with all that done, now it was time to get the TV show part done.  I figured I would use an old fashion rabbit ears antenna to get my local programming in HD. But what about all the stations that I couldn’t get local? Sure the HUB supported HULU Plus (We’ll come back to that later), as well as NetFlix, and my network BluRay player had Amazon on Demand (I’m an Amazon Prime member so there is a limited amount of free content), so in theory I was already in decent situation to get rid of my cable provider, but I was not going to be satisfied with what I had so far. Hulu (regular and plus) has some severe content limitations

• Some content (Fox) is not available till eight days after it airs

• Some Networks are simply not available (CBS)

• Hulu still has ads, regardless if you take the pay option

• Only the most recent episodes of many shows are available on Hulu (a larger number is on the Plus version)

• For set top boxes, like my Live Hub or Roku, Hulu requires that you buy the Plus option at $7.99 a month.

So Hulu was working for me, but I still wanted more.

PlayOn

Out of all the options I could find, running a PlayOn server from Media Mall Technologies here in Seattle, and streaming the content to my WD boxes seemed to be the best option. I had already tested the free demo version which works for 14 days and was pretty happy with the product. PlayOn comes with a bunch of basic stations, that serve web based content. Now that doesn’t mean you can watch any show on that available station, but gives you some content from each provider, some full shows, some clips, as well as access to a bunch of video and audio podcasts. This alone would not necessarily have met all my needs, if it were not for one very important feature. PlayOn allows third party scripts and plugins that give you thousands of shows. Some you have to buy the script ($1 to around $5), but most are free. Some channels are for one specific  show (Hogan’s Heroes, Batman), some off the scripts add channels that are networks (Bravo, The WB), and lastly and most helpful to me, there are plug in channels that can be added that have 100’s of shows, and every episode of each one (WatchSeries, TV Links). Now we’re cooking. Stations that have all the shows I want, where I can watch an entire series from episode one forward, or just catch the most recent episode.

PlayOn would handle two of my needs; watching previously aired shows, and watching/listening to internet based content. That second piece is basically and easy way to aggregate Internet TV shows that normally I would have to surf around the net to find.

Live TV

My last need is to have some level of live local TV stations. PlayOn does have some scripts that will pickup live TV feeds, but I have found them to be only somewhat reliable. Initially I intended to just use a pair of electric rabbit ears as an antenna which would work fine for watching sports in Hi-Def. My plans changed as it turned out that the most inexpensive plan I could get from Comcast for my Internet connection, actually included the most basic level of cable TV, and there was no way around that. Thus, I hooked up the cable wire to the TV and was able to get my local channels plus a few others. This is more than enough to satisfy my needs for live television.

So here are my needs and how each one will be handled

• Access my own local DVD Collection online
• Rip everything to hard drives and run from my WD Live HUB
• Listen to my Own CDs online
• Rip everything to hard drives and run from my WD Live HUB
• Listen to online music, albums, artists or genres. 
• Use HUB to access Pandora, TuneIn and Spotify
• Get some live TV, most specifically for live sports
• Use subscription to basic cable and attach to my TV
• Watch previously aired shows that were run through the Internet
• Use PlayOn Server
• Watch internet based shows, Video Blogs, news etc
• Use PlayOn Server

Not that I know how each of my needs Is going to be met, it’s a simple (who am I kidding, nothing in networking is ever simple) matter of implementing each part. The WD devices were already up and running. Plugging in a cable wire to my TV would take a few seconds. The main part left was to purchase the full version of PlayOn, configure it correctly, and then find all the channels, scripts and Plug Ins that I would need.

Now we have a plan. Next step, implementation.