My TV History

I thought that before I got into details on how I built my media center pc, I would explain why I built it.

There are lots of options out there when it comes to TV. Here is a brief history of where I have been with it.

First of all, let me say, I'm not rich! So even though I'd love to have the latest and greatest, I simply cannot afford it. Growing up, it always seemed we paid for basic cable service. We didn't get any of the "bonus" channels like HBO or Disney Channel though - except for those free preview weeks.

In high school (1994-96) my parents got DIRECTV. I loved having an on-screen guide - no more need for TV Guide!

In college (1998), my mom had Dish Network. I liked it much better than our old DIRECTV that my dad had. The Guide was much faster and easier to navigate. I liked how it showed channels in red that we did not have.

When I got married (2000), we basically had rabbit ears for a year until we decided to bite the bullet and get Dish Network. It was great. After about 3 1/2 years we moved to a new home. We again ordered Dish Network, but this time we got the DVR system. That was even better! It was great to pause the TV if we had an interruption (which occurs regularly with kids).

About a year or two later we started having signal problems and just couldn't watch TV. I finally gave up with Dish Networks support and switched to DIRECTV. It was certainly quite an upgrade from the system my dad was still using! It was a TiVo system with Dual tuners. Now we could watch one program while recording another, or record two shows at once. There were a few things that I preferred Dish Network for - mainly dealing with the guide and favorite lists.

After a couple years fo DIRECTV, I started shopping around again for whatever reason. There were a few channels that I wanted, but wasn't getting in my package and I didn't really feel like upgrading. If I switched to Dish Network, I could again get the latest and greatest equipment for free.

But at this time, I also started lo0king into Cable - mainly because it was the only package that had the new MTN station which allowed me to watch BYU and Utah football games.

Plus, I was already using Comcast for my high-speed internet, so if I used their cable TV service I would also get a discount on my internet. That is the direction I ultimately went.

Again, there are pros and cons to every decision. Comcast seemed to have the best package for the money. It was very customized to our area. We even got Fox News which my wife quickly became addicted to.

One think that I really liked about Comcast is that we have a set top box which gives us the guide and crystal clear TV, but it also streams an analog signal.

My First Media Center PC (sort of)

About a year ago I built a new computer and installed Windows Vista Ultimate. I was really curious about the Media Center. A friend a work had told me about his media center that he used (Beyond TV) and I wanted to try it out. So I bought a Hauppauge TV Tuner card for my computer and hooked it up. The tuner card limited me to 99 channels, but I don't think I get anything hire than that anyway.

Setting up Media Center was a snap. It basically walked me through the whole process. I tried other applications like Media Portal (free), and Beyond TV 4 (trial). I prefered Microsoft Media Center.

So while it was cool having this on my computer, it wasn't very comfortable watching shows on it in my office.

Time For an Upgrade - The Options

So here I am now. We have a TV in the family room and one in our master bedroom - both with Comcast cable boxes. (Plus my computer in my office). While the cable box provides an onscreen guide, and OnDemand (which is pretty cool I must admit), we are lacking DVR service, which we really miss!

We could simply get a cable tuner from Comcast that has a DVR. But the prices goes up significantly. We have to pay to upgrade to digital cable, plus the monthly rental of the DVR, plus the monthly DVR service fee. I won't do it.

Second option I've considered is to buy a Media Center Extender. This would basically use my main coputer to send programming to the extender. These have come down in prices lately. I was actually considering this and came close to going this direction, but there are a few issues with this decision:

  1. I want one that also plays DVDs, because our kids have broken all our DVD players. This options is available, but a little more expensive.
  2. I work on my computer all day. I don't want to worry about performance issues on my computer if the kids are watching TV and streaming shows from it.
  3. Media center extenders are limited to the video formats they support. You cannot add addtional formats if you need to.

Plus, there are other benefits I see with having a Media Center PC:

  1. I can watch shows on Hulu and other sites such as YouTube, CBS.com, ABC.com, etc. These even have Hi-Def available for free. Who needs a DVR or OnDemand if this are readily available on the internet?
  2. I can run game emulators. I had a Nintendo when I was young, and I love playing some the old games I used to love such as The Legend of Zelda (the original), Kid Icarus, Mike Tyson's Punchout, Metroid, etc. Yeah, I can also buy, and play these on my Wii, but that's not the point. There are a number of game emulators and the number of games available on a PC are virtually unlimited.
  3. OK, this is somewhat embarrassing, but we don't even have an HDTV yet (that is next on the list). Therefore, high-def is not that critical. But when we do, I'm sure we'll get into the blu-ray craze. By building my own Media Center PC, upgrading to a blu-ray player is as simple as swapping out my DVD drive and currently would cost about $70 for the drive. Where are you going to find a blu-ray player for that amount?
  4. I can burn my kids' favorite movies on the thing so they can stop destroying our DVDs
  5. Upgrades are simple if I build my own. If I need more storage, I can swap out the hard drive - or just plug in some external hard drives.
  6. I can back up my pc to an offline storage center such as Mozy.
  7. I could probably go on and on. There are all the other cool things that you can do on a computer - browse the internet, check email, check weather, view photos, view family videos, etc. Plus, I'll still be able to link to main computer so I have access to all the files, photos, and videos on there.

I guess the one other option if I wanted all this, is to just buy a Media Center PC. But again the cost is prohibitive. For what is available I can build for 1/3 or 1/4 of the price - and I will show you how too!

Plus, who knows how well you can upgrade one of these systems? If I build my own, I can update components as I please.

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