Monday, February 15, 2010

Ditching cable (part 3)

Well, I'm having some struggles. First of all, I went to a Terk HDTVa indoor antenna because the other, cheaper ones (passive from Philips and amplified from RCA) just weren't cutting it. I can't seem to find a good position to get all of the "over the air" channels. I really don't want to put one outside. That opens up a whole host of things that I don't want to do - aesthetics and wiring issues. I'll play with this a little more and report back. Ultimately, I get most channels, but can't get my PBS and NBC stations without compromising the rest of the channels. These both provide 3 stations that are all watched in our house.

The other, larger problem is that I'm using WiFi to stream content from PlayOn for Netflix, Hulu, and other sources. I get very frequent pauses in playback to the point where I consider it unwatchable. I'm pretty sure that the problem is with WiFi because I have some movies ripped to ISO on a NAS box that have a similar problem. I'm going to investigate ways that I can optimize my WiFi capabilities. I'm also looking into dropping Ethernet into my living room and basement.

The Windows Media Center I have upstairs is hard-wired. Its streaming is perfect. I still have antenna issues with over-the-air TV, but I haven't put the Terk antenna on it yet.

I really want this to work, but don't know how much leash I'll have with the family. For the moment, I'm not even worrying about the basement TV (which is the best one of them all). Also, I'm not sure what I'll do with the TVs behind the bar (and their wall mounts) down there.

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