Barry Arnson [dot] com

Honestly think about.  Is there any real reason to keep cable TV anymore?  With things like Hulu, YouTube, TV.com, iTunes, and the like I just don’t see a reason to keep Comcast or any other cable line coming into the house.  I do realize that cable modem is faster that DSL and that perhaps you could get a discount on cable TV as a package but that would be the only benefit.  What is the point if all I watch is recorded network TV programs (Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, etc.)?

PC Magazine had a great article on building your own personal Living-Room Media Center PC (or Home Theater PC) that includes the introduction of a cable line and recording of live TV on a fat hard drive.  I mean perhaps you could build a machine that could be more intuitive than TiVo or Comcast’s (suck) DVR if you had some mad programming skills (or perhaps someone has already thought of that).  But what I am suggesting is completly cutting loose from the cable company and allowing your machine to stream content from any number of sites/programs.  And hell why stop there?  Why not play online games, music, Blu-Ray movies, update Twitter all from the comforts of your own living room.  You can’t tell me there isn’t some MMORPG gamer out there right now thinking about how he can get WoW on his 42″ LCD.

Let’s say I spend anywhere from $80 – $100 a month for cable.  If you built a machine like the one in the PC Mag article for about $1200 you could break even in just over a year.  Then guess what!  You are your own tech support.  No more waiting on the cable company tech to get to your house between the hours of 7am and 5pm.  Of course that has its own cons but if can’t troubleshoot your own machine maybe you shouldn’t be building one in the first place.  Google “Build Media Center PC” and you can see how many people have done it before.

Just some food for thought and trying to open up a conversation with my tech savvy friends.  (Disclaimer:  If you are my wife and you are reading this please understand I am not going to go out a spend $1200 to build a computer and get rid of our cable TV…this is just discussion)