We all have our vices.

I had a moment of weakness this week. Throughout this entire process, in the back of my mind, I knew there was one thing that could derail the whole operation, and that was Dexter. Dexter is the one event on television that I care about as much as I do football. Well the season premier of Dexter was last Sunday, it came, it went, I missed it.

So I started going through my options:

Wait until it comes out on DVD, no way, and miss all of the "water-cooler" talk and facebook conversations about it. Not to mention, that the last time we did that, someone told us the end before we could see it.

BitTorrent, for those of you who aren't giant nerds the easiest way to describe this is, it's kind of like napster but for anything, movies, music, games, software, etc., but I was not crazy about this option because, for one, it is very illegal and television and movie studios are starting to prosecute downloaders; and also because the files are coming from random people there is always the chance of a virus. So though this was my best option I talked myself out of it. I am all for stealing things especially from the likes of comcast, as long as I encure no risk, so this option is out.

My third option, and here is my moment of weakness, to get back cable for the few months that Dexter airs. Harmless and doable yes, but why go backwards, we have made it this long cold turkey why take a bump and risk getting hooked again (sorry for the drug reference, I am reading Kieth Richards biography). And to be completely honest I was totally ready to make this move, even thought I knew that we would probably keep cable if we did it. So I brought it up to Erin, and she was the one who nixed it, it was amazing, the student becoming the teacher, and in the 15 seconds of silence after I asked her she had convince me we didn't need to.

So now I am back to either waiting or stealing, and if it had come down to one of those two options I probably would have landed on wait, but I have the feeling waiting long enough may have made Erin regret her previous decision not to bring back the cable. So I am sitting at work and I remember, it's so simple I can't beleive it required thought, if you subscribe to Showtime with comcast you can stream episodes online. Well lucky for us we still know a few comcast subscribers, my parents for one, so we just have to pay for their bill increase for the Showtime for a few months and we get to watch Dexter without the guilt of theft or the ruined endings of waiting, it may not be what comcast had in mind, but hey, at least we're paying for it.

Thanks for reading
Michael

New Recruit and a Couple of Heroes

So the other day, Erin and I took Teddy for a walk and ended up at my Aunt Kathy and Aunt Gerry's house. The all too familiar topic of TV came up followed immediately by the unavoidable question, "How's that going?" (usually said with a tone of feeling sorry for us). That's when it happened...it was so unexpected that I almost missed it, Erin said, "It's going good!" Woo Hoo!  Have I finally won her over? Is it the lack of a cable bill? Is it just that it is not yet television season? Who cares? She said it's going good...I WIN! Well, maybe it wasn't that dramatic a moment, and I don't mean to sound like Erin has been difficult at all during this process, but she was difficult to win over, so I am claiming it as a victory.  Hey, I'm married so I have to count the few victories I actually get anymore. So now here we are on the verge of starting the fall television season and I am confident that if we can make it through this fall, then we may never look back.

So now that we have gone from 300 channels to 64 channels, you may be asking, what the hell do you people watch?  Well, I am surprised to announce that our most recorded channel so far is PBS.  That's right, home of Sesame Street. There is actually some quality stuff on PBS these days.  I suppose there may have always been, I just missed it because I had too much else to watch. Of course, what I am watching on PBS is mostly cooking shows that even though they don't have the polish and characters found on Food Network, the actual cooking and recipes are on par with anything coming out of Food Network. Superstar chefs like Rick Bayless, Ming Tsai, John Besh and many more, bring expertise and flavor to their shows and food.

Erin and I have also been supplementing our TV viewing with some movie watching.  Erin came up with the idea that we should pick out movies to watch with each other and thus, we are going through our movies in alphabetical order. We each get to pick a movie from each letter and each of us get 2 vetoes. We started with As and Erin's pick was Along Came Polly, and mine, wait for it ...  Apocalypse Now Redux (Erin fell asleep by the way). This should be interesting.  I can't wait to see what the rest of the alphabet brings.  Bring on the Bs... any suggestions?

Now on to more serious news.  I would like to take a moment to thank three personal heroes of mine: JoAnne Flink, Terry Strle and Mary Strle.  These three selfless women, without a second thought, became live organ donors to improve the lives of my Aunt Jackie and Aunt Kathy, and I cannot thank them and their families enough for their sacrifice and grace. Last week, Mary went into surgery and donated a kidney to my Aunt Jackie.  Everything went great and everyone is at home and doing great. Now it is our turn to learn from their example:

1. go to http://www.organdonor.gov/ and register to give the gift of life.
2. go to http://www.pkdcure.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1182&Type=0&TeamID=2891 and donate to our family's team for the annual Walk for PKD – the PKD Foundation’s signature fundraising event. Please help us reach our goal.  Every little bit helps, so please give what you can.

Thanks for reading,
Michael

Week One, a recap

We made it! Contrary to popular belief, there is life after cable and so far, it has been a very easy transition...after all of our drama was over that is.

I spent all of last Wednesday setting up my new TiVo, arranging my A/V closet, and cancelling cable.  I then had a few minutes before Erin got home to test out the signal and watch some TV and everything was working great.  Erin got home and we sat down on the couch with our freshly cooked Jack's Pizza and flipped on ION+ for our favorite guilty pleasure, Criminal Minds re-runs. Well, we were about 5 minutes into the show and the picture started to pixelate and then went out completely.... oh bother. I couldn't even look at Erin and was waiting to get a piece of pizza in the face not to mention a breakdown about how this totally wasn't worth saving $80 a month. So, I assured her I would fix it and started troubleshooting the problem: 1. All other channels were fine and 2. Upon checking all of the connections, everything looked fine, but ION+ was still not coming in.  It was a stormy night so I decided that was the problem because ION+ is the farthest network from us and the only one we were having trouble with. So our first night without cable was spent watching Iron Man 2 on BluRay. Well the next day, I went into the closet to plug something into my receiver and voila, my signal booster was unplugged!  It must have fallen out when I was fumbling around to put in the new TiVo. Awesome!  Now everything is hooked up and churning out crystal clear, beautiful, and most importantly, free HD.

Other than this little mishap, the rest of the week went fairly well.  We set up all of our shows to record automatically on the TiVo, set up our free 6 month membership for Hulu Plus, and everything is going great. We even got to watch one of our favorite Food Network shows: Food Network Star by hooking up my laptop to my TV and streaming it via the website.  Best of all our favorite, Jeff Mauro, moved onto the next round. The only problem with this method is that we have to wait 5 days from the original broadcast before it is available, but this is really only an issue one time, now that we are on the new schedule. We just have to be careful not to hear/read too much on Social Media Networks or at the water cooler.

We are 7 days in and going strong!

Thanks for reading,
Michael

Back in business

We have finally, officially become "Cord Cutters" and are only 3 weeks behind schedule!  Woohoo!  I think this speaks to the true procrastinator in me.  I must say we were very close to nixing this whole project all together, but we persevered through way more mishaps than we deserved and I think – with one day behind us – that we made the right decision. 

As you may remember, my beloved TiVo and first technology crush had broken along with a piece of my heart. After spending two days chatting online with TiVo customer service, we both decided that is was time to let her rest in peace. So after a few days of mourning, (read convincing Erin that I needed to buy a new one), I decided to just go buy a new one and take the verbal beating from Erin when she got home.  (Which didn't happen, I think she secretly wanted it too!) 

So off I went to the internet to find the cheapest price, which was $84.99 at Tiger Direct.  I then took that to Best Buy and picked up my new TiVo (Best Buy is actually great at price matching). Upon getting my new toy, I raced home and tore into my home theater closet. What is nice about this TiVo is that it immediately reduced the number of boxes in my closet from 6 to 3.  I got to get rid of my cable box, my Roku, and my digital to analog converter box, making for a far less cluttered and much cooler closet. 

And now for my review:

Out of the box, the TiVo is definitely their sleekest most attractive unit to date.  It almost makes me regret putting it in a closet!  In the box is a sleek remote in the traditional TiVo peanut-shaped style and an array of cords, including an HDMI cable, power cable and RCA style video cables.  Setup is a breeze, especially if you are going over the air.  If you are using cable you need to have someone come out and install a cable card into the TiVo.  After allowing the TiVo to power up for about 10 minutes, I began the guided setup, which is about a 30 minute procedure with about 5 minutes of which actually involved any effort on my part. After that I was introduced to the new HD user interface, which is vastly superior to the old one, and from the ones I’ve seen, it's light years better than Cable DVRs. 

This unit’s DVR functions all work very well, but where this unit really shines is in its bells and whistles. The unit comes out of the box with access to Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon VOD, YouTube, and BLOCKBUSTER on demand, which means I have access to over 100,000 movies and TV shows as well as a wealth of video podcasts at the touch of a button.  Take that, Xfinity on demand! There is also access to Pandora, Rhapsody, Music Choice and Live365 for a plethora of free music and music videos. 

What makes this product revolutionary is the integration of all of its video sources into one search feature. Searching for a show using TiVo search yields results not only from channels you may receive but also from all of the internet video sources listed above.  For example, a search for one of my favorite shows ,“Scrubs”, yielded the options to record an upcoming episode on WCIU, buy episodes from Amazon VOD, or stream every episode using Netflix.  All of these services were offered from just one search!

For cord cutters like Erin and I, this is the most elegant option I have found to incorporate free over-the-air TV and internet streaming into one device.  The integrated search works perfectly and easily.  The user interface is so easy that even my parents could figure it out and the integration of online scheduling and iPhone app make this an excellent buy, and perfect for our situation. 


Thanks for reading,
Michael

Down for the count?

Could anything else possibly go wrong?.... ::Fiercly knocking on wood::

So when I last left you all I was waiting for my new digital to analog converter to come in the mail so that I could continue to use my TiVo with my antenna set-up. Well it came, and upon hooking it up to my TiVo, I have no picture or sound, however when I bypass the TiVo, the converter works wonderfully. After spending the better part of 2 days chatting online with TiVo customer service, whom I cannot say enough good things about, they came to the conclusion that my TiVo is broken. Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

I feel a little background information may be necessary.  Before I got married, the two events that most changed my life were: 1. My first iPod and 2. My TiVo (yes, I am a giant nerd, but I'm ok with that). It has now been 1.5 weeks without my TiVo and I can honestly say I have watched maybe 3 hours of live TV and it is simply unbearable.  How do people sit through commercials like this?  How dreadful! Also, with my schedule, I currently work 2nd shift and am not home for prime time shows - not a big deal during the summer but when new seasons start in a few months, I will absolutely need me some TiVo.

So now I am at a crossroads.  Cutting the cord to save some money has so far cost a little bit of money, which was easy enough to write off when it only came to the equivalent of 2 months of cable bills, but adding the cost of a new TiVo, ($498 TiVo premiere w/lifetime service) that brings us up to 7 months worth of cable bills. I know this will be a wash after the first 7 months and after that I should be able to cash in on the initial investment, but it is becoming more and more difficult to convince Erin (who admittedly wasn't a fan of this idea from the beginning) that this is a good idea.

My argument has become that we will need a new TiVo with or without cable. Her argument is we can just get the one that comes with cable, but that doesn't really work for me.  Decisions, decisions.  My fellow nerds at wired said it best:

'Get TiVo. Just do it. Don't whine about how the DVRs from the cable company are free. Don't argue that they have bigger hard drives.  If you like TV, you'll step up to TiVo. Think of it this way: A lot of the phones offered by wireless carriers are free, but you still bought an iPhone (or at least an Android), right? Why? The difference between that junky Nokia and an addiction-inducing iPhone 4 is the same as the difference between a stock Comcast box and a new TiVo: the interface. There are exactly three companies in this world that are truly great at interface design — Apple, Google, and TiVo.'

Hiccups

Well the best laid plans......

Turns out you can do research till you are blue in the face but if you are not researching everything, something will go wrong, or everything will go wrong.....

Take one: Our bedroom TV fell off of its stand on Wednesday! Erin caught it mid-fall, but not before it hit the corner of the dresser.  The TV was off at the time and the only damage we noticed was a little scuff on the screen, so I decided we could live with it and I ordered a wall mount for the TV to avoid such a catastrophe in the future. Well, Friday came and we got the TV mounted.  I turned it on and.....

.......Well let's just say the picture left a little to be desired! Luckily for us, Menards was having a Crazy Days Sale and we picked up a new set for the bedroom on Friday night..... Problem 1 taken care of, now on to problem 2.

Well after the broken TV issue, I started in on the task at hand for this Friday which is making the switch to OTA (over the air) Broadcast and ditching cable. All of my TVs were already hooked up and tested, except for our main TV in the Family room, where we do 90% of our TV viewing. I thought this would be straight forward and as easy as hooking the antenna feed into my TiVo and off we would go. Well, I got everything hooked up and started the guided setup on my TiVo only to realize that the tuner built into my TiVo was an analog tuner. (We all remember this from 2009, when all OTA broadcasts went digital) So now I need a Digital to Analog converter to get my TiVo to work. After driving around to 4 stores and not wanting to pay $60.00 for something I could have gotten for free in 2009, I decided to save myself $20 and order it online: Zinwell-ZAT-970A Digital Converter. Note: You only need this if you have an old TV (pre-2007) or you want to route the signal through an A/V receiver or TiVo Series 2 or older.

So, Day 1 is slightly delayed. The converter should be here Wednesday so if all goes well, we will be up and running on Thursday. I have also added a "What I'm Reading" section to the blog on the left-hand margin of the page. That is where I will post what book I am currently reading and some thoughts when I'm finished. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading,
Michael

A slow start.......

I officially made the decision that we would be ditching cable in favor of a combination of OTA (over the air) television and internet streaming, about 3 months ago, so why so long to get started?

Well, I had a little convincing and number crunching to do. The numbers were easy, we currently pay $137.38 / month for basic cable with HD and internet. Dropping the TV and keeping the internet would bring our monthly cost down to $46.95, a savings of $1,085.16 / year, not a small number! That's not the whole story, however, because making the switch costs a bit of money up front, unless you already have an outdoor antenna. So after countless hours of research, I found the equipment that I needed. (I highly recommend: http://www.dennysantennaservice.com/ for those thinking of making the switch)

- RCA ANT751 Outdoor Antenna: $44.00 at amazon.com, great little antenna, performs like a larger antenna with a much smaller footprint, only 36" X 36"
- Winegard AP-8700 Preamplifier:  $36.11 at amazon.com, I highly recommend this gem, before I hooked this up I got 3 channels, after hooking it up, I am getting 56 channels!
- Grounding Block: $1.99 at Menards
- Grounding Rod: $5.99 at Mendards
- 10 Gauge Copper Wire: $17.00 at Menards
- Lag bolts
- Roofing tar

That's it!  For about $120.00, I was ready to rock.  Luckily, I already had plenty of coax cable and the tools needed for making cables but this could add a bit more to the cost if you need to purchase them, and should be considered. Overall installation of the antenna and running new cables to all of the TVs (a ridiculous 4 - in a house with 2 people!) took about 4 hours, and some quality time in my crawlspace.

Now for the moment of truth.  I powered on a TV and did a search for channels, and was exceptionally pleased to see that we were receiving over 50 digital channels! I flipped on channel 2 and was pleasantly surprised to see the best HD picture I have ever seen. WOW! This picture was amazing I couldn't believe it was coming from an antenna, great stuff!

Next came the convincing, I had to convince my wife, Erin, that we would not miss cable that much. This took some work but when it came right down to it, most of the TV we watch comes from free channels. The few shows that we will not be able to get over the air can mostly be supplemented with online streaming, using our RoKu device.  For myself, I will miss being able to flip on Food Network and leaving it on as I work around the house on a Saturday, but I have plenty of music that can serve the same purpose, and Food Network has a great online library of videos, not to mention PBS has a few great cooking shows. Erin's achilles heel will be random movies from networks like TNT, AMC, and the like, but Netflix streaming shall fill this void and as a bonus, has no commercials.  Additionally, because I was already a Netflix subscriber before the switch, there was no added cost.

This journal will document the first year of our journey, along with tips, tricks, and new tech toys to help ease the transition and maybe even a few book suggestions along the way.  (I am anticipating having a little more time to read... woohoo!) Well that's where we are at as of now so stay tuned and I will detail how it is going and the different ways we will supplement our original cable experience, and see if we can make it a full year. We will be cutting the cable before long: Day 1 starts tomorrow ...