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ditching cable once and for all....building a media center pc
hulkster:
after careful consideration, im decided to cancel my comcast stuff all together other than my internet, and save myself $100 a month in comcast bills. ive using substitutes to allow me to keep most of the functionality and channels/movies i want....
instead of paying comcast for hbo and movie channels, im just getting Netflix. its awesome, and im using the instant streaming now on my xbox 360.
im going to get an antenna in order to get over the air HD channels and SD channels. i mainly watch Lost, Supernatural, and Heroes along with occasional sports on the local channels like CBS and stuff, but thats taken care of with the antenna.
finally, im putting together specs for a htpc that will allow me to use vista media center and record hd. here is what i have so far for my pc:
AVergMedia AVertTV Combo PCIe tuner card with remote
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100014
antec htpc microatx case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129034
gigabyte mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128360
amd athlon 64 X2 5050e 2.6ghz cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103298
640gb SATA hard drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218
2gb ddr2-800 ram (i have this already)
DVD-RW drive (have this already)
PSU (included in case)
OS - vista ultimate (won a copy at work)
what do you guys think? suggestions? do you think this is a good build? i dont plan on doing any gaming on it other than mame for console emu's so it doesnt need anything more than the onboard video.
Paul Olson:
Buy a 360. Stream media from your PC, and download netflix from xbox live.
Malenko:
dont go over your 250GB/month limit
call comcast and ---smurfette--- about your bill being too high, odds are it wont be that high much longer.
hulkster:
--- Quote from: pcolson on January 10, 2009, 07:39:28 pm ---Buy a 360. Stream media from your PC, and download netflix from xbox live.
--- End quote ---
i have a 360....but i dont want to have my 360 on every time i turn my tv on.
i did complain to comcast and they offered to lower my bill from $150 total to $99 total for 12 months. thats a good deal, but the whole point of doing this is to get rid of comcast completely for my tv viewing. for some dumb reason, they knocked my internet down to $33 a month for 12 months just as a "courtesy". whatever. but after i get the htpc built, ill be saving $100 a month by not using comcast.
J_K_M_A_N:
That is funny. I just did the same thing. We canceled cable and phone last Tuesday. I did keep the basic channels because internet is $45 with cable and $55 without and the basic is $10 so...I did also buy a Tivo because I can't live without pause and rewind live TV. Even if it is just basic channels. I just use the xbox and Usenet to get all my TV shows. I would like to get an HD tuner since my TV didn't come with one but...oh well. I like saving $104.30 a month. :) I also have blockbuster but I may get rid of that also. They are pretty slow sometimes. Maybe I will try netflix but I am not sure.
As far as the HTPC, I would get a 1 TB drive right off the bat. If you are going to record HD you will need it. And they aren't THAT much more. I have a 1TB and a 500 GB in my PC for storing shows and movies and I could easily use more. I guess if you aren't going to keep any of the shows, 640 would work.
J_K_M_A_N
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