Post-cable, one week in.

Last week we got rid of cable TV in our house in lieu of internet entertainment options.  Between my Roku and my Chromecast we've been watching a lot of stuff we haven't seen.  One remarkable thing is that while we miss certain shows (notably Big Bang Theory), my wife and I have been forcing the kids off the television more and watching our own shows (my wife has been catching up on Grimm for instance). 

By far, we use the Roku more often than the Chromecast, but that's largely a geography thing.  The Roku is connected to the main television downstairs while the Chromecast is connected to the TV in our bedroom.  So far, I've been streaming Youtube to the Chromecast at night, watching some of my favorite channels like "Tested" and "hickok45" - watching their longer streams that I never really had the time to sit at a desk and watch. 

Do we miss certain aspects of Cable?  There are a few shows, but we don't really miss live events as we didn't really watch sports to begin with, and the news we get through the internet anyway.  My biggest gripe with the Chromecast is the lack of support for phone apps, and navigation on my phone for Youtube channels is kinda wonky (the kind of wonky most people are used to already).  Trying to find specific videos is not as cut and dry, but I'm figuring it out. 

My Roku does randomly lock up, which is annoying.  Its patched all the way up, and I have it on a hard-line to the main router (not wireless).  I have to reset the whole thing by pulling the power cord out.  Overall its been fairly stable with only a handful of lockups.  I need to lock down some sort of security into the Roku as the kids have been caught unknowingly watching stuff on Vimeo that was not age appropriate (mostly Lego stop animations), but we're working through the kinks still.  Looking forward to hooking the Raspberry Pi up on one of the media server distros and giving that a whirl as a possible replacement / enhancement to the current setup.

Cut the cord

After hemming and hawing about it for months, and generally grumbling about the cost of cable TV, an article by Marketwatch prompted me to really think about the amount of value I get from TV.  I watch sports generally twice or three times a year and otherwise watch very little time sensitive material.  After seeing what I could do with the Chromecast I got earlier this week, I'm finally cutting the cord.

As a technology person, I'm really a Luddite when it comes to basic home entertainment.  My main TV is a 32" Samsung HDTV Tube Television (one of the last Tube TV's made).  I already had an older Roku player as well as a Samsung BluRay player with Smart capabilities.  My home network has been disassembled for years (I had two RJ-45 Ethernet jacks run next to the TV area), my switch isn't properly configured to run and apparently my USB -> Serial converter isn't supported on Windows 8 (wife's laptop).  As a stop-gap, I ran a longer (30' or so) Cat6 cable to my Wireless access point in the next room to the Roku until I have a chance to rewire everything in the next couple days.

I already have Amazon Prime and Netflix, I went ahead and grabbed Hulu as well.  Right now my youngest son is watching Team Umizoomi on Amazon Prime and honestly, it looked better than it ever did on TV.  For the real test, we'll have to see how well the wife and kids handle the new remotes.

Google Chromecast unboxing and first impressions

I received my Google Chromecast today,  far earlier than I had anticipated.  I managed to take some pictures while I unboxed it as well.   My first impression is while not as polished as an iDevice, the box itself is well thought out and designed with everyday users in mind.

My biggest disappointment thus far was the lack of channels.  As of right now, there are only really three channels, Google Play Store (although for some reason they split it into a second channel for music vs movies and television), Youtube and Netflix.  I was probably up and running in under ten minutes.  Luckily my Samsung monitor / TV had a USB port on the back that I could tap to power the device, so no extra cables running to the ground.  Setup is quick and easy with the application taking maybe ten minutes.