Cable/Satellite alternative

In reply to curtis73:

That is what I am thinking. Right now the hardware decisions are the only issues. Nice to have the wife onboard

Yep, Hulu Desktop on a good PC with a wireless remote works for us. Windows Media Center or MediaPortal works for watching OTA TV and playing your saved media files. MythTV is the Linux solution.

XBMC (XBox Media Center) works on PC's and Linux I believe and is at the base of Boxee and other media center solutions. The latest version works pretty well.

Boxee just released an iPad app and a media manager to stream content from a PC to your iPad or from your iPad to your TV (you can get a video out adapter for the iPad) Boxee does a good job with online content as well.

Lots of options, poke around and see what works best for your needs. Ultimately, I would start with a cheap Media Center remote (seek them out on eBay) that plugs in via USB and emulates a keyboard and most of the above understands them natively.

foxtrapper wrote: My house has a weird TV hookup. It's done through this thing that looks like a dead christmas tree. It's up on the roof. Someone told me it looks like Aunt Enna, but never had an Aunt Enna, so that just doesn't make sense.

ROFL! Good one, FT!

Last one of those I had, I used for my shortwave radio. There's not a lot a lot of local TV that interests me, I went OTA (in the industry, we call it "broadcast television") when I first cut the cord, but unless there was a race on a major network (or a Braves game ) on, the tube had two settings: PBS and off. Didn't really get with the program until I bought a computer new enough to benefit from a high-speed connection.

In reply to curtis73:

Thanks for the tip on Crackle! I'd never heard of it before. That place is great.

friedgreencorrado wrote: In reply to curtis73: Thanks for the tip on Crackle! I'd never heard of it before. That place is great.

NIce thanks!