Change in Plans

So I will try and put my 4 year old media center to use. Cable was cut today so hopefully my Gateway media center can pull in HD from the antenna.

Stay tuned we are heading on a cruise in a day  so I will not be working on this for a while.

Not your fathers Antenna

A few days ago I ordered the Mohu Leaf Antenna from Amazon.

I liked that it was a thin sheet omni directional antenna that I could hide easily.

I have it hidden behind an 12x12 picture above the TV.

It arrived today and I connected it to my 42 inch Sony LCD Projection TV.

After some fiddling the tv found 19 channels over the air and 16 of those were Digital.

Reception is solid with an occasional stutter in the image. I will be fiddling more to stabilize the channel line up and stability.

I used Antenna Web to gain a sense of what channels and what type of antenna to order.

The Decision

Recently I contacted Comcast to determine when my contract would end and to see if they would offer me a deal.

Well after paying 80$ a month for 1 year then 100 a month for a second year for 1 HD DVR and HBO with digital plus and Internet they wanted to raise my bill to 130$ for the same service. I tried to haggle and hoped the canceling would bring them around but no luck.

Previously whenever Comcast would raise my bill I would call and call again and always managed to get the bill lowered.

Now they will be canceling my service on July 21. And raising my Internet from 44$ to 57$

So I have decided to kill cable , buy an antenna, and buy a Roku XDS with Hulu Plus and possibly Netflix.

I previously wanted the Boxee Box but the lack of Hulu Plus was the deal killer.

I will be detailing our configuration update in following posts.

The Purpose

We are about to embark on an adventure in cutting the cable.

In other words 120$ a month going to Comcast coffers was too much.

How we arrive at this stage was the birth of our Daughter. TV is now regulated to after she goes to bed. This has been in place for the last 19 months.

Since I was in a contract with Comcast for 2 years I used that time to research our options. The frustrating part of this research was all the articles out there were over a year old. I needed help in choosing between Google TV, Roku, Boxee, Sony, Xbox, WD, .......... the list goes on.

So I will be posting updates on how this works in my family.