The DIRECTV-less experiment is on
After 12 years, I finally did it. I called today and canceled my service with DIRECTV. For those of you unfamiliar with my decision to do this, click here to read my previous post explaining why I decided to go old school with a pair of rabbit ears.
So far so good. I have two widescreen televisions now pulling in all of the Indianapolis over-the-air (OTA) digital broadcasts (in stunning high definition when available). I also have a TiVo high definition digital video recorder (HD DVR) hooked up to each television so that I can record two shows in high definition at the same time while watching a third recorded high definition program on each television.
I was also happy to see my kids enjoying a few of the cartoons broadcasting on a channel I didn't even know existed in Indianapolis until I switched to the new setup. I'm even happier to know that ABC re-broadcasts several of the Disney Channel shows on Saturday mornings.
Record on one, watch on another
New to my setup is the ability to transfer recorded shows between my two TiVos. Previously I only had one TiVo so there was no need for this. But now I can seamlessly watch recorded shows on either television without regard to which TiVo actually recorded the show.I've also discovered I can listen to podcasts, watch videocasts and even download current music videos straight to my DVR. I can even watch television shows downloaded from the Internet to my PC. Mind you, I don't have to watch them on my PC. Rather, my TiVo is wirelessly networked to my PC and can display any digital content on my PC on my television. The TiVo, in my opinion, is the hands-down winner when it comes to integrating television and the Internet.
I still have yet to experiment with getting a "pass" to a show on Amazon Unbox (Amazon.com's digital download service). These would be shows that were previously only available on cable or satellite networks, like the Discovery Channel or Nickelodeon. With a pass on Amazon Unbox, new shows would automatically download to my TiVo box as they become available. This feature pretty much blurs the line between having to record a show on your own equipment and trying to find the show on the Internet later. And it's 100% legal.
Like I said, so far so good. I'll keep you posted with a few more updates as my DIRECTV-less experiment progresses.
2 comments for this blog post so far...
May 01, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Scott
What kind of high speed internet do you use? If it’s cable based, most cable services I’m aware of use a splitter to differentiate the signaling used for high-speed internet traffic versus cable signal. So, you could pull the cable signal in front of the filter on the incoming cable to use for basic cable at no charge. I did this for awhile when I had high-speed cable and DirecTV for the basic cable channels on those rare occasions when the weather interfered with my satellite signal.
May 02, 2008 at 10:52 am
Patric Welch
@Scott, I do have cable based Internet but will stick to the OTA channels for now for the reasons probably obvious to both of us.
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