It's Comcastic!

When basketball season ended, we cancelled cable TV, saving about $60 a month. And life continued.

Turns out there is plenty of entertainment for our "television" screen out there for free. Instead of cable TV, we are watching OTA television, Hulu, Netflix on-demand, and ESPN3.

Comcast was nice enough to leave the free over-the-air (OTA) channels on the cable itself so we dont have to mess with an antenna. Using Sage TV software on a Windows 7 PC, we are able to record and watch PBS and the major networks just like we would with cable. Even better actually since these channels are in HD and unscrambled so we can record them with our home theater PC DVR.

ESPN was nice for sports but most of the ESPN content is also available on their online site ESPN3. Some shows are only available during the broadcast but most are available on demand for a week after the actual event.

Netflix on-demand is fantastic. I find that Claire and I spend most of our time with this service.

Hulu is also great but mostly for broadcast shows during the season and for anime that does not have the same restrictive licenses as the major network shows.

Life with high speed Internet but without Comcast is worth living after all.

HTPC update

This change also made me realize that I may have build my last Windows PC.

Our HTPC was pretty long in the tooth. A single processor that was 4+ years old. It has been a solid performer for years but it just could not keep up with the demands of Adobe's CPU hog known as FLASH. Apple is right to criticize the performance of FLASH, which is a dog. Trying to watch the jerky, low-rez version of the World Cup on ESPN3 was the final straw.

For about $300, I bought a new entry-level AMD CPU, motherboard, memory and a nicer case to rebuild our HTPC. Then I spent a half-day putting it together.

• For $100, the Lian Li case is half the size of our old PC. It does not look like a "stereo" but it is small and distinct enough to look decent and still give us flexibility.
• We kept our Hauppage PCI TV capture card for recording HD TV shows with cable or an antenna, and the SageTV software for running a PVR. (Although about the only TV we watch this way now is the news.)
• The CPU is a dual-core and the motherboard has on-board video from ATI. I was worried it would not keep up but it does just fine with HDTV so we got rid of the separate $60 video card I had.
• The most exciting addition was a remote touchpad/keyboard that fits in my hand for about $40. This was my main point of frustration with the HTPC system that I was never able to solve. Who wants a huge keyboard on the coach or wants to get up to use the keyboard across the room?

The new system is half the size, quiet, and performs like a champ.

FLASH video from Hulu and ESPN3 looks great at the highest quality level. No complaints now. (Netflix always looked great because it uses Silverlight not FLASH.)

I considered moving to an Apple system for the HTPC but ruled it out for cost. We would need to spend money on a TV capture method that I already owned and the Apple TV does not provide full browser support for Hulu and ESPN3. So I stuck with Windows.

Is this the last Windows PC I build?

the end of Windows PCs?

The HTPC and my gaming PC both run Windows 7, but the rest of our computers and devices are all from Apple. Two iMacs, two iPhones, and iPad and a few iPods.

My gaming PC is almost 2 years old and still going strong. For about 10 years, I have been building my own Windows PC's to game with. Every year or so, I replace something in the system. Our basement is a testament to those investments: a pile of worthless PC parts in their original boxes. While we have been re-selling our old Mac's on Craiglist for about 50% of what we paid for them, most PC's are worth next to nothing after 2+ years.

But is building PC's fun? Lately I think not. My hobby is playing games not building PC's (or worse, troubleshooting malfunctioning ones). Now that I spend more time playing console games, I really question the value of time spent building PC's to play games.

My next Mac upgrade will likely be more powerful than my game PC, with a better video card and CPU, which also calls into question why I have a separate game PC. Valve now has Steam for the Mac so I can get a number of games on my Mac natively...

So the end may well be in sight. With a 27", 4-core iMac, I will move to Bootcamp - one Mac that runs MacOS or Windows 7, as needed. That will remove a PC box and a monitor from my office and give us back some space while providing an even better experience. Sometimes it is nice to use my Mac to look stuff up while playing a game, but I can probably live without that.

The world keeps changing but the good news (for computers at least) is that the experience for users continues to get better.

I had been hearing about this Stieg Larsson book for a while now. Angela happened to get it from the library so I started to read it...

And I could not put it down! What a pleasant surprise.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (Stieg Larsson)

An interesting story, likable characters, an easy to read style (even translated) but this book stands out for me in two ways.

One, it is the first murder mystery I have read where no one wants the police involved, ever. Now that network television has just become a vehicle for delivering cop shows and commercials, it was kind of odd to read about solving crimes without involving the police.

The plot events call into question the whole idea of justice. As American's we are so (at least now) obsessed with the government delivering justice, being the ultimate arbiter of justice, this was an interesting concept. Particularly because it was free of the 2nd-Amendment "the gob'ment's gonna git us!" paranoia of the TEA party ilk. No shoot outs, no car chases, just cold blooded murder and normal people trying to figure out what happened.

The other piece that stood out for me was a small one but it really resonated with me because it just never gets talked about here. World War 2 and the complex relationship Europe had with Hitler. After a devastating economic depression, Hitler and the Nazi party promised a future of prosperity and pride. Hitler's militarism created jobs for people working towards a common goal and there was an environment of mixed excitement, pride and fear throughout the region.

Pride and excitement? America has white-washed history into this simplistic evil vs good parable that is nothing like the reality of Fascism in the 1930's. We have also glossed over the fear and risk people took then when faced with a simple question: Can I save my child from the Nazi's? In a culture that spends most of its brain power deciding what cell phone to get, this kind of life and death choice is chilling.

If the USA has forgotten about the dangers of power, I was glad to read that at least European's still remember. (A lesson lost on most of the USA when Bush declared war on Iraq a decade ago.)

The only reservation I would have for the book is that it is very real. Murder and torture and abuse - today. And all of it against women. Another important topic that continues to happen because we are too uncomfortable to talk about it.

Great book.