I had enough - Charter’s HD cable boxes were driving me bananas. In two years I had gone through nine boxes, four or five high-level technician appointments, and a complete re-wiring of the house. Not only that, but in the past four months I have had to call Charter once (sometimes three times) a week to have them reset my boxes because they weren’t sending signal to the TVs. That was it. I called to cancel my cable while I was on the computer signing up for DirecTV. Cable isn’t something I need, however I’m a sports fan living in New England. I need my Celtics / Redsox (sometimes) / and Patriots. The only other option you have in a city like ours is DirecTV. Charter has a lock-down on almost the entire county. I’d never had a DVR before (I usually get my shows another way ::cough::) so I was pretty excited to get their service. I setup my appointment for Monday, the day Charter was to turn off my cable. Short story? The installer told me I had too much tree coverage. He couldn’t put the satellite dish anywhere but smack dab in my front lawn. Damn. It was time to do some research. No way was I crawling back to Charter. Side note: at no point in my life have I been a customer of a company where I literally wanted to jump through the phone and strangle the person on the other end. Charter is that company.

Options

There are a number of options to choose from if you want to cut the cord, especially in December of 2010. Boxee & D-Link just released the Boxee Box. Roku recently updated their whole lineup. Apple has the AppleTV, and on and on and on.

Boxee

I’ve used Boxee in the past. I dig it. The reviews for the Boxee box weren’t great however. I want to focus on local media (on my iMac) as much as streaming media. The Boxee Box initially gave priority to streaming, basically putting your local media in a ghetto. They’ve since changed that but I still don’t feel it’s good enough. Another problem with Boxee is that like the Google TV (notice I didn’t mention it in the options, it’s not one) content providers can block you from watching their content via the box. They’re sniffing the user agent from the built-in browser and completely blocking their service. When Google TV launched they promised “the internet on your tv”. Well you can scratch a big chunk out of the internet I guess.

Roku & AppleTV

Roku and the AppleTV are made specifically for streaming. It’s a deal-breaker for me but it may be an option for you. If you only want Netflix and the ability to purchase/rent content then these may be just for you. The AppleTV can stream content from your iTunes libraries however you’re very limited in codec support. That’s a deal-breaker for me since most of my local media is made up of DivX or MKV files.

Mac Mini

So after doing some research I decided on getting a Mac Mini. It’s got HDMI (with audio) and can do anything the other guys can and more. No one is going to block a computer from accessing their content, and a computer can play any file you throw at it. The hard part was the decision on what to use to make the experience a good one. After all, no one wants a keyboard and mouse on their coffee table (looking at you Google). At first I thought of the Boxee software. It’s a nice interface and it was the software I was used to the most. I didn’t want to base my whole media center on something that may be going in a direction I don’t want to, so I scrapped that idea. Now, I’m coming from a PS3. I’ve been able to do Netflix, Hulu Plus (a waste of money), and streaming local media for a while. The problem is the interface isn’t that great. You can really hook up a PS3. If you’ve got a Windows PC in the home you can look at PlayOn. If you’ve got a Mac you can stream local content by using MediaLink. Yes I’ve tried every alternative to MediaLink. No they aren’t as good. Anyway, onto my final solution.

Plex (and some others)

I went with Plex. It’s based on XMBC. It’s a good competitor to Boxee as it’s focus is local content with streaming being a close second. It looks like they’ll be getting the software installed onto some TVs and Blu-ray players in the future as well. That’s promising. Other key features Plex has over the competition:

• Can stream from multiple sources on your network
• Has tons of plugins for different online content
• Has lots of themes (Night Skin looks awesome)
• Very very powerful metadata editor (link|link)

As you can see, after installing some of those plugins I have access to the channels I watched on cable, all without the heavy bill. HGTV, The Food Network, and ESPN3 are in heavy rotation, as well as the two internet-only networks I watch, Revision3 and TWIT.TV. So all this combined with my local files covers almost all of my needs for TV (as well as Elena’s luckily). Now what about sports? I like baseball, basketball, and football. The pro stuff, no college. MLB has a plugin for Plex so if you are a MLB.TV subscriber you can watch live games of your favorite teams. NBA has a streaming package as well but it’s nowhere as nice as MLB’s package. You can literally get MLB on everything, PS3, iPad, etc. It’s a sad world when even the NHL is kicking the NBA’s ass when it comes to technology. The NFL is looking into doing the same thing as MLB. I don’t need to watch the Pats at home though. That’s what bars are for. Other key pieces to my media center are RowMote Pro, which turns my iPad and iPhone into a touch-based remote for the Mac Mini, SABnzbd, to uh…automate some things, and iTeleport so I can control my Mac Mini from anywhere in the world. Now let’s be clear. This is a computer. You will run into the occasional app crash. The best way to set this up is to turn on screen sharing, and turn on remote login so you can SSH into the Mini if you ever need to kill a process.

The sports problem

I subscribed for NBA.TV. It’s not pretty. First of all you’re dealing with blackouts here. Because Comcast SportsNet has the contract for every Celtics game, no one else can broadcast it. This is true anywhere in the country. Live in Phoenix and want to watch the Suns? Ehhhh. Too bad. This is stupid and clearly twentieth century thinking. The NBA owns this content. They should have the power to say “Sure, you have exclusive rights on cable, we have exclusive rights online.”. It’s 2010. Make it happen. So how do I watch my local team? I VPN into a computer across the country and watch it from there. It’s a hack but it works. The interface the NBA came up with is awful, and it’s pricey at ~$150 a season, but the cost is nothing when you compare it to how much you pay for cable in a year.

Cutting the cord

So with Plex, NBA.TV, and a Mac Mini I have completely cut the cord. Cable won’t get my business again until they come out with a pay-per-channel business model. Why are you paying for Lifetime and the Jesus network when all you want is the History Channel and Comedy Central? The average cost for cable is $75 a month. Why not put that money towards a setup that will allow you to watch some of the same content for $0 a month?