Anyone doing this or what do you think?

[kjr39]

So, I hate TV. Well, I hate paying for TV. My cable bill for TV alone is 80/month and I don't watch that much TV to begin with. Almost everything I do watch is network and I don't need to see Into The Blue on Showtime anymore.

Here's my idea.

I have two places to watch TV, upstairs in the media room or downstairs in the den. The systems are:

Upstairs: 50" plasma with 5.1 system and have a Mac Mini with an extenal RAID.
Downstairs: 42" plasma 3.1 system with a Airport Express on it now.

Put an antenna in my attic and connect it to both TVs and the Elgato HD Homerun. From there, have the Homerun record everything I would want to watch to the Mac Mini (upstairs) and let the Mini do the conversion for an Apple TV that would be downstairs. That covers network TV at both locations.

I am close enough to the towers to get good reception for HD OTA.

For movies, I am planning on getting Netflix.

That would cover 95% of the TV watching that I do. For the other 5% there is iTMS...

Is anyone running anything like this and can comment on how it is working for them?

 

[ejbenjamin]

I'm doing it, or a simpler version of it at least.

I had the same problem as you: I was paying a lot for cable channels that I never really watched. The only two shows I watch every week are The Office and Grey's Anatomy, both available OTA. But they're on at the same time.

So I canceled the cable and bought an antenna. I watch The Office live and buy Grey's Anatomy each week from iTunes, and watch it later via the AppleTV.

The only thing I really miss about cable is The Daily Show, but I can buy an episode from iTunes when I'm in the mood.

I'm saving fifty bucks a month-- so six months later, the AppleTV has paid for itself.

 

[imlucid]

I am sort of in a similar situation. A year ago I turned off DISH network and packed up my two ReplayTVs.

I've been living off iTS on my three Apple TVs for about 95% of my content and 5% is recorded OTA HD using two Elgato EyeTV 500's which then auto export to iTunes. (Basically I just record OTA for stuff that isn't on the store. Its worth $2 a pop for commercial free shows and I sometimes have issues with the meta-data from EyeTV not being correct).

I also use NetFlix which is great, though the last year I've watched much more TV and fewer movies.

I was paying $70/month for two DISH receivers and after a year I calculated that I paid almost the exact same amount to iTS as I would have to DISH (within $5!) and I still have a whole bunch of not yet watched TV Shows on my computer.

The biggest bummer is that I didn't get to watch Hockey this last year and my football team is NFC which shows on FOX which is the one OTA channel I can't get.

Kevin