Kiss that Cable Company Good-bye
We all seem to end up paying about $40 to $100 a month to some heartless cable or satellite company. They gobble up your cash and return to you poor customer service and TV that goes out right at the season climax of your favorite show. So I had a thought, with the advent of such websites as Hulu.com and Netflix.com, why couldn’t I be my own cable company…hmmm. So here is what I did (and it only cost about $40)
Step 1: I purchased a converter to take my computer monitor and make it show up on my TV. I bought a “PC to Video EZ” made by www.grandtec.com. I bought mine on Ebay. This converter is literally plug and play. It is powered by a USB port and it allows you to watch your computer screen and the TV screen at the same time.
DISADVANTAGES: If you like to really tweak and fine tune things, this converter isn’t going to give you ‘permanent joy’, but the two buttons on top allow for screen cropping and a little fine tuning. Also, the picture quality is fine for simple TV viewers such as myself, but may not be the highest quality for HD tv’s. There are other HD options out there for people who crave such things.
- ‘PC to Video EZ’ by Grandtec.com
Step 2: I took a sip from a smooth cup of freshly brewed coffee.
Step 3: I bought the necessary cables (the converter came with an extra monitor cable and…I believe… an S-video cable)
Step 4: I hooked it up to a PC I had laying around, fired up the ol’ internet and watched a little TV.
- Computer and TV hooked up
Step 5: I ordered an $8.99/month membership to Netflix.com and get 1 DVD at a time by mail and as many ONLINE MOVIES as you can watch.
Step 6: I bookmarked hulu.com and fancast.com for easy access to full-screen viewing of my fav shows.
That’s it. Give it a try and let me know how it works.
I dig this Idea. One issue, one of the main internet companies in the chicago (comcast) area has a limit on how much data you can download. It is currenty limited to 250gb. As far as I am aware ATT and WOW do not have a limit to your data usage, so if you have those internet providers this is a great idea. Otherwise you may get dropped from comcast or other providers that Limit data usage.
Dan,
I’m not a big fan of ‘Commie Cast’. I didn’t know they had a cap on downloads. I’ll have to look into that. I would go with WOW if I could, but they don’t cover my area.
Adam
I don’t like comcast either. Though my download speed is almost 16Mb. WOW doesn’t cover my area either and ATT uverse is the only service with the speeds like commie cast, but its not available to me yet.
Dan,
Comcast is great on speed but I would drop them in a second if there was a good alternative. Primary reason is the poor customer service. Oh well, monopolies don’t need to be good at customer service. Enough of that rant:)
Adam
As would I! AT&T’s customer service isn’t a whole lot better.
Guess it depends on the TV, I run an HDMI cable straight from my Nvidia video card to a 32″ Flat screen (Samsung). I also use my computer (Bose) speakers in lieu of TV’s. They only drawback is you cannot do separate functions on computer versus TV.
Whatever you do on computer shows up on TV like a rather large monitor.
Scott,
I have to admit, this is a lower tech solution. It would be nice to be able to do separate functions on the TV and the computer. My goal was to do as low cost option as possible. One of these days I will get a digital TV and be able to explore some other solutions.
Adam