Saving@Home on your cable bill

[dcwp]

Originally Posted by Xringer

I was thinking of using my old PC to drive the 42" Plasma in the den.
I had the idea of setting it up mainly as an HD DVR, but my wife wouldn't
like all the fan noise coming from that old gamer system.

I do like to watch movies and some TV shows, and I think this little
Netflix box is going to get a few more channels, plus pay VOD from Amazon.

Yeah, those powerful gaming rigs make a lot of noise. Of course there are passive cooling options, but they are pretty pricey so it wouldn't achieve the goal of saving money. I just have a nice big silverstone fan and heatsink and it makes a low enough noise that I don't notice it. But then I'm no true audiophile.

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by dcwp

Yeah, those powerful gaming rigs make a lot of noise. Of course there are passive cooling options, but they are pretty pricey so it wouldn't achieve the goal of saving money. I just have a nice big silverstone fan and heatsink and it makes a low enough noise that I don't notice it. But then I'm no true audiophile.

My main home PC is not much of a gaming system (Dell 4600), but when I upgraded the video card, it's fan was loud and got louder as it got older.
I was almost ready to buy a new card, when I found the Arctic Cooler heat sink (w/ heat pipes) online at NewEgg.
Cut the noise from this PC about 85%.. Passive (no fan) is nice!

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by MazdaMatt

I dumped cable when they took SPEED off of the regular list

That was about 18 months ago and I DO NOT MISS CABLE. It is a huge waste of time. I still watch movies, but i'm not bombarded with commercials or spend hours "flipping".

I know what you mean with the "flipping". I've got it so bad, that I'll change
the channel during the ads and forget to come back to the program I was
actually somewhat interested in watching..


One thing that I do like about the cable box is the Pic-in-Pic of the program I'm watching, while the TV guide is being displayed.
That's when I can hit my FAV button and see what's on my HD channels, but never leave the program/channel I was watching.
And, if I do see something that looks more interesting on the History channel etc, I can just press Select and I'm there..

It's not really worth the cost to me. I watch cable about 1 or 2 hours a week, unless there is a good movie on. (Which is rare).

But, my wife likes a few cable shows & stuff on the E-channel, and she would miss see them. So, it's really going to be up to her.
My No vote is a given.

[Snax]

DTV for the win here.

We ditched our Dish Network a year ago and really hardly miss it. Aside from the $100/month we were paying for all of those channels, which rarely had anything I wanted to watch anyway, the DVRs were each consuming about 28W each on average 24/7, or about 40 kWh/month.

If we want to watch something else, we stream it or rent it. Otherwise, we read.

[The Atomic Ass]

I haven't had cable, or even a TV since I moved out on my own... I only watched CN and CC to begin with, and most of their programs I find online now.

Also, it's allowed me more time to focus on building up my business and reviewing my Anime collection.