The Late Summer Wine Retirement Blog: A Sensible Alternative to Cable or Satellite TV

As I approached retirement, I started to look at monthly expenses and tried to find ways to free up a little cash. Not because I'm going to find things tight monetarily, but rather just to be able to save for extra expenses. One of the areas I thought about saving with was my Satellite TV expense. Here's why.

I have become rather tired of Satellite TV as of late. The programs I tend to want to watch are history documentaries, science programs, shows on how to do it yourself - gardening, etc. I found over the last several years that the history channel (lower case because they aren't) has given up on history - all they are busy doing now is trying to make it up with truck driving alligator hunting pawn broking rusty antique hunters looking for ancient astronauts. The discovery channel isn't any better - more reality programs season after season that barely deserve one show, much less 5+ seasons of the crap. The Science fiction channel has end of the world movies - either by weather, monsters, earthquakes or outer space debris. Oh. And they dumped an actual Science fiction program for wrestling, have a makeup program, and an entire evening looking for ghosts. The Science channel, part of the Discovery network, now has some decent science fiction (?!!??) with very little science, and one of the decent networks left, the Smithsonian Network, has been showing only reruns for the past 3 years. Arts and entertainment channel used to have it, now they don't. HGTV seems to be hooked on selling houses, buying houses for insane amounts of money in foreign countries, or an occasional remodel, but the remodel is damned expensive. The DIY channel still has good programs, but even there, if you pay attention, bathroom remodel s can be $20,000 and up, with kitchens being even more insane! I once redid a bathroom in a Queen Anne Victorian, with custom tile, antique soak tub, new stool, sink and wiring and more for less than $2000, so I have no idea what the hell these folks are thinking.

So I dumped satellite with no intension to return. I read more now, and found lots of interesting stuff on YouTube, (including some hilarious clips of old variety shows - check out Dean Martin, Tim Conway, and especially what's my line!) There is also a number of excellent websites that specialize in documentaries, listing them by category, and free TV shows from various networks. The problem is you have to hunt each of these things down on the internet and that can take a bit of time.

There is an alternative to cable and satellite, and it is on your computer. XBMC, the Xbox Media Center. It is a free, open source media player and entertainment center for your digital media. It has versions that work on Linux, Windows, OSX, Raspberry Pi. You should have at least a 2GHz dual core or better CPU, and an ATI Radeon X800 or newer, or an Intel GMA 945G or newer, or an Nividia Geforce 6-series or newer to run. If you have an older machine laying around, it will, with XBMC make a wiz bang HTPC -Home Theater PC!

I have the latest version of XBMC, Frodo, and it supports a TV tuner (in my case, Hauppauge), it will support an FM tuner if you have it, it will play back video, audio, DVD's, can be setup to play back Blu ray if you have a drive installed, and has access to tons of add ons.

If you install it, one can go to add-ons for video - and add on such things as PBS videos, DIY channel videos, HGTV videos, and see full programs. It seems that as many cable channels are converting to 16x9 HD content, the older SD 4x3 content is being released on the internet for viewing, and these add-ons make this content easy to find and watch. DOZENS of excellent programs - gardening, remodeling, landscaping, and more. The PBS add-on has many full episodes of NOVA, POV and lots more. The YouTube add-on allows you to search for your favorites clips. I've just watched a couple of great gardening shows, and an episode of NOVA on medieval cathedrals! Also, the clip of Tim Conway doing the elephant routine is an absolute scream on YouTube!

The ITunes add-on allows searching of all of the many Podcasts available. You can also specify local directories for video and audio, and play all of the content on the computer. And if you have attached the computer to your TV, it is a full blown Entertainment center!

It has add-ons called scrapers, that grab metadata information and artwork for music, videos, and TV shows. There are add-ons to grab lyrics to your favorite songs, weather add-ons, web interface add-ons, photo add-ons and lots more. If you have a video or music library, there are add-ons to watch the directory for any changes and keep the library up to date.

Earlier versions of XBMC had problems with Live TV, but the latest build (Frodo) that I am using only needs to have a TV server software installed, and then enable the add-on for that server. I am using NextPVR, which seems to work . It does have some klutzy interface issues, making it difficult to change channels, but it is a step in the right direction, and I'm sure the software will continue to improve in the future. Since I typically use the TV for watching TV, this isn't an issue. Also I find this software really great for watching all of the programs that I liked to watch on satellite, listening to music, and watching recorded TV.

ADDED August, 2015

Currently DISH network has added a nice cable/satellite alternative - SLING TV. If you go to www.sling.com, you can sign up and pay about $20 a month for about 15 or so cable channels, and add program packs for $5 each, like kids tv, news, sports and more! Check it out!

The following websites will get you started: