My HDTV Dilemma
I now have 5 HDTVs in my house and exactly zero SDTVs. As HDTVs replace the SDTVs in your house, it gets incrementally more expensive to provide a HDTV signal to your TVs. In the old days, if your TV had a cable ready tuner in it, all of cable's programming was made available to your TV. Then cable introduced "digital" channels which could only be accessed by a set-top box at each TV but you could still get all the local stations and such without paying more than your basic subscription price. With HDTV, no HD content is available without a set-top box, not even the local HD channels that you can pick up with rabbit ears.
This presents me with a problem. I've bought HDTVs as my SDTVs needed replacing and I cannot use them to their fullest capabilities without forking over a mind boggling $79.75 per month in set-top box fees. This has lead me down the path of figuring out how to get cable TV either out of my life for good or in a position where I can watch HDTV without the massive rental bill. If I'm going to spend $1,000 in rental fees over the next year getting content to my TVs, I'm willing to spend $1,500 on a solution that would free me of the large never ending rental fee.
Here's how I plan to do it.
As I did more research into the matter, I've come to the conclusion that I can do what I want to do for about $1,800. That's a 20 month break even point by doing raw math. Consider that three of the TVs don't have DVD players and at least two of the TVs (in the kid's rooms) will eventually need game systems and our $1,800 expenditure really feels like $1,400 (2x$199 for Xbox 360s) which is in the right ballpark for a roll your own solution. Prior to this year, rolling your own DVR solution wasn't possible. CableLabs, the certification authority for all cable equipment wouldn't give anyone but OEM system builders access to the necessary CableCARD technology required. As a result, whole home DVR systems remained in the $5,000 range which makes renting 5 set-top boxes from the cable company an easier price to swallow. The alternative simply wasn't there. It is now.
For my home, I'm moving to a headless Windows 7 Media Center server with 5 Xbox360s serving as HD capable set-top boxes. There are other solutions from Apple and in the Linux world but today, the only operating system capable of decoding the encrypted QAM signal that comes from your cable company is Windows 7. (Vista can do it as well) The server machine will have the following components:
- Intel Core i3 550 3.2Ghz Clarkdale processor and Intel H55 motherboard. ($199.99)
- Corsair 8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM ($139)
- ATX Case w/650watt PSU ($99) (I'm putting the server in a closet so it doesn't have to be terribly quiet)
- Hard Drives Western Digital (3x$79)
- Incidentals such as case fans, DVD burner, etc, etc. ($50)
- Ceton InfiniTV 4 Quad CableCARD tuner ($399)
Total System Cost: $1024 ( I can save $99 by reusing a case and power supply that I already have.)
At each TV, I need an Xbox 360. Since I already have one, I need 4 more. The 4GB models will do perfectly fine for this and casual game play. Each of those are $199 and readily available at any Best Buy. I’ll admit that I am concerned about RROD issues. It’s a risk that this setup brings with it because I’m not convinced that the Xbox 360 can handle the rigors of daily multi-hour uses without breaking down. Additionally, I’ll need Xbox 360 Media Center remotes and I have to upgrade my Xbox Live account to the $99 /year family pack. In the end, I’ll have a whole house media servers and five extenders, though I might simply use the AV capabilities of the i3 processor and directly connect the PC to my theater. That’ll depend upon the performance that the other TVs receive while I am using the box in the theater. If using it as a HTPC is too much, I’ll simply use the Xbox360 extender instead.
Xbox 360 Media Remote (4x$16)
HDMI Cable (4x$2.50) Monoprice.com to the rescue.
Total System Cost: $874 + $1024: $1,898
UPDATE: I managed to get a Xbox 360 4GB for 149.99 this weekend so I'm already ahead of the game by $50 bucks. I'll update this post as I purchase the rest of the components and will create a new post when I actually get this setup working later this year.
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7 Comments
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Wow... that's pretty intimidating. This kind of hardware/networking stuff overwhelms me but it's cool you came up with a solution. Great job!
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As I put this all together, I'm going to update this post and the Home Theater Index. We'll see how it all works out in about six to eight months.
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Pardon my ignorance but I'm a little confused what the $400 CableCard tuner does for you that makes it worth $400. Do you get access to cable content that the rest of us have to pay for? Or is it just the capability to record 4 different HD channels at the same time?
And not owning an XBox, how does the content get served up? With only 4Gb, I'm assuming the XBox is pulling from the back end (wired? wireless?) but is there an "extra content" menu or what?
And which version of Win7 are you using? I didn't see it in your pricelist.
Thanks for the info.
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The cable company encrypts many of their premium channels. While local broadcast stations are usually sent over cable in HD in what is called ClearQAM (Unencrypted QAM), HBO, ESPN, Showtime and other channels are encrypted. Your run of the mill TV with an ATSC tuner in it, cannot decrypt these HD signals without the use of a CableCARD to do the decryption.
The $400 Ceton card is the only internal card on the market that will allow decryption of encrypted cable content through the use of its built in CableCARD slot.
As for the Xbox question, yes the Xbox is connecting as a media center extender and streaming content from the backend server. The Xbox 360 dashboard has a Media Center application that allows this functionality. You can get to all of your pictures, movies, music and live television through the Xbox. DVR functionality is provided by the server and not the set-top box so the 4GB model is all that is needed here. That assumes that I will only be using streaming options because with only 4GB, I wouldn't have the room to download one of Microsoft's for download movie options. Considering, I've done this once, it is not something I plan on doing.
I own copies of Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Professional already so anyone looking to do that would need to factor in Windows 7 Home Premium or better. The Ceton card is only certified for use in Windows 7.
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Thanks for the extra info.
The Ceton card sounds pretty sweet but you still have to pay for the encrypted content (HBO, etc.), right?
And will the XBoxes be streaming wired or wireless?
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The 4GB Xboxes can do Wireless N which would be the only real solution for this. Even at that, I would prefer to have the boxes wired to a 1Gb network. There's only 100Mb of bandwidth on a Wireless N network. While 5 Xboxes all going at once would work under 100Mb conditions, it would be suceptible to all sorts of signal loss situations making the wired solution far more reliable.
I'm afraid Wireless N won't make it past the Wife Acceptance Factor. (Called WAF) TV just has to work, no glitches, slowdowns or problems. If Dancing with the Stars or Grey's Anatomy are interrupted because of the Xbox or the computer, it will make the whole purchase feel less than the just rent the box from the cable company solution.
Lastly, you still have to subscribe to HBO and such. The only thing the Ceton card does is tame the set-top box tax from the cable company to something reasonable.
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Thanks for the information. This is pretty much a dream setup for me. I'm excited about the cable card. Don't forget with this setup you could place your music and movie library on your Windows 7 machine and serve it up to any of your HDTVs. I haven't had a problem with any Xbox 360 with this kind of use, but you could always try to buy refurbished ones from somewhere like gamestop. That will save you a few dollars, and won't be too expensive if a couple have decide that can't hold up.
11.30.2010 at 11:17 AM