The FreeVo Project

During the last several months I was formulating a plan to get rid of my monthly TV service fees by setting up our PC as a DVR. Here are the details.

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What we started with:

• DirecTV Choice package with DVR service $59/month, $708/year

Channels we watched on a regular basis (besides local channels):

• Disney Channel
  
• TLC
• Noggin
• USA Network

What we'll be giving up:

• TLC - There's no way around losing this channel since they don't have many online episodes, but its not worth keeping DirecTV service just for TLC.
  
• Noggin - Noggin doesn't have full episodes online. Carter is switching to the local PBS kids and Qubo shows, Netflix instant kids shows and movies we have on DVD.
  
• Happily, $700/year in monthly bills.
  

What we'll be gaining through our PC:

• Dual-tuner DVR functionality that will let us burn recorded episodes and movies to DVD. We'll also have much more hard drive space for storing recordings than our DirecTV box.
• Access from our sofa to Netflix 12,000+ "watch instantly" movie library. This is a paid service, but we already had and loved Netflix for movies by mail and here's no extra fee for unlimited instant movies.
  
• Living room access to full episodes online from NBC, CBS, ABC, USA, Disney Channel, and many more major networks.
• Access to all TV shows and movies available on Hulu.com
  
• Instant access from our PC to any movie we own on DVD.
  
• Access to our personal Pandora music stations and our iTunes library from our TV.

The Plan:
When I built a new computer, I moved our old one (which is in a half-sized case) into our entertainment center and connected it directly to our TV through the S-Video connection. I bought a media center keyboard with a built in mouse. It uses a 2.4GHz wireless signal so it has a lot longer range than a standard wireless mouse/keyboard. This lets us use it from the couch without any problems. It's not perfect, but it is so much better for the living room than a normal mouse and keyboard. I set up the PC to eliminate typing as much as possible.

Watching online content:
I installed Hulu Desktop to give us sofa and remote control access to Hulu so we don't need to bring up an internet window to watch online shows. This gives us access to NBC, CBS, ABC, USA, and Disney Channel. From there we can choose any of the recent episodes of the shows we are watching. We'll also be recording any of our shows on the national networks using our PC as a DVR, but this allows us to watch Disney and USA shows that we'll no longer be getting through DirecTV. I also made a desktop shortcuts to Netflix, and Pandora (so I won't have to type in the web addresses) and set the logins to remember me so I don't have to enter a password. Right now, I'm also trying out Zinc to give us a better way to browse Netflix watch instantly and online episodes from a TV friendly interface. It's working pretty well, but the browser window get's messed up and unreadable when the computer sleeps, then wakes up. Until this is fixed, we have to open the program from the keyboard when we want to use it. I'm looking forward to trying out Boxee on June 23rd when it's released for Windows.

Instant access to our personal movie library:
I used this handy guide to use Handbrake to rip Carter's and our favorite movies and TV shows that we have on DVD to play directly from our PC. This solves three annoyances: We don't have to look for the DVD to play it, the discs don't get scratched up from daily abuse, and we don't have to skip through the previews and menus to get to the movie. That last one is a glorious benefit. Most movies, especially kids movies, have a lot of intros, advertisements, previews, FBI warnings, etc., some of which you cannot skip through to get to the menu. Now I just start the movie and get on with my life.
Now for the disclaimer: Ripping DVD's requires decrypting the source files, which is technically illegal. Note that I do not rip movies that I don't personally own, nor do I condone ripping rented or borrowed movies or distributing ripped movies as that is, without argument, piracy. I rip them for viewing convenience in my own home and to protect the original discs I paid Hollywood good, hard-earned money for.
I am also able to use Handbrake to transcode HD recordings we make from movies that come on TV. This way I can encode them using H.264 encoding (the one used for Blu-Ray) so I get files that are half the size for about the same video quality. This makes difference since each 2 hour movie recording is about 15GB.

DVR setup:
For the TV tuner, I'm using the Hauppauge 2250. It gives me a dual tuner with a single connection so we can keep recording/watching two shows at once like we are now with DirecTV. It also comes with a remote, so I don't have to use the keyboard/mouse as often.
The caveat with using TV tuners in PCs is that there is not an elegant solution to use your PC to record cable or satellite TV. If you cannot live without the channels you can only get through paid service, this solution isn't for you. You're simply better off paying the extra $10/month for DVR service if you are already paying for cable or satellite. However, if you like $700/year more than you like the few channels you actually watch that you can't get over the air, you can free yourself from a lifetime of monthly payments.
I installed this TV antenna in my attic to pick up all of the local channels, including HD channels (no HDTV yet though). With the digital transition, our TV doesn't pick up any stations by itself without a converter box, but the TV tuner card picks up all of the stations in their digital format.
With the tuner card and antenna area set up, I set up the PVR software to pull the programming guide off of the internet to schedule recordings. If you have Vista (or Windows 7!) Premium or Ultimate, the simplest solution is to use the included Media Center software for recording TV. If you want to use Windows XP, I've heard a lot of good things about BeyondTV. It's a little pricey, but has some good features. Since the purpose of my project is to save money, and since I like to tinker with computers, I'm using the free open-source software GB-PVR. This program is not for the faint of heart, since it requires a lot of manual setup, but when all is said and done, it gives you a lot of features that you don't get with Vista Media Center or BeyondTV, including:

• Playback movies or photos stored anywhere on your computer. This is the easist way to access ripped DVD movies. Beyond TV doesn't do photos or videos and Vista Media Center can't play files generated by Handbrake without installing a separate codec pack.
  
• Automatically skip commercials with the Comskip plugin. Vista Media Center doesn't do this.
• Store recorded TV to a format that you can burn to DVD or transcode to shrink the video files down. Vista Media Center saves recordings to a proprietary format - you can only use the recordings in Windows Media Center.
• Do custom searches in the TV guide based on titles, keywords, actors, all upcoming movies, etc. BeyondTV does this. I'm not sure if Media Center supports it.
  

Music:
As I mentioned before I set up a desktop shortcut for Pandora, which made my wife very happy. Aside from that, I installed iTunes to play music from our personal library. We like the genius playlist feature.


CD's and DVD's:
We also have the option of playing CD's and DVD's from the PC rather than our DVD player, so we could get rid of our DVD player to free up space in the entertainment center. For now we're keeping it because its surround sound speakers and 5 disc changer are nice.