Goodbye WD TV - Hello XBMC!!!

So - I was actually pretty happy - as far as being happy goes - with the WD TV Live Plus box.  It did do a great job of finding media on my network and playing said media.  The part where it failed for me was the ability to resume a video that you have stopped.  If I am watching a show and I need to stop it for some reason (too tired - want to finish tomorrow), I should be able to start where I left off.  This is not the case with the WD TV box.  I am forced to start all over - even during the same session.  If I leave it on and go to another video and then come back, I am stuck.  I think they missed the ball here.  Still - not a huge deal, but a pain for me.

So - My wife asked me if we could just hook up one of our old computers up to the TV to get the job done.  I sat there with a blank stare on my face for a few minutes and then realized - YES!

I downloaded XBMC and installed it on an old laptop.  After playing around with configurations, etc., I hooked it up to the TV.  Oops - one problem.  How am I going to control it?  Play, pause, rewind, etc.???  Well - Google is my friend, so I did a quick search.  Did you know that XBMC has a nice little application for the iPhone/iTouch?  Well, you do now!!!  Through a quick network configuration on my iPhone, I was able to control my XBMC with ease!  Not only is it easy, the application is really cool.  You can use it to control every aspect of XBMC with ease!  You can pull up playlists and songs, albums, etc.  I haven't had time to dive too deep into it, but it is pretty darn cool.  Only drawback is its price.  For a simple app, it is a little high at $2.99.  Not as high as other remotes - especially when I have a nice $200 Logitech remote that will soon start collecting dust!

I'll check in when I get this new setup tried and tested a little bit more.

The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller

This was posted on Gizmodo today.  It is a chilling note that Bill Zeller left to the world before taking his life.  While taking his life seemed to him to be the only option, it shows you how important it is to seek help if you have gone through the pain he went through as a helpless child.  Nothing he went through as a child was his fault and was out of his control. 

RIP Bill Zeller.

The following is exactly as it appeared on Gizmodo:

The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller [Bill Zeller]

by Joel Johnson

Bill Zeller was a talented programmer whose work we've featured on Lifehacker. He took his own life on Sunday and left an explanation that I think it's important you read.
Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It's clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the world in any way that didn't leave him feeling he was too sullied to have the same experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described "darkness", which despite his prostration it's clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized.
Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere.
I think a person has the right to live or end their life as they choose. If Zeller really felt that suicide was his only option, so be it. But as someone who has had similar experiences in my own life, I want to say to anyone else who feels the way Zeller felt: You can't escape your past. Not completely. But you can deal with it. You can contextualize it. You can learn how to prepare for the times when you feel like it's not even on your radar and then it totally broadsides you.
And you can talk to people. You really can.

Bill Zeller

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.
My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.
This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.
At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.
The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.
Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.
I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.
Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.
Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness will always be with me.
I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.
I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.
Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.
Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn't feel "right". The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.
Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.
So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn't apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one more person in a long list of people I've hurt.
I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.
I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.
I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.
I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.
So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.
I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.
I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.
There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.
You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.
People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.
Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.
I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.
I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.
—-
I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.
If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.
They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us, "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.
A random example:
"I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist." - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.
If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.
Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.
I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it's tiring.
Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.
I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.
—-
To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.
I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.
Bill Zeller
—-
Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.
Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player

When my secondary Xbox 360 went all RROD on me, I had to move on and figure something else out.  Shelling out a couple hundred dollars to watch TV an hour or so a day wasn't really worth it to me.  Besides, I'm not gaming in my bedroom, so it seemed pointless to me to fork over dough for something I wasn't going to be using for its true purpose.  

In comes the deal I got for the Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player.  Best Buy regularly had it for $129 but was running a special on it for $99.  Throw in the gift card I got for my birthday for Best Buy and the deal was on!  

Hooking it up to my TV was a breeze.  The only thing I didn't have was an HDMI cable, so I went the Component cable route instead.  720p vs 1080p isn't a huge deal in the bedroom... especially since the videos I wanted to stream from my home server weren't in 1080p anyways.  

The interface was easy to navigate through for the most part.  When booting it up, I was notified immediately of a new firmware that was found.  Prior to downloading this, I wanted to cruise around it and see if it was something that I wanted to keep.  It found my home shares on the network without issue, which was nice.  It also found my Media Center PC's recorded TV drive.  I decided to play a recorded show... no dice.  The picture came up nice and clear, but within 5 seconds, the audio started getting choppy and the video started slowing down frame by frame.  Not good.  

I decided to look for my PlayOn media streamer.  It found this without issue - even though the WD TV isn't on PlayOn's list of supported devices!  I was actually VERY pleased when I started playing a show.  It actually queued up MUCH quicker than I had ever experienced through the Xbox 360!  This alone was a huge benefit!

Next, I decided to try to play a ripped AVI movie I had on my Home Server.  It found these folders without issue and played video back quite nicely.  What was left?  Upgrade the firmware, of course and take advantage of other new features!  Besides - maybe the firmware added support for Windows Recorded TV Media (WTV files).

Well - the upgrade went off without a hitch.  Only problem was that it didn't seem to fix the playback of WTV files.  OK - let's look around and see what other new features were included with the new firmware.  Facebook?  Nice!  Twitter?  Nice!  Plus, there were many other Internet based sites available natively on the box now!  

OK - enough playing around - time to watch Conan through PlayOn... What?  No media found in the PlayOn folder?  You're kidding me?  It was working before!  Let me go to my Media Center PC and restart the PlayOn service... still no dice!?!?  Let me look for an updated PlayOn server file... nope.  How about rebooting the computer.  Something surely isn't right here.  Still no dice...

Well - I decided to let Google be my friend.  Here it is - some firmwares released by WD disable some features people find useful - particularly PlayOn!  This is not acceptable!  

So, I found a nice forum online that lets me download previous versions of WD Firmware.  I downloaded it easy enough, modified a version file to trick the box into thinking there was a new firmware and I was on my way.  

Rebooting after downgrading the firmware resulted in PlayOn being restored!!!  Yahoo!!!  But, now I don't have Facebook... not a huge loss, but it is a loss nonetheless...  

Now - I've got to figure out if I want to keep this $100 box to watch ripped movies and PlayOn streaming content or if I really want to take advantage of something that will play WTV files to watch the shows we typically watch in bed - recorded shows and fast forward through the commercials.  

Now all I have to do is find something that will do that for the same budget I've been looking at.  A Blu-ray player may do it, but those aren't at the price point I'm looking at...  Google TV is supposed to be really cool, but those are up at the Xbox price level...  

Back to Google to do some more research and see if I can find something else that will work for me... I guess I could always convert the WTV files to something a little more friendly, but that takes time and resources and more hard drive space... Back to the drawing board before my return window runs out...

Google 1, Me 0

Well... Google decided I wasn't important enough to reinstate my AdSense account... oh well.  I'm not too heartbroken over it anyways.  It would have been nice to get a personal email explaining their reasoning, but I trust them - there is a reason that they are so popular and successful.

On to the rest of my life, I guess!

I'm a Bad Boy!

So...  I just got back into posting blogs a couple of weeks ago after returning from a 10 day Hawaiian vacation.  In my excitement to go back, I noticed while reading my own blog, that I had little "Google ads" on the side of my blog with links to places in Hawaii and other vacation destinations.  I figured - Hey - I'm ready to start planning my next trip!  Why not click and see what deals there are?!?  Well... I guess that violates Google's AdSense terms of service.  You are not allowed to click on your own ads on your own blog or website.  Without any warning, I received a notification from Google that my AdSense account is suspended.  What?  After ready why - invalid clicks, I realized I had violated their terms of service.

I explained myself in my appeals form, so hopefully I'll get it back.  Not like I have a ton of traffic to my site or anything, but I thought it would be a nice little chunk of spending money...  Oh well - time will only tell if my appeal is accepted...

Oh - and if you are reading this, my dear friends at Google - please accept my sincere apology.  I know I have read the TOS in the past, but this was an honest mistake!!!  Thanks!!!

Being My Own Cable TV Provider

So, it all started about two and a half years ago. I was fed up with the idea of how much we were paying for our Dish Network Satellite TV Service, the crummy customer service we were receiving from them, and the fact that I had an Xbox 360 I was getting tired of playing that was supposed to be able to stream all sorts of media.

In fact, I kept seeing menu options on the Xbox 360 for videos and "Media Center." I was curious about this and decided I wanted to dive in a little bit more to see what I could do with those options. The most information out there pertained to the fact you could download videos to the Xbox 360's hard drive. But, back then, the biggest hard drive you could get for the Xbox 360 was a 20 gigabyte one - hardly enough for a video collection!

About the same time, I had also noticed that my Windows Vista PC had a Windows Media Center built into it, but I didn't really have a use for it. I did some Googling and found that Windows Media Center and "Media Center in the Xbox 360 were one in the same. While I didn't have a TV tuner in my Vista box, I solved this quickly by picking up a USB HDTV TV Tuner stick to bring in over the air television broadcasts from my local television stations.

Converting my desktop PC into my Media Center PC was a breeze. I set up a few programs to record with the TV Tuner and I was on my way. Connecting the Xbox 360 to my Media Center PC was easy as well.

Back then, everything was basic - I had my Media Center PC recording live tv and it was streaming that content, including live TV (who watches live TV anymore, anyways!?!?) to my TV in my living room. Comparing my experience to that of Dish Network's DVR was pretty much the same - except it didn't cost me a dime in monthly service fees.

So - over the next couple of months, I "beta tested" the whole setup in the living room while using our Dish Network DVR in the bedroom at night. Things kept getting better and better as time went on. I started to realize I could stream more than live and recorded TV to my living room, but I could also convert DVD's to either .ISO's or .AVI's and watch those over my home network as well.

As time went on, I became more and more sure that we were ready to cut the cord and decommission our Dish Network service. I actually had a pretty bad back injury and was scheduled for surgery and would be confined to bed for a couple of weeks. Knowing this, I didn't really want to move my Xbox 360 upstairs. I decided it was time to either find an inexpensive "Media Center Extender" or find a used Xbox 360 to put up in the bedroom. I found a refurbished one on the Internet and got it a few days before my surgery. Getting it set up was a breeze and I was in business. After only a few days of using this in the bedroom, did I realize it was in fact time to turn Dish Network off!!!

Fast forward a couple of years now and look where I am now! I've expanded my Media Center PC to be running on a Windows 7 Ultimate PC and now have two USB HDTV TV Tuners - allowing me to record two separate shows at the same time!

I've also expanded my PC setup. I now have a Windows Home Server hosting up 6 terabytes of storage across three external hard drives. This array is actually redundantly backing up all of my family pictures across the drives, as well as storing all of my music collection, movie collection, and backing up all of the computers connected to my home network! Connected directly to my Windows 7 Ultimate TV is a 2 terabyte hard drive dedicated solely to storing my recorded TV shows at 1080p resolution. I remember looking back to my Dish Network DVR and worrying with my wife on what shows we either had to delete or watch before we ran out of room on our DVR. Now - I've got storage that I am in no danger of running out of in the near future.

But wait! That's not all!!! Not only am I able to stream my own content, but I am also able to stream content that resides on the Internet. While Netflix and Amazon are both supported by the Xbox 360, I am choosing to go the most economic route. These are pay services. I found a service - Media Mall's PlayOn that streams not only Hulu content, but content from many other providers.

This is a service that runs in the background on your computer and is recognized on your network by your Xbox 360 (or Playstation 3, Wii, and more recently Google TV). PlayOn not only natively supports streams from many providers such as CBS, MTV, PBS, YouTube, CNN, Crackle, and others, but it also supports third party plugins allowing me to view content from the History Channel, Comedy Central, Spike TV, SyFy, Fox News, Nick TV, Discovery Channel, the CW, and more!!! I was lucky enough to get in on the bleeding edge of this software back when Hulu was about the only streaming option. Just several months ago, they even released an iPhone and iPad application, allowing me to watch all of this content from anywhere in the world! I have been able to see them grow like crazy and am a huge fan of them.

So... while I am probably by no means an expert in this area, I do think I'm a pioneer in my own right in the arena of becoming my own Cable TV provider. While we still do need to pay for Internet service, we have been able to cut out television service proper.

Coming up - My review of the Western Digital TV Live Plus media streamer. My refurbished Xbox 360 in the bedroom recently went all RROD on me resulting in me resorting to my iPad for streaming through PlayOn.. although this is great, it stands to reason that if you have a 46 inch TV in your bedroom, an iPad isn't going to cut it for long!!!