How we geeked out and stuck it to The Man

Chel and I recently took the drastic step of canceling our cable, and in the process, we created for ourselves a gadget and entertainment nirvana. Here’s how.

For my birthday, Chel wanted to get me a new computer since our old home computer was on its last legs. I had been eyeing a new iMac for quite a while, but also came upon the idea of connecting a teeny weeny Mac mini to the TV in our living room.

Connecting a computer to a big screen TV might seem a little odd, but it made a lot of sense for us since we already had laptops from work and we rarely spent time in our home office (more commonly known as Addy’s room).

We had heard about people going this route and ditching cable in favor of watching shows online through Hulu and other sites. And with a TV tuner card, you can watch live TV from an over-the-air antenna and you really don’t need cable.

The Mac mini Home Theater Setup

So I took the plunge at the Apple Store and ended up with this setup:

• Mac mini with 2.53 GHz processor, 320GB hard drive and 4GB RAM.
• Keyboard and mouse. The mini doesn’t come with either and you need both, obviously. We went with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
• EyeTV Hybrid tuner (including the EyeTV 3 DVR software) to watch live TV.
• HP Photosmart C4780 wireless printer, which we put back in the office so that we can print out whatever we need while keeping Unsightly Printers out of the living room.

A few other goodies were required to make the setup complete:

• The Logitech Harmony Remote controls the Mac mini and all our other gadgets.
• An HDTV antenna connects to the EyeTV. More on that in a bit.
• Good, fast wireless Internet.
• Long enough cables connect the audio & video signals to the TV and speakers. My new favorite cable source is Monoprice.com, where for example, I got a 15-foot miniDisplay port to HDMI cable for the insanely low price of $13.

My first mistake in this whole setup was coming home with a “rabbit ears” antenna to connect to the EyeTV. Yes, they still make those, and yes, I had barely gotten them out of the box and extended them all the way before Chel said we needed to invest in a more hide-able antenna. In hindsight, it would have been a little ghetto to spend all this money and have rabbit ears sticking up behind all of this.

So back we went to Best Buy to exchange the rabbit ears. I was just going to run in and out, but Chel decided to come in with me. After I found a much more decor-conscious antenna, I discovered Chel hypnotized in front of the new TVs.

“Must….get…this,” she said in a semi-catatonic trance.

After taking a moment to wonder what had become of my gadget-phobic wife, I too became hypnotized, and what began as a trip to exchange a $10 antenna ended with us walking out with a 55″ Samsung LED TV.

Word to the wise: should you ever decide to go this route, you too will likely want a new TV out of it, and such TV will make All. The. Difference. When we first connected the mini to our old DLP TV, I could barely read the icons on the screen, although I would not have admitted that to Chelsea. When we got the new TV turned on, one of the first things we saw was a beer commercial with an extreme closeup of the water droplets rolling down the frosty glass. It made Chel’s mom ask for a beer. She hates beer! That’s how good this TV is.

The software

There are a few pieces of software we use on a daily basis:

• The aforementioned EyeTV software serves as our DVR and records all the episodes of The Bachelor, Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries that Chelsea and I could care to watch. (Me? Watch those shows? Never!)
• Hulu Desktop is our gateway to streaming entertainment goodness such as Family Guy and The Daily Show. (You know, manly things worth watching.)
• The Boxee beta has useful apps like CNN, Pandora and a Netflix app to watch (mostly old B-grade) movies instantly. I’ve tried Plex too but am not smart enough to make sense of it, and Boxee works well 8 times out of 10.
• iPhoto provides a fun way to make people suffer through vacation slideshows.
• iTunes for music, of course, but the great thing about iTunes on a big screen is the Visualizer that draws entrancing geometric patterns on the screen in time with the music. It’s great fun at parties. Seriously.
• Remote Buddy enables the Logitech remote to control a wider variety of apps, including all of the above, so we can put the keyboard and mouse away most of the time.

There are also a few must-have iPhone apps, too:

• Mobile Air Mouse turns the phone into a trackpad/keyboard/remote and is great for web surfing and basic stuff, although I wouldn’t recommend it for typing long essays such as this.
• Remote by Apple controls iTunes from afar and is a great way to change music without going back into the living room.
• The EyeTV app connects via wifi and streams recorded programs. This was great the other day, for instance, when Chel was surfing the web on the big screen and I could watch The Bachelor The Office on my phone. There’s a free web app that streams live TV over wifi or 3G, but I haven’t tried that one yet.
• Jaadu VNC enables the phone to connect back to the desktop and control the computer remotely.

So, have we missed cable?

Yes and no, but mostly no. The main times I’ve missed cable have been sports-related. While the biggest events (like the Super Bowl) are on over-the-air TV, I’ve missed being able to watch some TCU and Mavs games. There are sites like Channelsurfing.net that have helped with that somewhat, and we get some games on ESPN360.com through AT&T DSL, but a setup like this will miss some games.

I’ve also missed being able to turn on CNN and such for breaking news, but hey, breaking news is online, too, and the news websites have started streaming more live video when stories warrant.

It’s also been a bit tough to explain the setup to houseguests, since it’s not quite as simple as turning on the tube and handing them the remote.

On the plus side, a setup like this really empowers us viewers to choose what we want to watch and not tie ourselves down as much to some network programmer’s schedule. And it’s just pretty darn fun to plop down on the couch and surf the web on a big-arse wall monitor, even if the couch does not always make for the best mouse pad.

In conclusion

While this setup is not for everyone, and does have a few more moving parts than your average cable-box-connected-to-the-TV-box, I’ve really enjoyed it and I think Chel has liked it too, which is saying something since she is much more gadget-averse.

We’re in an era of blurring lines between computers and TVs and phones and tablets and whatever else is next, and it’s been fun to jump into that era in our own way. I reckon it’s just gotten started.