If you ask people if they watch TV or not, you generally get two responses. The vast majority of people will say “Yes, I watch TV. Of course.” Often followed by water cooler talk about the latest episode of whatever happens to be their favorite show.
Occasionally you will find people who say that they don’t watch TV. but if you ask a bit more carefully, they will admit that they do have a TV, it’s in the living room, and occasionally they will watch a news program, or something on cable, etc….
I’ll admit that I don’t really fit in either group. What I can say is that “I watch television programs that have been on TV or some cable channels, occasionally in near realtime.” I do not have a ‘TV.’ Well, I might have an old B/W 5″ portable burried in the garage some place, likewise for a color edition of the same sort of thing. Battery powered, etc. I don’t recall seeing it the last time I was rooting around in the garage cleaning things out, but I have a ways to go. I have to admit that I don’t think a portable manually tuned b/w or color TV that’s burried someplace in the garage quite qualifies as ‘having a TV.’ But that’s me.
What I don’t have is a 25″ or 52″ or so Color TV sitting in an entertainment center, or the like, in my living room. I subscribe to Cable TV, as the combined cost of the Cable Modem service, and the Cable TV is something like $30 more than the cost of the Cable Modem alone. Granted the Itemized bill suggests that Cable TV is about half of my bill, but if I were to drop the Cable TV service, my costs for Cable Modem would jump between $20 and $30. And as I say, I do enjoy some of the programming.
So how does all this work? I have a computer dedicated to capturing programs that I’m interested in. This requires a TV tuner card to capture analog TV or Cable, and alternatively other devices for capturing Digital TV. For that I’m using what is called an HD-HomeRunner. Two actually. One is attached to the Cable service with 2 tuners and I can capture unencrypted digital cable (which ism’t all that much, and I have not been using it for that for a while.) I have another that is attached to an antenna that I have setting on my window sill outside of my apartment. Odd as it may seem, each HDHomeRunner has an ethernet interface, and 2 digital tuners/receivers.
What I’ve had setup for the better part of a year has been a computer with 2 analog tuners built into it, and able to control 2 tuners on each of 2 HDHomeRunner receivers, including capturing from them.
About a week ago this computer effectively ‘went up in smoke.’ Actually the video card appears to have failed and taken out the motherboard with it. It also left a bunch of soot inside of the computer. Because it was an electrical fire, and appears to have centered on the power conductors of the pci-e interface for the video card, I’m afraid that the power supply for the computer is somewhat suspect at this time. Since the power supply is specific to the case, I figured it was probably time to get a new case (with power suply) and build a new system.
As I believe I mentioned back in June, I tend to run Linux on things. That is the base operating system for this box. My plan at this point is to transfer the hard drives from the old computer case, into the new computer case. Well, that was originally what I had in mind. It turns out the new case does not support as many drives as the old one did. So now I have to figure out how to attach the drives that don’t fit into the case. I think I will be visiting one of the local computer stores, and seeing if they have some reasonablly priced esata housings. If so, then things should work out OK. If not, I’ll figure something else out.
As I’m writing this, I think that 1 of the two video cards in the old computer is salvagable. It is possible that both are, however it is also possible that neither are. This system had 3 of these cards before I replaced the motherobard with one that only had 2 pci slots, so somewhere around here there is a spare card I can use. I have other tunner’s available as well, though I don’t know how well they will work in my setup.
I may be able to pull the memory, but I’m not really inclined to do much else with the hardware in the old computer. Later on I may try one of the motherboards that I pulled from another system along the way, but it’s not critical to get that today. And as I say, I’m not sure of the power supply. But that’s for later.
For now though, it’s pull things together to get my system back together, and running. I still need a couple of parts here and there. CPU cooler, and possibly a bit of extra memory, though I may also have that covered. We’ll see.
As to costs, it’s one of those things. I enjoy the experience of learning new things, as well as getting back to recording those shows I happen to want to watch, and watching them at my convienence. (Eureka just happens to be on at the same time as a meeting I am planning on being at this next week….)
For now though, I suppose I should go and get some sleep.
Updates to follow.
