Goodbye, Comcast - or How I Learned to Love the Internet

Are you ready for the digital upgrade? According to Nielsen, 2.5 percent of the U.S. populace isn't. That works out to about 2.8 million people whose screens could go dark today. Statistics I see in reports and on the news tell me that "Younger, African American and Hispanic homes are disproportionately unready." They forgot to mention another demographic: stubborn nerds who are fed up with how Comcast handles cable's version of the analog-to-digital transition.

Like me. I'm a TVholic. I have a Media Center PC, with three digital tuners. I have a couple terabytes of storage for the stuff I record. I stream out shows to my Xbox 360 and PS3. I should be psyched for the digital upgrade, right?

Wrong.

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Are you ready for the digital upgrade? According to Nielsen, 2.5 percent of the U.S. populace isn't. That works out to about 2.8 million people whose screens could go dark today. Statistics I see in reports and on the news tell me that "Younger, African American and Hispanic homes are disproportionately unready." They forgot to mention another demographic: stubborn nerds who are fed up with how Comcast handles cable's version of the analog-to-digital transition.

Like me. I'm a TVholic. I have a Media Center PC, with three digital tuners. I have a couple terabytes of storage for the stuff I record. I stream out shows to my Xbox 360 and PS3. I should be psyched for the digital upgrade, right?

Wrong.

This is more of a personal story of how I'm fighting back against being forced to:

(a) Use a crummy cable-provided tuner box with an interface ripped off from a third-grader's crayon drawing of how a ReplayTV worked.

(b) Sift through "riveting" channels that cater to underwater basketweavers just so I can watch the three shows I want to see.

(c) Pay too much.

(d) All of the above.

And my hope is that I can help a couple of you fine folks out there in the process of sharing my mini-rant with you.

Confessions of a Media Center PC Owner

What I have in common with some 13 million (according to Microsoft) other people: Thus far we've avoided the cable-provided tuner boxes like the plague. TiVo and ReplayTV were good; but I found the Media Center interface clean and easy to organize, and I've been a fan of the additional features that have accumulated over the years. I'm talking everything from simply streaming TV to my Xbox and Internet TV to the recent addition of Netflix to the app. I took it for granted, too; my Costco-flavor HP desktop handled the job just fine. As the years went by, I added more digital tuners (one ATSC jack, one analog cable jack--I was thinking "ahead"). I just plugged the cables into the computer, and I was all set.

But with the cable digital upgrade, The Man is forcing me to use a box just to see the few channels I care about. My griping with editorial partner-in-crime Melissa Perenson inspired her to write "How the Unknown Digital TV Transition Could Screw You." It's a fantastic, helpful read. Check it out.

The short version of my story is this: Suddenly I need multiple cable boxes and IR blasters heaped on top of my PC. Or I can go out and buy a computer that supports CableCards, which I can then jam into my PC to descramble the extra channels. (I haven't bought a CableCard-capable PC, by the way. Instead I consulted Microsoft's Ben Reed, who makes these magical machines.) Apparently, it's a select group: ACE Computers, Aspen Media Products, Cannon PC, Exceptional Innovations (Life|ware), Fluid Digital, Inteset, Moneual, Niveus, S1Digital, and Velocity Micro. Okoro and Vidabox are not licensed directly from Microsoft, but rather have agreements with third parties. Will you see any of these brands in your local store? Probably not. I didn't.

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