First of all, I want to give a big thanks to the brains of this message board. Although I'm usually just a lurker, the posts I've read have helped me a ton. I'm just getting started in the whole home theater thing, and I really appreciate the people who help out here.
With your help (although you had no idea you were helping), I've managed to overcome the biggest obsticle to my home theater, my wife. She is deadset against the whole theater thing. She hates having to pay the cable bill and there was NO WAY I was going to talk her into my dream AV item, a TIVO. She just wouldn't go for the $400 plus $10 a month. I can't complain too much though. I get a new computer every year and I pay for DSL, Everquest, and my website, so I let her have her way with the TIVO.
So, I started lurking here and other sites, looking for a way to get free TIVO. The best solution I could find was to integrate my computer into my AV system. I headed down to BestBuy and picked up a ATI Radeon 7500TV on clearance for $130. It was simple to install and had all the features I wanted.
The 7500TV kinda mimics the features of a TIVO. It comes with a program guide with one touch recording. You can also pause live TV. The card is also pretty nice for games. Overall, I'm pleased with the card.
One of the benefits of having the "TIVO" on the computer is that I can record shows and them burn them on VCDs that will play in my DVD player. The ATI will record directly into VCD format, so it's pretty easy to use. It's a great way to get around the hurdle of limited disk space.
Now, this alone doesn't help much with the whole home theater thing, but the 7500TV has a TV-Out so here is where I started to get creative....
Since the 7500TV comes with a wireless remote that worked throughout my house, I thought it'd be nice if I could get the computer to output to every TV. This wasn't too hard, because of my cable setup.
There are two main cable lines that come into my house, an A and a B. In the cable box (outside, on the side of the house), both A and B go into two different splitters and two lines go to each TV.
I changed this setup by sending A directly to my computer. The signal is then outputed to the B that is in my office. At the cable box, the B line from my office is split into the As for the other TVs. The result is that the output of the computer can be seen by switching any TV to channel 69. This was accomplished using a modulator from Radio Shack. I also had to add a combiner and a coax signal enhancer because the cable went fuzzy on all the TVs after all this modification.
Here's a quick flowchart with what I did:
Now, as you can see, I had to do a lot of moding, so I came here for some advice and comments about this setup.
The quality of channel 69 is ok, and if you want the TIVO features, you have to switch the TV to channel 69 and use the tuner that is built into the computer. The computer connects to the modulator using RCA cables and all the TVs are connected with coax, so I'm sure there is something I can do here to improve the quality. The sound is connected from the computers soundcard to the modulator using RCA cables too.
The remote from the 7500TV works great around the house, but you can't use it to type, so I'd like to get a keyboard with at least a 30ft range. Any ideas?
This has a couple of advantages over TIVO...
1.) No monthly fee.
2.) Only about $200 for the setup if you already have a SECOND computer. It'd suck to have this on your main computer.
3.) Full access to your computer from anywhere in the house.
4.) Groovy visualizations on your TV while you listen to music. Using MP3s, you can have TONS of songs and get by without a CD Jukebox.
The next thing I'm going to work on is a family "concierge". I'm going to write a screensaver in Flash or VB that will cycle photos while playing MP3s. In between photos, the screensaver will insert calendars, to-do lists, local weather, and messages to the family. Since the TVs have a "wake-up" feature, I'll just set it to turn on in the morning automatically. I'm also going to make the screensaver updatable through the internet. That way I can send my wife notes while I'm at work. :)
Anyways, what do you guys think?
