After years of debating how to best configure our home audio visual system, we have finally moved ahead with a radical plan. We have disowned our only television. And yet, we are still watching cable programming on our computers (and even my cell phone) through the Slingbox.
In order to make this feasible, we needed a larger computer monitor for our family PC that sits in our office/family room. So we bought a 24" LCD panel, with 1920x1200 resolution (thats HD 1080p for you tv geeks out there). We use this monitor as a TV when we want to relax on the couch and watch cable programming through our new Slingbox.
It felt very liberating to finally ditch the energy hog television with it's great big picture tube. Although our new LCD panel is huge compared to most computer monitors, the screen is still quite small relative to most HD TVs. We have our home stereo connected to this PC as well, so the sound quality for iTunes, movies, YouTube, video games, home movies, and cable programming is great.
And we have much more space without that 36" TV and cabinet. Our home computer is now multi-purpose, and it has assumed it's rightful position as the focal point in the center of our family room.
The Slingbox made all of this possible. This little computer plugs directly in to my Comcast digital cable box, and also connects to my wireless router. After some easy configuration, we can view cable programming (and even use the crappy Comcast "on screen menus") through any PC or internet capable mobile phone. The picture quality is not perfect (especially when viewing over the Internet). Watching TV in the car will be interesting (for the passengers).
2/11 - Update: I returned our Slingbox over the weekend. The resolution and reliability were just not good enough. We couldn't watch On Demand movies on Comcast without major problems.
So we hooked up a new HD Comcast digital converter directly to our new Gateway 24" monitor. Comcast HD is broadcast in 1080i resolution, which almost takes full advantage of the 1080p resolution that the Gateway can handle. We can toggle back and forth between HD TV and computer input very easily.
The quantity of content provided by Comcast HD is surprisingly robust. Several local channels are available on HD, as well as most of the other channels we frequent. And the ultra slow response rate of the remote control is much improved when you upgrade to their HD converter. We are getting a $100 gift card from Best Buy for upgrading our cable through the Comcast representative at Best Buy. The additional cost for HD with Comcast is only $7 per month.
Another lesson I've learned is that you cannot watch iTunes movies (through their new rental system) if your PC has a processor speed under 2GHZ. Ours is 1.7GHZ and the picture was pretty jumpy when we rented and watched Superbad over the weekend.