I know folks its hard to believe. How bad to you want to dump cable? Willing to spend a few bucks risk-free to see if this option will work for you? Why not? I post different ideas on how to dump cable and each of them costs something different. This option is the cheapest one I know except for buying an outside antenna and getting 22 channels.
Step 1: Buy a Roku box for less than $100
Step 2: Buy the entire Playon.tv package for $50 and install on a PC. This will give you basic cable, Hulu (standard definition) and more. You get 30 days free to see if you like it. Also make sure you use a newer PC. All PC processors (chips) have a rating. If you want to stream video over the internet without buffering or other transmission problems you want to make sure the processor in the PC can handle the video stream so you are not calling tech support alot. If you click on your Windows Start button then put your mouse over “Computer”. Then right click and click on “Properties”. The screen that pops up will tell you the chip that you have in the “Processor” section. Write down what you see there.
Then go to http://www.cpubenchmark.net and click on “search for your CPU model”. When the page pops up “DO NOT PERFORM A SEARCH”. Unless you type the exact character string to match thier list, nothing comes up. Look down the list and find your processor. The first column to the right is the “Passmark CPU Mark”. If your CPU is over 1,000 your streaming should be pretty solid. Keep in mind bandwidth, RAM and other stuff may impact your video quality. But if your CPU is over a 1000, give it a try. You get 30 days free with Playon.tv.
Happy viewing.
Bill, home media guy
Home Media Guy 