Taming the hydra

A while back, we acquired cable television and a DVR, a significant upgrade from Time Warner’s free cable that included a smattering of stations located ten channels above their official slots. Don’t ask.

The fire hose of cable, however, just doesn’t seem worth it – we’re hooked on Jon and Kate Plus 8, Adult Swim and Bravo reality TV, but everything else is a wash. I want a la carte television, and thankfully, the interwebs seemed poised to deliver. While only a fraction of shows currently broadcast online, that number is getting bigger all the time. It won’t be long before nearly every show appears as a download or a stream at the same time that it’s aired on television.

Of course, there’s a hitch. In order to cast a net over as much available content as possible, it’s necessary to drink from many different streams – iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Each has exclusive content, compelling features and some serious downsides. Searching for a solution that includes as many sources as possible has lead me to one conclusion – a PC running Windows. The other contenders? An Apple TV looks nifty, but that excludes Netflix and Amazon, which offer Windows-only viewers for now. MythTV looks like a great DVR replacement, but it’s inability to play any DRM’d content leaves out nearly all legal sources. Xbox Media Center strikes out for the same reasons.

Thus, it looks like I’ll be building another Windows box soon, but the looming project excites me, bringing the prospect of taming television within reach. This isn’t the simple way, but it should make for good TV.