I’m going to be a bed potato

V got me a Roku for Christmas and I love it! It’s hooked up to the TV in the bedroom so I predict 2012 will consist of more time spent in bed watching Roku channels. In addition to the free channels I installed (TED, Crackle, Comedy Time), we have a Netflix account and an Amazon Instant account so I have lots of content available to me!

As much as I love the Roku, I don’t think it’s a good fit for everyone. I can’t imagine that it would be as useful to someone who doesn’t have Netflix, Amazon and/or Hulu Plus. Roku does offer Crackle which has free movies but the selection is pretty slim.

If you do have a subscription to a streaming service, the Roku is great if you don’t have a spare computer that you can set up as an HTPC. Before buying the Roku, V tried to set up his old laptop as an HTPC but the video card just wasn’t good enough.

I hope Comcast doesn’t cap my bandwidth, I’m going to be streaming a lot more content from now now on!

Do we have too many computers?

The hard drive on my laptop failed last night. Luckily, I backed up all my data a couple weeks ago so I didn’t lose much, just several food photos and a vacation video which are all online anyway. Thank goodness for cloud computing and social media sharing!

Since Black Friday is just around the corner, I’ve decided to wait until then to buy a new hard drive. I’m in no rush because we realized that we have several computer alternatives on hand:

• V’s old laptop. It still works but V eschews it for a newer one.
• The desktop which we use as a home theater pc.
• Hooking up my laptop to an external hard drive and booting off that.
• My trusty iPad.

Three of the five computers in our house (if a tablet counts as a "computer")

Is it crazy or average to have this many computers? Are we overly reliant on computers, keeping pace with the digital revolution or hoarders?

Our HTPC

V and I spent some quality time at Fry’s this past weekend. I love Fry’s. It’s so much better than not so Best Buy.

We were looking for a TV capture card for our home theater PC (HTPC!) and we are a few steps closer to figuring out what exactly we need. There’s no guide to setting up an HTPC, or at least we haven’t found one, so we have to figure out a lot on our own.

I’m going to write about all the things we learn because I like to document our geekery.

Q: What is an HTPC?
A: It stands for home theater PC. It’s basically a PC-based home theater system. An HTPC is usually linked to a TV, that’s what makes up the “theater” part of the system.

One has the option to buy an HTPC but we’re DIYing ours because we’re on a budget and we like to tinker with computers.

What we already have:
a quiet PC – you don’t want a loud PC because you don’t want to hear the hum of the computer in the background
a TV with HDMI, S-video and VGA ports – you can set up an HTPC with any TV but the quality is better with digital connections. It’s also better to to have several port options so you don’t have to bother with converters.
wireless mouse – so you can control the PC from the couch, woo!

What we need:
a TV tuner/capture card – this allows you to record TV shows (similar to a DVR) and watch TV shows on your PC
a wireless keyboard – to go with the wireless keyboard. We’re actually looking for a keyboard with an integrated mouse or a wireless trackball so we don’t have to have a flat surface to use the mouse.
better speakers – I want better sound. Good speakers are kind of pricey so this might have to wait.