How To Watch Streaming Media And Save On Your Cable Bill

For those of you who have a new 1080p HD TV you know how great High Definition movies and video look on it. Not to mention, an unreal gaming experience with some of the new gaming consoles. There are also endless options when it comes to cable TV viewing. Having a DVR with on demand ensures that you never have a moment without some form of entertainment. The only problem being  with all of the bells and whistles the monthly fees really begin to add up.

That is why I am going to outline how to have an amazing media experience while saving a cash on monthly bills. While at the same time, having an easy to use system that doesn’t require hours of configuration tasks. In the past there have been two issues with creating a system like this. The first issue is finding devices that are compatible with each other. Fortunately, the Digital Living Network Alliance was created. The DLNA is a standard used by device manufacturers that allows home entertainment devices to share content. Theoretically what these standards do is allow a DLNA compliant TV to communicate with a DLNA compliant  media device.

The good news is that these standards are beginning to work. It is becoming easier to connect computers, hard drives, media devices,  gaming consoles, and DLNA compliant TV’s. The second problem has been all of the different file formats. In the past, if you wanted to watch a video that was in a certain format, the device that you were watching it on either has to use that format or you need to transcode the file into an acceptable format. This process has been hit and miss.

Fortunately, the problem of transcoding has been addressed, plus new media devices and media software have the ability to take the software and convert it into a format that your media device will understand. The functionality of this transcoding technology is becoming automatic and it is actually working. Also the choices of different file formats and codecs are increasing, as well.

So let’s say that you have a new HD TV and you have a large collection of HD movies, photos and other files you would like to view on your. The easiest way to do this is to use a new HD Media Player device such as the popular Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player. Once you get your new player you can plug it into your TV. Then you have a few choices for getting media into the player. Keep in mind that this player has the software to convert, organize, and play your media but it doesn’t have storage capacity. So in order to store media you either need to hook an external USB hard drive to the player, or connect to your existing network.

I’ll go over a couple of different scenarios here. First off say that you have a new USB drive you are going to use to transfer and store your files. All you would have to do is plug your drive into your computer and transfer the files to the drive and then plug it into the WD HD Media Player. Then you can use the software and the remote with the WD HD Media Player to organize and play your files. You can also plug your new empty USB drive into the WD HD media player and connect to your computer network and download and organize the files you want on your new drive. The player also comes with a 2nd USB port so you can also experiment with, other transfer and storage options.

Let’s say that you have a lot of media on several different computers and you want to consolidate that media. You could purchase a Network Attached Storage device to hook to your network. A NAS is like a giant hard drive that plugs into your network. The advantage of having one of these is that you can store all of your media files on one central location and access them from all of your computers, and your WD HD Media Player. Another advantage is that the NAS plugs into the network via your router so you have the advantage of accessing all of these files without having to leave any computers on.

Let’s say that you are trying to conserve on space and cords so you don’t want an external USB drive connected to your WD HD Media Player and you don’t want any additional cords besides the HDMI cord you purchased to connect the media player to your TV. The solution is to get a wireless USB adapter. Then you can stream content from your NAS and also from You Tube and Flickr and other compatible streaming options.

This is a great solution and it is sleek and functional. The problem is you also don’t want to pay for monthly cable fees, besides your broadband Internet. But you still want to watch standard TV shows and old reruns. Plus, you have a membership to Netflix and you want to watch streaming movies so you don’t have to hassle with waiting for the mail.

What you will need is software that will give you access to Hulu and Netflix and whatever else is not built into the functionality of the WD Media Player. There are a few choices that will do this, one is tversity and the other one is PlayOn both are good choices but some reviewers have had better luck with PlayOn so that is the choice we are recommending.

One caveat is with the PlayOn software your Hulu programs won’t be in HD this is because of the computing power requirements for converting HD into other formats. There is a good chance that in the future this won’t be an issue. So with these solutions you can watch almost any show or movie you want without paying outrageous monthly fees. In fact without the monthly cable fees the hardware and software will pay for itself in a couple of months.

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