18 Jun 2012
A Kind of Inception
Here we have a picture of a kind of Inception. It’s my cable TV, playing through my computer and being displayed on my TV:
(That is the Disney channel, showing a Tron ad. My photograph-the-TV-with-my-phone skills are a bit subpar, I’m afraid.)
There was some trickiness involved, but I got it to work using something called HDHomeRun Prime. If you have cable TV and want to watch (and record) TV on your computer, then it works pretty well. I can now watch cable TV on any computer in my house.
As it turns out, I really don’t watch much TV. (I spend my evenings gaming, not TV watching.) There are only two shows that I really care about: Phineas and Ferb, and Mythbusters. I’ve got P&F set up to record – and this time it will record to my computer, and not to the Comcast DVR. When new episodes come out, I will have them.
My wife is pretty excited about this because our old Comcast DVR was in the living room, meaning she couldn’t watch anything on the DVR when she was in bed. But now, thanks to the magic of computers, she can watch DVR stuff on her laptop – and her laptop is very portable.
I have to say, the main reason I did this was just to see if I could. How well does it work? What are the problems? What are the limitations? The fun part, for me, was the technical exercise.