Other Ways to Get Content Besides Cable
// June 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Computers, Software Reviews, TV Talk
Over the long weekend, I stumbled onto a useful little application that hit me at just the right time. Recently, we had a death in the Keefer electronics family — our living room TiVo HD is down and out. A replacement is crawling its way towards us via UPS Ground, but in the meantime, we’ve been reduced to watching live TV in standard definition in the living room. *shudder* Even before this high definition time-shifting tragedy, we’ve been exploring alternate ways to watch media on our TVs without cable TV. Ways we’ve come up with so far included:
1. Getting a Mini-Display Port to HDMI adapter for the wife’s MacBook (plus a mini jack to RCA for audio since until the newest MacBook, the DisplayPort was video only). This is the best way we’ve found to watch Hulu and other Web-based content on the big screen.
2. Setting up our PowerMac with 360Connect – a way to stream videos from the Mac to the
3. Netflix and its ability to stream to our TiVo HD (when it’s again functioning), Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii
4. Wii Transfer, which seems to function similarly to 360 Connect, though in my tests, the video quality was dropping frame rates, and you’re using the Wii’s Opera browser. I couldn’t figure out a way to hide the chrome either. This seems like a passable way to view photos and stream music, though I can’t recommend it for video (unless I’m doing something wrong)
I’d love other suggestions in the comments on ways to go. We don’t have a PC, so a lot of the Hulu stuff needs a MediaCenter type services to get it to appear on the 360 or Wii. Anyone have any FREE solutions to get hulu and other TV and movie content to the TiVo HD, Nintendo Wii and/or Xbox 360? Any suggestions and further discussion would be appreciated and welcome!
