It’s been a year since we dropped our Uverse tv subscription of $116/mo (3 tv’s, HD, Showtime) and put up an antennae for over the air (OTA) reception. Since I last wrote about this we’ve added an additional $70 pre-amp (to help with the picture when trees are fully leafed out and wet!). I’m very satisfied that we made the switch. There are a few things we miss, but there are streaming workarounds for most. The picture on network shows is phenomenal, better than cable. Sometimes when there are temperature inversions or other environmental issues, we’ll get pixelization, but not often on the most popular channels.

We’ve found that we do buy a few things from iTunes, such as the TNT series Falling Skies and The Closer. We’ve maybe spent $100 on content.

Adding things up, you have:

Antennae & amps $275

TiVo (w/wireless) $170

Year of TiVo service $240

Hulu+ (6 mos free w/TiVo) $48

iTunes video content $100 (tv shows)

Tour de France app for Jan’s iPad $15

That’s $848. Saved $1400. Net $552 savings, year one. Without equipment purchases, projected year 2 savings ~$950.

How much do you really like (and watch!) cable?

Comments: TiVo does Hulu streaming, and non-Prime Amazon, and Netflix.

Caveats: I already was paying for Netflix subscription, so that doesn’t count. We have Amazon Prime which pays for itself with shipping savings, so streaming via that doesn’t count. I have a Mac Mini hooked up as my media center PC for Amazon Prime streaming.

Downsides: no ESPN. ESPN3 streaming works, since we still have Uverse as our ISP.

I’ve been really happy with my mid/late-2011 model iMac which I’ve had for about 6 months. I got the entry-level version with stock 4GB of ram and a 2.5Ghz i5 CPU. However, the more I tried to run, the more I kept swapping, and I’d watch the free memory (in Activity Monitor) essentially go to zero, as I kept a number of apps up…two accounts logged in (mine and Jan’s) for running iDevice syncs to iTunes, a Linux VM on my profile, a couple of browsers (Chrome and Safari), Tweetdeck, Evernote, Mac Mail, etc. Run Word or Excel and it swaps in and out…try to run Xcode, and it takes a long time to load, and it worked better shutting down several apps.

I decided to price some RAM, and found that I could get 8GB (8.0GB PC3-10600 1333MHZ SO Kit) from Other World Computing for $47 including shipping. What’s not to like?! This iMac has 4 slots, so I just dropped in the two SODIMM’s, and voila, 12GB of RAM. Runs like a champ. Apps load and switch nearly instantly. As an old mainframe systems guy, I should have known it was memory-starved and not been surprised, but I was…reminds me of the time… 😉

Of course, I used to code in 360/370 Assembler, and you could address 4KB (that’s 4096 bytes to you young whippersnappers) from one base register…. 🙂

It’s a cool, damp January Sunday afternoon, so it’s a great time to spend a bit of time with the new ITunes U app, sampling course content. I’ve been wanting to learn iOS development, and have been working my way through a book on the topic. I decided on a whim to load the new app on my iPad, checked the top courses, and the #1 free course was a Stanford course from fall 2011 on iOS development, updated for iOS 5. I “subscribed” and took the first class. The production values are outstanding and the professor does a very nice job with the material. The slides are beautifully integrated with the video and illustrate the points well. This lecture already clarified several points that were confusing me.

The iTunes U app uses a bookshelf metaphor like iBooks. You can put courses or collections in your library, but I’m not really sure about the differentiation as there seems to be some overlap. However, the point is more about the tool, running on an iDevice, as a portal to a wealth of free material presented in a convenient format. This is likely to be huge in several niches…continuing adult education, K12 home schooling, tutoring/remedial learning in K12 and at the college level. It’s a continuing part of the evolution of academic pedagogy. Self-directed non-degree-seeking (for now), but surely an interesting development on the eLearning scene, and more bites at the heels of brick & mortar education, especially when combined with Apple’s new textbook publishing tool.

Time to get back to the next lecture on iOS development 😉

As we continue our quest to be happy with entertainment solutions without a monthly cable bill, I decided to add a Roku to the mix. We’ll use this at Emerald Isle, where we’ve got an Apple TV box hooked up to the set, but didn’t have a way to stream Amazon Prime (at home, I’ve got a Mac Mini that we use for Amazon). Apple TV offers a beautiful interface as well as access to the iTunes ecosystem, Netflix, and streaming radio. As a multiple-iPhone/iPad household, AirPlay is a great feature, as is PhotoStream. However, no Amazon Prime streaming, and given the relationship between Apple and Amazon, it’s unlikely that the Apple will sprout an Amazon streaming client. The Roku box fills that gap. I picked up a Roku XD for $69 with free shipping (had a $10 coupon) so I thought I’d give it a try. Given that Amazon’s streaming library is rapidly approaching Netflix, it may be that not too far down the road I can drop Netflix. I get my money’s worth from Amazon Prime on free shipping for some “subscribe & save” grocery items that we order regularly, and movies/TV are a bonus.

The Roku is another small black box, very similar to the Apple TV, but a little taller and narrower and lighter. It does have a little tab on it that lets you know it’s a Roku, as does the remote. This is really a very handy feature on a remote, since it’s often confusing to look at pile of remotes and sort them out 😉 . The Roku is a nice box, all kidding aside. It does exactly what it says it does, provide Netflix, Amazon, Hulu+ and many other video sources. I use Pandora, and it logged on just fine to my account. I like the weather service apps on the Roku. I’m hoping that Apple will open up app development on the Apple TV (since it runs iOS) but I’m not holding my breath. The thing, though, about the Roku, is that while it works well and the video quality is excellent, the user interface is just plain ugly. It looks like it was designed by 1st year CS student. Contrast that with the elegant interface of the Apple TV. Oh well…

What I’d really like is the flexibility of the Roku, with Apple’s user interface!

In mid-July, we decided that we’d had enough of paying $116/mo (nearly $1400 per year!) for TV that we hardly ever watched. We had ATT U-verse, and it was much better than Time Warner, IMHO for value for cost. However, we were paying for 3 U-verse boxes, HD tier, some movie channels, and watching very little other than network (CSI, NCIS, Hawaii-50) and local news/weather. We already had a Netflix subscription, Amazon Prime (for recurring grocery purchases), an Apple TV on one set, and a Mac Mini on our primary set, so we had options.

I put in an over-the-air antennae on the roof (a Channel Master 4228), a +8 db Channel Master powered splitter, and bought a d-to-a converter box for our oldest TV set (total about $200 for all this). With streaming movie/TV from Netfix, Amazon, Apple iTunes and Hulu, we had plenty of choices for on-demand programming. When we first did this, we knew that we could stream shows from TNT, which was one of the few cable channels we watched with any regularity. We knew that we were going to miss ESPN, but in keeping U-verse as our Internet ISP, ESPN3 was a viable option though we’d still miss some games. C’est la vie. I did decide to spring for a TiVo for $170 (including the wifi adapter) and $20/mo. to record network shows. Given that I can get about 45 channels OTA it makes a reasonable setup. The quality of digital OTA TV is actually better than cable, as there’s no compression…but just like satellite, it is affected by weather.

We did have a minor crisis last week when we discovered that TNT had gone behind a pay wall that was only accessible if you subscribe to a TV provider that carries the network. That knida defeats the utility of streaming access, I think. I would consider a streaming subscription for a la carte channel access. I’d pay $5/mo or so for a channel like TNT or ESPN. Then, I realized that I could buy episodes of “The Closer” and others from iTunes, and that while you pay $2 to $3 per episode, the iTunes TV library is extensive and an option when Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime wasn’t an option for a show.

The bottom line is that pay TV has just gotten so expensive that it makes sense to look at what you are spending and try to figure out a plan that works for you. The whole business model for broadcast and cable entertainment is in flux right now, and I don’t think that the cable providers are going to give up easily. Paying for what you watch and having some streaming subscriptions though, is likely to be a path chosen by many.

I’ve had my G+ account since July 1, and I think I’m figuring out enough to say something cogent. It’s not Facebook or Twitter; it does take a very different approach to sharing. While there are browser extensions that will take your Facebook or Twitter feeds and put them in your G+ stream, you should think of that as a view portal and not an integration. You do not want to cross-post everything from either service to G+. Circles are the power of G+, but it will take more thought from users, both in creating logical circles and in deciding what to post to which circle(s). A “friend” can be in multiple circles, so while the circles are not hierarchical or overlapping in their definition, they can act that way in practice. You can set up circles for project teams, neighbors, friends, hobbies, etc. You can have public content, but that is really more the realm of Twitter or Facebook (quasi-public). For example, you can have neighbors that are friends and neighbors that are not friends and you only post about neighborhood business to them. A very different model, but more demanding of the user.

The other thing that I think is a killer feature is the “hangout”. Like any content shared on G+, it can be targeted to specific circles, or to all of your circles, or made public. It’s a water cooler/break room/hallway/team room/living room/party, depending on how you use it. Audio, video, text chat, and sharing of YouTube media. For work, combine with the collaborative tools of Google Docs, and you’ve got a powerful toolset.

So, will it replace Facebook and Twitter for me? Maybe, but not yet. G+ suffers in the Metcalfe’s law comparison with tools that have hundreds of millions of users. However, I like the concept, and the more I use it, the more I think it could replace the social interactions of those platforms.

It already has one big advantage…no silly apps 😉

i don’t run much, but I still like to get out and run a bit, particularly on summer mornings. Years ago I ran 5 and 10K races, but that was as they say, “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”! I saw a blurb about an app that worked for running training, a so-called “couch to 5K” app, but it was too rigid, plus it really wasn’t what I wanted. I browsed the app store and found one that looked better, and splurged the $2.99 😉 from the $25 iTunes gift card Jason and Jenny gave me for my birthday. It’s called “Log Your Run” and I’m quite impressed. I’ve used it two days to jog thru the neighborhood and along the creek, stopping to throw sticks to Lessa along the way. I’d guessed this at 2 miles, and it measured 1.99 miles each day. The app lets you upload the results to its web site (logyourrun.com) and track your walks/runs. Lots of features & flexibility. It plots your run on a map and does an elevation profile. I am very impressed with the mapping accuracy and elevation profile accuracy. I’ve compared against a topo sheet and its spot on. The combination of GPS and accelerometers seem to work very well in the iPhone 4. I just drop the phone in my shorts and take off with the dog.

Makes me want to run more! That’s worth $2.99! Will take it to the mountains for hiking this weekend and see hoe that works. So far, very nice!