Action Packed September

September was a pretty full month. House guests, homework, weddings, baseball games, etc. etc. I should talk about all that stuff but honestly.. I am just to tired and too much of it is a blur (only some of which is caused by alcohol).

I did finally get the device I have been waiting years for (literally). This means that my obstinate refusal to allow a Cox cable box into my home or pay service fees to use a device I already payed for *cough*Tivo*cough* is no longer preventing me from enjoying a full HD lineup. I am now using the Silicon Dust: HD Homerun Prime. It is a small device (about the size of my cable modem) that accepts a cable card (rented @ $2 a month instead of the $8-$20 for HD decoder or DVR) and decodes digital cable. This device plugs directly into my network and can by accessed by any computer on my network. With a Windows media extender or a Home theater PC already on every TV this is a very convenient solution. The device has 3 independent tuners so 1 computer can be recording a show while playing another show and I can have the extender playing a second show in a different room.
The only draw back is that thanks to the evils of DRM there is a small restriction in playing back recorded TV. The computer that records it is the only one that is authorized to play it.

I can see myself sliding down the rabbit whole of technical talk here so I am going to cut it short. The point is I now have high def TV available in all my rooms without having to add another box to each TV. Its not quite the integrated dream I have but it is pretty close and I am very happy to be able to watch Monday Night Football in full 1080A (that is 1080 awesome).