Using My Office PC as an HTPC (1 Viewer)

Perhaps this is a better category for this post: Below is a website I've developed that chronicles the ups and downs of using my office PC as an HTPC. It's not a really fancy setup, but it leverages streaming content, and I'm not paying for cable any longer. I'd love hear any feedback or suggestions. http://greenandtheblue.com/hometheater_pc/

I always wonder why more people aren't cutting the cable cord and going this route.

It's coming. The more people you talk to, and the more tools that are out there, the more we see it. Hell, now with more global sources allowing cheap IPTV (thank you, BBC/ITV, and others) it's becoming more of a thought.

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich

I always wonder why more people aren't cutting the cable cord and going this route.

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mattCR said:

It's coming.   The more people you talk to, and the more tools that are out there, the more we see it.   Hell, now with more global sources allowing cheap IPTV (thank you, BBC/ITV, and others) it's becoming more of a thought.

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Out of curiosity, how does one get BBC/ITV content outside of the UK? At one point I tried using proxy servers, but this interfered with USA-only content providers (like Netflix), and created related issues for me with secure online databases that flagged the foreign ip addresses. Is there a seamless and inexpensive work around?

Yeah, actually, there are two ways to do it:


The first is you can use a mediacenter plugin like SecondRunTV: http://www.secondrun.tv/


Setup your BBC/ITV.. I also setup several other channels, and then have them mapped to go through the proxy. That way, the proxy ONLY kicks in when you are watching content from those sources, saving you the headache above.


The other method is to use PlayOn: http://www.playon.tv/playon and a linking product, TubeCentric. http://tubecentric.tv/


The two together can also be made to parse, arrange, and download for viewing shows straight from ITV/BBC. It's good stuff. BBC has upgraded almost all of it's streams to 720P, basically.. and it looks decent. Not as good as US broadcast, but definitely a step up from SD. And, you can use schedulers and other tools to make sure you have to ready to watch when you want.


The world is getting much closer - even for those of us who do it "legit".

Interesting. How seamless do such options integrate into WMC?

Full interface linked right into the WMC on the top level.

Looking at sites now...cool. Thanks!

I use unotelly.com to stream BBC it uses DNS instead VPN system.