[mythtv-users] Matrox Millennium G400 MAX

[mike at grounded.net]

> My main fear is that as more people
> discover Netflix streaming the ISPs will tighten up their bandwidth caps,
> trying to push other on-demand services that cost
> far more, and are often owned by the ISP itself (usually a cable company).

Brian, you have that totally correct. Comments like this always get my consumerism passionate side fired up :).

If you check out FCC complaints, you'll find lots of consumer reports of people getting short changed on their services. Or, service providers, especially Comcast, being caught for putting your voip packets on the slow side so they can show you how fast their own media services are.
Cable providers are scrambling and spending billions on infrastructure to get all of this converged media to you as their own services. 

Consumers are going to have to learn to keep a very close eye out, to learn how to identify when they are being throttled or certain packet types are being slowed down purposely so the provider can make their media services look much faster. If people understand these things, they will complain.

> If I really want HD quality, Netflix now has Blu-Rays (which,
> hypothetically of course, can be ripped).

Not hypothetically, you can, they're big but no different than ripping SD's. Of course you do need an HD player. Again, not worth saving them for long term anymore. 

It's funny, I used to store many TB's of movies and shows when there was no such thing as massive drives that exist today. I did that for a dual purpose. I wanted to get more experience dealing with big data, making sure it was never lost, backed up, etc etc, for other non media applications. 
My collection was ridiculous, I spent all kinds of time on ebay looking for LOT deals. One day, I noticed we're storing huge boxes of VHS tapes and of course, DVD's when we all happily got caught up in having to upgrade all our collections. 

I came to the conclusion that I was doing it for the sake of doing it, it didn't make any sense to have instant access to tons of junk I barely watched. Now it's even more ridiculous to save anything because of how badly every service provider out there is investing in wanting to give me VOD. Now I just save long enough to time shift, to watch it one more time if it was good enough too then gone.
 
> That's similar to my feelings, I just wondered how others were handling the
> "HD or SD" decision.
> It's only TV, nothing is worth many hours to make sure I don't "miss" it.

That is my wife's favorite saying, especially when she's watching me about to spend money on it again.

I had mentioned this in another thread but most recently, I realized I've given $12 thousand dollars to DirecTV for 10 years of TV and just floored myself. The realization was that I do it because I'm so used to having the TV on, always gotta have something in the background.
I took the plunge and turned off DTV which is why I want myth, to receive local channels. The local channels are really just to get some news, a few shows now and then, local weather info when things get ugly. 
I paid DTV for mostly channels I never cared for at all. 

On a side note, one weird thing we've found is that getting rid of DTV also put and end to our being sucked into the so called 'news' channels. More and more, we can see now how they affect people. People think they are well informed and they just don't get it, they are being FED all kinds of crap which in America at least, is hurting the hell out of this country by dividing it's people. People should be standing together on ALL issues right now, but instead, they argue, fight and disagree over things they THINK they know and nothing ever gets done. 

Anyhow.... :)