And decided it wasn’t consistent with my goals for this project. I’m building this system around a PC, and it’s dual-use: The computer’s day job is to be my development server on which I build Web sites. So when I consider peripherals, I always have to justify it for business use.

In the case of a bluray player, that means an internal drive, and preferably a writer. Blu ray with 25 gigs is the only medium with even a prayer of backing up data in the volume I use (4 terabytes of storage on this server!).

Which is where I run into a problem. Media players for Windows have already paid the licensing fee to get a decryption key for bluray discs, but there are no players available for Linux. I won’t be able to watch any commercial blu rays on this machine.

For a while yet. I know you’re wondering where the “cracker” is, since it was the same problem on Linux which inspired somebody to break DVD encryption lo these many years ago. Seems that blu ray encryption is tougher, and so far there hasn’t been a practical method (just difficult proofs-of-concept to show that it least it can be done, in theory).

Sigh…it’s an old story, dumbshit corporations throwing artifical barriers in the way of people making legitimate use of recorded media for which they’ve paid the requested price. They always lose the fight eventually, why do they bother?

If you buy a blueray player with online capability you can join netflix and bypass your computer completely.

The BR player will be around 75-100 bucks but imo it would be worth it to get netflix.

Which is a real pisser, but it’s because they went with Microsoft’s “Silverlight” player technology, with Microsoft’s built-in copy protection, which only runs on Windows. I’m pretty sure Mac users get boned too. There’s this whole cult of people building Linux media centers that is mightily pissed at Netflix. Netflix could give a rat’s ass.

I went with Amazon’s service, which you get with a Prime membership, which is actually about free shipping with streaming video thrown in…but I’ll wag that dog. Yearly fee averages out to about $7/month. I don’t know if Netflix lets you purchase and download videos, but Amazon does, so in most cases I have a choice between online viewing of the lower-rez (480) streaming version for gratis as part of Prime, or I can pay $2 to download that rez or $3 to download the “HD” version (1280×720) of TV shows; and movie purchases are on a par with DVDs, approx $10. A select few items, most notably Torchwood, I can stream online at “HD”, though I can’t store a copy locally.

Some items on Amazon you have to pay for even with a membership, but I’ve found that I can usually find TV shows for free out there somewhere. Either hulu.com (or xfinity, which uses hulu), or I can go directly to a show’s Web site. I watch the Daily Show each night streamed direct from their Web site. It pays to comparison shop: The version on the Web site is higher quality than the one streamed through hulu/xfinity.

Wow, lots of info to impart, now that I’m talking about it. Should I start a thread on Geek?

http://www.youtube.com/user/watchtheguild

For 8 bucks you get a ton of streamed movies and TV series. I think it is a helluva deal, which means it probably won’t last.

I would do what you did if not for my family members who are totally not wired.

Instead I dropped cable for Dish. I saved some money and I am semi-pleased with the service.

My internet is still with comcast but I am getting stiffed on band width as discussed in another thread. My only reason to keep fighting with them is my long standing email address. The more I think about it the more I think it might be a good thing to change.

On top of the legendary NBC programming magic, I think they’re having serious cash problems. That may partially account for all the low-budget wrestling and table-rapping “reality” shows (gack, anybody who can combine the words “paranormal” and “reality” in a sentence is in touch with neither normal nor reality).

The only bright spot at Syffy continues to be their handful of original quasi-science-fiction series, like Eureka, Warehouse 13, and sometimes Sanctuary. But with that perverse NBC logic, they put them all on the same night–I think it’s now Monday, but it keeps moving–so that six days a week the channel’s not worth watching, while on the seventh you’re supposed to devote the entire night. Braindead.

You said you “had” to watch them on computer? I’m finding that my TV experience suddenly got a lot better when I dumped cable and got all my video from the Net. What’s not to like when you can watch the show on your schedule, and have an HD option if you want it?

Maybe I should start a thread on Geek about how to set up for “net TV”. The time has come to apply a swift kick to the cojones of your cable company. Payback’s a bitch, and payback for a half century of monopolisitic boot-in-the-face treatment is going to hurt like a sumbitch.

This character seems like Wesley grown up, too. At the end of the character’s run on ST, he’d turned bitter and disillusioned, and, if I recall right, joined up with a band of rebels and became a renegade. This Eureka character has the feel of the boy genius for whom things didn’t turn out so well after all. Considering that his premiere episode was titled “All the Rage”, good casting.

BTW, I purchased this season of Eureka from Amazon for a little under $3/episode for the “HD” version (720p). The day after each new episode airs, I get an email telling me $2.84′s been charged to my credit card for the new one (“Of Mites and Men” just arrived), and I can download it when I’m ready to watch. It’s quite a treat in HD, believe me; and I guess the fact that I’ll pay good money to watch Eureka tells you I’m a fan.

I cancelled cable TV a couple of weeks ago, and my TV experience has improved a lot. Everything you’ll ever want is available digitally on the Net, on your schedule.