Spill the beans already plus I need some backup..

[frontlinegeek]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

It is nice to have everything in one box, but if you can use sage for TV/Movie/general video file organization and ATV2 for all your online stuff then you'd stll be doing well to only have only 2 sources. Think of those people with 10 remotes because they have specific devices for everything they do.

Ya, that is just crazy. You really should have no more than 2 devices for content and whatever game consoles you want. If some of that doubles up and means you only have 2 (Like the PS3) then great.

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Extenders are another ball game, but I don't have any yet so I'll worry about that when I get one.

I was gun-shy on the HD200 and the HD300 but the costs of messing with HTPC upgrades and all of the associated patching and driver updates were driving me insane. I deal with systems, servers, databases and the like for a giant company so when I get home, I just want crap to work and not require loads of fiddling.

And on cost, even if you consider the price of both an HD300 and an ATV2, a good and proper HTPC costs at least as much if not more and for the average setup, does not offer much less than what an HTPC does. Of course I say that knowing that I have a 7.5 TB server with all our movies on it so I do not need a DVD or BD player at any of our TVs/watching locations.

Off Topic: Did anyone notice that you can now get a 3 TB drive for less than $130!!!! Seriously!!! Holy crap!!!

[wayner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Online content is not much of an attraction to me, yet. In canada we get screwed over big time by the ISPs, which are also the cable and satellite providers. I'd probably use netflix more, but I have a 95gig plan, and by only watching a couple of netflix movies (combined with all other regular internet use) we usually get a notice close to the end of the month that we are getting close to the limit

There are solutions to this, even here in Canada. I am watching more streaming as I am using a service called www.unblock-us.com to appear to be in the US to services like Netflix and Hulu. With PlayOn you can get these services on Sage extenders but it is not an ideal situation.

Solving the Internet cap issue was harder but I upped my internet service to Rogers Ultimate. It now costs me $100/month but I get 50Mbps down, 2Mbps up and 175 GB per month. Fast enough to watch many streams at once, the 2 Mbps upload speed really helps for Placeshifter and I don't think I will get through the 175 GB/month any time soon.