Cancel your cable! Over the air HD DVR

If you have a computer in another room and want to free yourself from cable and don't want or can't have a computer in your living room this tutorial might be for you.  

• Use your iPhone or iPod touch as remote
• Stream HULU, Netflix, Youtube, Pandora to your living room 
• Record your favorite shows in HD one at time or whole seasons
• download tv guide info
• Keep your pc out of sight

Step 1 Materials and Tools

Materials:

1. Antenna *Bowtie, RadioShack- $ 3.99-? (*depending on your location you will have different needs for antennae see: www.antennaweb.org to get an idea)
2. 300ohm to 75ohm transformer (gold tipped), RadioShack- $4.99
3. 100ft cat6 550mhz utp cable, MonoPrice- $11.44
4. RJ-45 Network cable crimper, MonoPrice- $5.36
5. HDMI over Cat5e/ Cat6 extender wall plate, MonoPrice- $19.06
6. RJ-45 Modular plugs 100pack, MonoPrice- $8.77
7. 2- HDMI 1.3a 28AWG 1.5ft cable, MonoPrice- $6.02
8. KWorld ATSC USB 2.0 Tv Stick, NewEgg- $29.99
9. Ati Radeon Sapphire 4650 pci-e 2.0 x16 512mb, NewEgg- $54.99 (you can really use any graphics card that will output audio and video over hdmi)
10. PC with Core 2 Duo or better and pci-e 2.0 x16 graphics capabilites ~$350-$?
11. iPhone or iPod touch, Apple- $99
12. Hipporemote, Appstore- $4.99
13. HDTV with HDMI inputs- $350-$

 

Comments

[Computothought]

I have been doing the same thing with my antenna. http://www.instructables.com/id/Yet-another-dtv-antenna. Although I do not show it in the instructable I also use mythtv the same way. We get over 30 channels.

[mixamillion]

nice antenna you made there. I was going to go the mythtv route myself until I acquired a copy of win7.

[Computothought]

We have been Microsoft free for over 4 years. Best thing we ever did to no longer use MS. I have installed licensed w7 for friends who thought they needed it. To each his own.

[pmn9393]

What sucks is that you have to have win7 to use a cablecard tuner and replace your set top box with a pc.

[Computothought]

That is not completely true any more from what I understand. Besides if you live near a metropolitan area, there are more and more ota stations popping up. Even some of the big cable shows are migrating back to free tv slowly but surely.OTA is giving cable tv fits as people cancel their contracts. I first was able to get only about 30 stations. Now we get about 60. A chance to learn lots of new languages.

[ry25920]

Nice job on the instructions, definitely saving this to my hdd. Try to go into a little bit detail on the hippo remote and installation. Maybe some extra details on the WMC installation. +3.5 stars