When I originally installed Media Center as part of my Entertainment system, the major question was – Will it be used enough to justify using all that space and energy? Seems like it is getting more and more involved in our daily lives. Our lives have become so busy that beside live games (NBA and College Football mainly), we hardly watch any show while its airing. We Tivo everything and watch it later at our convinience. But with most TV networks providing online digital copies of their shows, even our recorded shows have been minimized to regional language shows, and few shows that are not available online. But a lot of our watching has switched to on the Media Center PC. With Netflix’s online movie database increasing, seems like we can get away with not having a Cable connection at all.
However, the interesting part is that the TV networks and Internet providers seem to be moving in opposite directions. Having all this content online would mean that as more and more users start watching content online, we would be using more internet bandwidth. But the Internet providers has started to cap their download limits. If you want to have a bigger (or unlimited) download limit, which you would if you are watching streaming online content, you have to pay more to get something more than the regular Internet package. Hence the cost that you might have saved by moving away from cable or sattelite television, comes back.
So will have wait and see how things play out between the Internet providers and Cable companies.
