What the $399 Apple-TV SHOULD have been: Commercial-Free Television

These people are just marketing geniuses: Here they introduce another mediocre product that’s just a little bit better than their previous (non-upgradable) version of their mediocre product so everybody has to upgrade and Apple stock goes sky-high.
Here is what I did with $399 instead of getting this junk: Take a used PC (approx $100) and a $240 22″ LCD monitor, put in a $29 video card that connects to the monitor, to my projector and to the big-screen TV all at once, and installed Hauppauge WinTV PVR and GB-PVR. Full-featured DVR but here is the sweetest deal: Totally commercial-free Television ON ALL CHANNELS. How?
Install COMSKIP and COMCLEAN and the computer can AUTOMATICALLY remove commercials from all recorded programs. StarTrek or ANYTHING, WITHOUT commercials. Any movie on TV gets converted into commercial-free. It’s a whole new world of entertainment.
Install WMENCODER and it converts it to Windows Media, any program can go on the road into my 2003 Smartphone, no need to wait for an iPhone. Now THIS is what the AppleTV SHOULD have been.
If there’s interest let me know and I’ll post more detailed instructions on this Web site.

read more | digg story