I've finally done it.

The cable box is now obsolete in the Bennett household. No longer will we be shackled by increasing monthly rates, hundreds of channels we never watch and service interruptions with ridiculous wait times. Instead, we've now gone completely net-based with our video consumption, and the process is surprisingly simple. Think you're ready to make the plunge and drop your cable box? Keep reading.

The first step is to find your favorite shows online. I've actually done most of that step for you in our first article in the series. Check out the big list at the bottom of the post.

The second step is to figure out which way you're going to watch your media on the big screen. We put together a gigantic list of hardware choices too, so pick the one that suits you best. In our case, we're planning to use an "old" MacBook from late 2006 to do our bidding. If you're using another device like a Mac Mini, PC laptop, or Home Theater PC, your setup will vary but the principles will be similar.

Next, we started prototyping the software we were installing on our computer. For this installation, we're using a variety of the software we previously recommended, but our primary method of watching video will be Boxee. The folks at Boxee were courteous enough to hook Obsessable readers up with an alpha invite by simply heading to http://boxee.tv/obsessable, so props to them. Boxee's install process is extremely simple, and most users should be able to simply follow the on screen instructions to complete it. We also set up the Netflix player using Microsoft Silverlight and tested that on our machine to make sure all was well before moving the machine into the home theater.

While I was prototyping the software, I ran into some problems with my machine. Previously, this MacBook had been my trusty sidekick through thick and thin. As a result, the machine has way too much random software installed, and won't restart properly. Rather than risk more complicated problems once my lifeblood of Cable TV was taken away, I opted to wipe the machine and do a fresh install from my Leopard disc. The takeaway? Make sure your system is clean and can handle lots of restarts. (More on that later.)

Once I prototyped Boxee and other websites on my computer, I started prototyping the actual hardware setup. I plugged in all the external devices I was planning to use, including two external hard drives to a USB hub. Despite missing a few cables to connect everything on first run, I started testing the setup by hooking up my computer to an external monitor. I started up Boxee, but found out that Boxee only operates in full screen mode on the primary monitor. A quick trip to System Preferences -> Display -> Arrangement and I dragged the menubar to my external display, designating that as the primary display. Once I had the video setup squared away I plugged in my computer's audio output into my TV's audio input. I was expecting to test the output volume levels, but as soon as I plugged in my audio cable I found a bigger problem: a low pitched hum ruining my sound. This annoying audio defect is called a ground loop.

A ground loop is created when two signals have separate grounding points, but neither one actually hits a ground. The result of a ground loop is an annoying hum in audio, or some rolling bars in analog video. With my setup, the problem was with audio, but luckily I knew about a device called a ground loop isolator which would fix the problem.

A ground loop isolator is pretty simple, it has two RCA style connections going into a barrel with RCA connectors going out the other side. I simply plugged my audio out of my computer and into the ground loop isolator, and then into the TV and the buzz was gone. Some will tell you ground loop isolators will give you some dynamic range loss, but in my experience it's not enough to notice. Fortunately a ground loop isolator is cheap too. I found it for $20 at Circuit City, but they should be available at any store that has car audio supplies.

With the ground loop problem solved and my computer properly displaying video on my external monitor, it was time to go cable shopping.

Cables of choice

• HDMI cable (male to male)
• MiniDVI to HDMI
• Stereo minijack to RCA
• Ground Loop Isolator
• Optional: USB hub
• Optional: Stereo Mini audio limiter
• Optional: DVI to HDMI (we're trying this for the experiment)

I bought the cables from Monoprice, which has extremely fairly priced cables that are surprisingly high quality. I was very satisfied with the quality of the materials, including the USB hub. (No compensation for this endorsement, in case you're wondering.)

Once the cables arrived in the mail, I unpacked the box and started to hook the equipment up in a loose state. Rather than have to go to the back of my TV a bunch of times, I made it so it was simple for me to guess, test and revise, since that's the case with many hardware installs. I'm going to hook the laptop up to the TV by using a MiniDVI cable which converts to HDMI. If you're looking to replicate the setup and don't have a MiniDVI port, you can use the HDMI to DVI adapter (which I also purchased) and it works the same way.

I started up my Mac, the screen popped up and I was very excited to see my computer's output on the big screen. There was just one little problem though. I couldn't see the top menu bar, nor did the dock show completely. I was experiencing a default setting in OSX called "overscan."

Since we're doing a conversion for DVI -> HDMI, and the TV isn't expecting a computer signal, OS X tries to "overscan" onto the TV. Overscan takes the edges of the video and over shoots them over the edge. Alternatively, if I turn overscan off, I get an extra border of black around the computer image:

Overscan is a frustrating fact of life with OS X. Windows users with ATI or NVidia cards might be able to work some driver magic to fix the problem, however Mac users aren't so lucky. To fix the problem users likely need to overscan the display, and then reduce the resolution so it fits into the proper frame of the TV. How does one go about doing that? We used switchResX, an application that installs as a preference pane. The process takes some guess work to find out the resolution that works best for each TV. We found using our TV at 1920 x 1080 and then scaling the resolution down to 1820 X 1010 filled our screen. Timing the picture down to roughly 95% of the big resolution seems to do the trick on my TV. Each TV is going to be different (and some may require no special calibration at this step), and every time you put in a resolution in switchResX, you have to restart your computer. I'd recommend putting in 10 or so test resolutions ranging in size by one percent each, and then cycling them through your monitor to find the best result.

Once we fixed the overscan issue, there wasn't much left to do. Simply get the old cable box out of the way, set up our hard drives positioned behind our computer, plug in all the cables in our home component setup and push the TV back flush with the rest of our entertainment center.

On the downside of the setup, I'm a bit of a video snob, so I've noticed a few interlacing artifacts on things like menus, text and icons, but since I'm not looking to use this setup for its text display prowess, it'll work fine for me. If I had a higher quality TV, the picture would likely improve. Also, since the computer I've installed is a bit sluggish, watching videos at full screen 1080p resolution tends to lag the video a bit. Rather than suffer through laggy 1080p video, I again downsized the resolution to 1280 x 720 (1216 x 684 with the overscan fix) and video played back at a better rate.

The only thing I couldn't implement in my home setup is surround sound. I haven't yet purchased that perfect surround receiver to compliment my home theater experience, but luckily when I do, the MacBook has a dual purpose audio connector which can send either analog audio, like I'm using now, or optical audio, through a TOSLINK (also known as SPDIF) adapter. When I do get a home theater receiver, it'll be a simple cable upgrade to 5.1 surround sound out of my computer.

All in all, the install went as well as I could have anticipated. I'm very happy to bid my cable box farewell and get started on the road to the future. Are you going to follow our advice and get rid of your cable box? Did we miss anything that you'd have liked to see done? Sound off in the comments about our setup, and let us know your ideal setup.