I'd like to help you with the process, if even just to experiment. My bet is that you're going to love it. We made the switch and have never looked back.

A Display.

You'll need a display with an input that your computer can use. I use the term “display” because it helps to think of your TV (plasma, LCD, etc.) simply as a monitor for the computer in the living room. Once you get accustomed to this setup, referring to it as “television” just won't make sense. There is no broadcasting going on here, or airwaves for that matter.

So how do you connect the display to the computer in the living room? Our display has HDMI^[1] and Component^[2] video inputs. Many late model displays also have a “PC” input – a standard VGA^[3] connection. You'll need a cable that connects your computer to the the input on your TV. We use an HDMI to DVI^[4] cable to make our connection. Leave a comment if you need help figuring out exactly what you need, though HDMI to DVI is pretty common.

Our Panasonic VIERA S1 Series 65″ Plasma, with a homemade PC running Windows 7 ultimate.

Choosing a computer for the living room will likely be the hardest part of the process. I've seen everything from an Apple Mac mini, to a dedicated MacBook. Some people just connect a laptop to the display when they want to watch internet based content. The computer we use is a custom built PC running Windows 7 Ultimate. This choice usually comes down to what you're willing to spend though. What's your budget? Do you have a PC sitting in the closet collecting dust because you switched to a Mac? Use that, it will likely do the trick.

Got Content?

Once you get everything connected, you'll want some great content to explore. Here are a few of our favorites. Don't forget to click the “full screen” icon available in most players.

Boxee: Boxee is an application that provides access to a variety of video (and audio) source on the internet. It's objective is to create a common interface to the sources, allowing people of all skill levels to enjoy it. There's also a social aspect with friends, sharing, and more (my screen name is msitarzewski. Price: FREE.

Hulu: Current TV shows from the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox) as well as a library of full length movies, and a really nice selection of older TV shows. Hulu also has a desktop application with a nice interface for exploring their content. Price: FREE.

Netflix: Netflix has a really nice library of “Watch Instantly” movies, from recent releases to a huge archive of older classics. We subscribe to the smallest package that has unlimited streaming ($9/mo). That price point also entitles you to one DVD through the mail at a time. The DVD by mail option is fantastic for current releases. Price: $9/mo and up.

Amazon VOD: Amazon VOD (Video On Demand) has a great selection of movies to rent (from $2.99 in most cases). You can watch them in the browser, or download them to your computer to watch later. Many newer Blu-ray players and TVs also have access to Amazon VOD rentals (and purchases). Price: $2.99 to $3.99 to rent standard definition movies. Purchase prices start at $5.

1. HDMI. 2. Component Video. 3. VGA. 4. HDMI to DVI

AppleTV is hands down the easiest way to get internet based video to your HDTV. It has outputs for any HDTV, and makes online viewing of TV shows and movies an absolute breeze. You don't need a computer to use it, but if you have one it also acts a lot like an iPod. You can sync your music and movies from your computer to the AppleTV giving you access to tens of thousands of songs with the click of a little white remote. CD changers are so ancient in comparison.

The AppleTV gives you a couple of options for watching movies. First, you can rent movies for between $.99 on sale and $3.99 (for an HD version of a new release). Once you start watching a rented movie, you'll have 24 hours to finish it, or it simply evaporates. If you don't start watching it right away, you'll have 30 days to start, then the same rules apply. The other option is to buy the movie outright, allowing you to watch it entirely on your own schedule. Purchasing movies costs between $4.99 (on sale) and $14.99, depending on the movie. Either way, the movie will sync to your computer giving you the option of watching it there or to move it to an iPod or an iPhone.

Television shows from many major networks are available for purchase through the AppleTV. They're $1.99 per episode, and aren't available for rent. You can buy entire seasons of shows through the iTunes store, just as you can on DVD. Many shows are also available as a subscription – they'll be downloaded automatically as soon as they're available – usually the day after they air on TV.

If that wasn't enough, Apple gives you access to the entire iTunes music store as well. You can buy songs and albums right from your TV – no more trips to the CD store or even to your computer. You can literally click and buy music. Since every song in the iTunes store is now DRM free (you can play it anywhere) there's no reason not to buy from Apple.

All in all, the AppleTV is an amazing device, whether or not you have a computer. If you're going to use it to watch movies and TV shows from the iTunes store, you'll want to have reasonably fast broadband internet access. AppleTV is $224 at Amazon.

The Web

Most popular shows on television are also available through the network's website. It's been a slow transition – just a couple of years ago, very few shows were available online legally making it pretty much impossible to enjoy. A few startups have popped up that make this process ever easier: Hulu for TV shows and a small library of movies, Boxee for movies and other internet based content, and Netflix for thousands of “watch it now” online movies. Other options include Amazon Video On Demand, Crackle, and of course the iTunes store.

There are really two options for getting these kinds of sources to your TV. The first is to simply connect a computer to your TV. Many HDTVs have the most basic connector – the VGA connector – and almost all newer HDTVs have Component and HDMI. Your video card will always support VGA, but may need an adaptor to connect to the other types. Once you've made this connection, watching TV from from website is as simple as going to the site, finding the show, and clicking the “full screen” button.

Finding a PC to connect to your TV can be a challenge. I built my own, but there are many options available to you if you'd prefer to just buy one. There's the Apple Mac Mini for starters, and there are a slew of Home Theater PCs too running Windows of some kind. If you'd like me to help you build one, let me know below and we can work on details and pricing.

Another way to get these shows to your computer is to buy a set top box that was developed for just this purpose. One such box is the Roku Digital Video Player – for just $99, this box connects to your broadband internet and your TV giving you access to Amazon On Demand and Netflix instantly. I've never used a Roku Digital Video Player, but I've never heard anything bad about it by those that have.

Live TV

Every Thursday for the past 5 years, my wife Heather and I have hosted a dinner party we've come to call Survivorhetti (thanks to David Cohen for the name). A group of friends come over for dinner, wine, and dessert. As a part of the evening we watch several TV programs depending on what's in season. Survivor is the focus, but other shows enter and leave the evening. Dollhouse, Eureka, Lost!, and Smallville have all been staples – lately we're trying out Big Bang Theory, and Castle.

Survivor is now the only show where we need some form of “live” TV capability – it airs on Thursdays at 7:00 PM, so we need to be able to record and watch it that night. The DVR (Digital Video Recorder) has made this a non-issue over the past 5 years, but without a cable or satellite DVR recording, live TV takes a little more effort. The solution I implemented turns a computer in to a TV, literally, allowing you to watch broadcast TV in a window.

Set up was simple. I bought the Elgato Systems EyeTV Hybrid TV Tuner Stick from ElGato – an HD TV tuner with great Mac based software for tuning and recording shows. There's a simple hack that allows it to run on a Windows based computer, but if you're only going to run on Windows, get a Windows specific device like the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q TV Tuner Stick. I bought a really nice antenna as well, the Terk HDTVa Indoor Amplified High-Definition Antenna that lets me tune in to the local HD TV signals.

Summary

As you can see, there are lots of options for watching video on your HDTV without having cable or satellite. There are literally tens of thousands of shows and movies out there. If you can let go of the perceived need for live TV, you can also let go of the $50 to $150 per month fee you're paying for TV. Really, save the money, get Netflix, and start enjoying TV the modern on demand way.

As always, if you have questions or thoughts, comment away. Let's talk.

Having Vista available in both environments has been very handy, it's saved gigabytes of hard drive space by not having to dedicate 40GB in disk space to Boot Camp, and another 20GB to a disk image. In order to get Windows 7 installed, I wanted to make the existing Vista partition in to a Parallels virtual hard disk.

It took a while, but I found the perfect solution. Parallels has an application called Parallels Transporter for Windows that helps you move a real Windows PC to a Parallels virtual hard disk. It's perfect for people that want to move to the Mac, but that aren't yet ready to let their Windows applications go completely.

But for us, this means we can trick Parallels in to moving a Boot Camp based hard drive partition to a Parallels virtual disk. Simply install and run Parallels Transporter for Windows in the running Boot Camp based virtual machine. Run the Mac version of Parallels Transporter – the windows virtual machine looks exactly like a Windows based computer, and does it's job just as well.

The result is a virtual hard disk with an exact copy of your Boot Camp disk.

Thoughts? Comments?

For notes and my blog posts, I use a simple program/web service combination called Evernote. It's a cross platform program with native apps for Mac, iPhone, Windows, and Windows Mobile. It is also accessible through the Evernote web site on any computer. All of these sources sync via Evernote.com, so I'm always up to date, everywhere. Think about that… your notes everywhere you are. The Mac version is my favorite because of the interface design. The built-in spell checking on the Mac is pretty amazing too. The Windows version is fine, but I'm not a fan of interface to the documents. It's like a long sheet with a strange cumbersome slider. Oh, be sure to check out the cool text recognition features of the iPhone app!

While Evernote is great for notes and blogs entries, most people don't use it. When I need to edit Word documents or send them to others, I use either Apple's iWork Pages or OpenOffice. Since all I typically do is read documents, the odd rendering problems I may encounter aren't that important. Compatibility in those applications has come a long, long way however. iWork '09 from Apple is $64.99 at Amazon. It includes Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheet), and Keynote (presentations). OpenOffice is free and can be downloaded from OpenOffice.org. There are Mac, Windows, and Linux versions, all available for free.

For work and when I need to collaborate on documents with others, Google Documents is simply amazing. It's 100% web based, and is great for allowing others to edit and view your docs. There is a revision history so you know who did what and when. It isn't as robust as a stand alone word processing program, but you should at least try it as it will serve the needs of a whole lot of you.

What do you use?

A new era of technological independence is upon us – either of the two major operating systems will do the job just fine. I left Linux out of of the equation for one reason, and one reason only. iPod/iPhone integration just isn't simple enough for *most* users. It just doesn't get better than iTunes for that, so blame Apple.

Some things may work better with one or the other. And I'm not talking about obvious specialty markets (gaming, platform specific application development, etc.), but the things that matter to the average user. The web, email, office applications, chat, media applications, etc.

Admittedly, I'm a power user, and have been primarily a Mac user since 1987. I've been using computers since 1983 beginning with the RadioShack MC10. I've seen a lot of changes in the computer industry (I actually learned a bit of Cobol, I have used punch cards LOL, and I'm only 40 years old and I think now is by far the coolest time in the history of technology.

So how am I going to test this theory? I'm prepared to switch full time to Windows Vista Home Premium – for at least 30 days.

I really want to help the average user figure out how to live with either operating system, equally. So if you're on the fence, in either direction, subscribe to the RSS feed

I'm using IntenseDebate for comments, so by all means sign up for an account and comment away. The comments are threaded.

Windows isn't quite a first class citizen with Apple's MobileMe (yet), but it is a lot closer than it was when the service was known as .Mac. With MobileMe on Windows you can sync your MobileMe Address book with the Windows Address Book, which is used by Outlook Express. If you tell Thunderbird to use Outlook Express' Address Book as a source for contacts (LDAP), any changes you make to those contacts get pushed back to MobileMe and subsequently to your iPhone and other devices (including your Macs.

There you have it. Sneaky, but it works. MobileMe meet Thunderbird.