Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

Several companies announced this week upcoming releases of the second generation of media center Extenders. For $300, you can get an Extender that has a wireless Internet card and can play Divx files from your computer. While expensive, it is cheaper than an Xbox 360, especially if you need the wireless network connection.

Extenders make sense if you have a media center with four Digital Cable Tuners, which have also been recently announced but are only available through the custom install market. Currently, I pay $12.99 a month for my DVR receiver and DVR service through Cox cable. If I had two TVs with DVR receivers, I would pay almost $26 a month. Two Extenders would offer me the same functionality for only the rental price of 4 CableCards, which would cost just under $13 a month. I could save $12 a month by using Extenders or $144 a year. In two years, I pay for one Extender with that savings. Not too bad. The savings are even better if you have 2 Tivos and their monthly fees.

The real roadblock to Extenders is the cost of Media Centers with Digital Cable Tuners. To me, I am not interested in using Extenders unless I could watch HDTV through them. The custom install market looks to be the main consumer of these new Extenders, relegating this new hardware to the niche market. Hopefully that will change as media center computers fall in price.