Unless you chose today to get marooned on a deserted island, you’ve probably heard that Amazon has announced a series of new devices, including one called the Kindle Fire which has an iPad-style touchscreen and is powered by the Android operating system. On the content side, meanwhile, Amazon has also signed deals with some leading publishers to provide one-click access to their magazines and newspapers. But while it’s nice for media companies to have a strong competitor in the tablet market, dealing with Amazon puts them in the same boat they’re in with Apple: They provide the content, but the platform owner controls the relationship. And in some ways, Amazon might be worse.

The impetus for Amazon’s interest in new tablets is fairly obvious: Apple’s iPad has shown that there is a relatively huge and growing market of users interested in the convenience of a small form-factor mobile device for reading and playing games. So far, no one has come along that shows signs of playing a strong second fiddle to Apple in that market, so why not Amazon? The company has deep pockets — although not quite as deep as Apple’s — and it also has something that Apple doesn’t when it comes to the content side: an existing relationship with many users that’s based around subscribing to magazines, buying books, etc.

The need for the Kindle Fire was obvious: As soon as the first version of the iPad arrived, the Kindle looked more than a little antiquated, with its black-and-white screen, no touch interface, etc. That’s not to say there isn’t still a market for dedicated reading devices, for people who don’t like the distractions or the reflective screen of the iPad — and Amazon will no doubt continue to sell plenty of Kindles with touchscreens and other features added. But the sweet spot of the market is a device that can do many different things: stream video, stream audio, display magazines and newspapers and books in full color, and so on.

Amazon sees devices as a way to sell content

In some ways, Amazon and Apple are polar opposites, at least when it comes to the way they are approaching the tablet market. As my colleague Erica Ogg has pointed out, Apple’s main interest is in selling hardware, and it uses content as a way of doing that. It arguably had no real interest in becoming a music powerhouse, except that controlling access to those songs would give it a powerful lever with which to sell more iPods. Amazon, however, sees devices like the Kindle Fire as a way to sell more content, and that makes it simultaneously more appealing as a partner for media companies and at the same time a potentially more dangerous one as well.

The benefit for content publishers and media companies like Conde Nast and News Corp. is more or less the same as it is with Apple: They get access to the users who choose that device as a way to consume media, and Amazon handles the logistics of the relationship — the billing, the processing, and to a certain extent the marketing and promotions as well. They also get to put their content on a device that (in some cases, at least) seems to make users more likely to pay for things, which is something media companies have been wrestling with virtually since the Internet was invented — although they have to give the platform owner 30 percent of the proceeds, of course.

But the downsides of this relationship are also a mirror image of the relationship many media outlets have with Apple: The platform owner is in the driver’s seat, both in terms of what apps are allowed or not allowed, and also what information about the end user or subscriber is provided to the content creator — an issue that was a sticking point for many when Apple started trying to sign up publishers for the iPad. In the end, the platform owner is the gatekeeper of a media company’s relationship with its customers, which is the same kind of tradeoff media companies make by creating Facebook apps.

Amazon likes to compete with content partners

At least in Apple’s case, however, the hardware maker appears to have no real interest in becoming a media or content producer, since all it wants is content that makes people want more devices. In theory at least, it doesn’t particularly care where that content comes from, as long as it gets its 30 percent. Amazon is in a different boat; it has already indicated it’s happy to compete with its former publishing partners when it comes to books (its core business) by pressuring them to accept lower prices and also by signing up authors like Tim Ferriss — in effect, becoming a publisher.

Is Amazon suddenly going to get into the magazine business or the newspaper business? No. But its Kindle Singles program is appealing to more and more authors who are using that avenue as an alternative to both publishing traditional books and to magazine articles or newspaper features. Some newspapers and other publications have been using e-books and the Kindle as a tool to extend the life of their content, and that is smart — but Amazon has a clear interest in that business as well.

There’s no question that working with Amazon and a new platform like the Kindle Fire makes a lot of sense for publishers and media companies — it’s a win-win for both sides. And so long as Amazon’s interests align with those of its media partners, then everything should go swimmingly. But what about when they diverge?

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Umberto Salvagnin

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• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
• The state of the e-book lending market: Business models and challenges
• As E-book Sales Grow, So Does Disintermediation

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Joel and I were so angry at each other in this picture that Cat Schwartz literally had to keep us apart.

I don’t usually want to bring people’s personal lives into focus here on CG. After all, we’re dedicated to, as Joel himself always pointed out, self-deprecation and dick jokes. However, since Joel is my mentor and friend I wanted to point you guys to a great interview with him on DadWagon where he talks about abuse at the hands of his step-father, Glen.

Joel wrote his piece [Warning: The first line is a doozy] last week and it spread rather rapidly among a certain group of people. Joel, the former editor of Gizmodo and Boing Boing Gadgets, is brave and both pieces are definitely worth reading – the interview for its reasoned stance and the actual memoir for its brutal honestly.

His level-headed interview with Matt at DadWagon is even more interesting in that he explores many of the emotional barriers that we tech geeks – and techie dads – rarely think about, namely the ways our relationships effect the ones we love. This is not to say we’re all in Joel’s situation or that we could even imagine the impetus for his step-father’s actions, but technology gives us a shield and an excuse. Joel, in this case, refused that respite.

He’s still the best tech writer I know, but he’s now also the best writer I know.

Idling in the CrunchGear chatroom the other day, John says to me, that’s John Biggs, he says, “Why don’t you interview that guy from Toothpaste for Dinner?” I says to John “Why?” and John says “He seems like a nice guy.” Who am I to argue with John? Plus, the guy from Toothpaste for Dinner lives in Columbus, which is where I live, so I sent the guy an email. We had a little back and forth, and he introduced me to his wife, Natalie Dee, so I interviewed her, too. They are, in fact, nice people, and I really enjoyed interviewing them. I hope you enjoy reading my interview.

ME: Drew, you appear to be a man of many talents: you have a witty comic, you make music and music videos, you Tweet, make and sell merchandise… What was the impetus? Where did it all start?

DREW: I’ve been writing for fun as far back as I can remember. I set up my first website in 1996 while in high school, and in college, 1998 or so, I started putting short stories online. Later, I started posting little drawings, and eventually it all came together into Toothpaste For Dinner in 2002.

Natalie set her website up in 2002 as well, and we’ve been able to slowly build traffic ever since then. We’re hooked up with the biggest screenprinter in Ohio right now, but when we first started selling t-shirts, we had them hand-made by this basement guy out on the east coast. One time he printed a half-case of black shirts on navy blue because it was so dark in the basement he couldn’t tell they were navy blue. Needless to say, making t-shirts, or merchandise in general, is as much of a trial-and-error process as making an entertainment website.

ME: Is Toothpaste for dinner all you, or does Natalie help? What’s the dividing line on your collaborations?

DREW: Toothpaste For dinner is all me, and Natalie Dee is all Natalie. We’ve both made comics for marriedtothesea.com. I don’t think there’s anything where we’re both sitting in front of the same computer like kids doing a group project, but we do bounce ideas off each other.

NATALIE: Drew’s projects are 100% his projects. My projects are 100% mine. It’s not so much an “intentional bifurcation” as it is two separate people with their own shit going on. Drew had comics online similar to the Toothpaste ones online before we even met, and likewise, I had been drawing comics and making zines for years before I had any kind of website. Our respective artistic projects were something we had in common before we started dating, not something we just decided together that we would do. I think that the Married to the Sea comics I made created a grey area for people, and that one project we both had creative input in confused people over who did what.

There is no possessiveness over turf or whatever, because I have no interest in making Drew’s comics, and I don’t think he has any interest in doing mine. There is an exchange of ideas that happens — if I come up with an idea that I think is funny, but it doesn’t really fit the tone of my site, I will offer it to Drew, and vice versa. We help each other with non-comic related work, like Drew doing the programming on my site, but when it comes to making comics or videos or whatever, it’s one person’s creative idea, and one person working on it.

ME: So … is this a full-time gig for the both of you, or do you have day jobs?

NATALIE: This is our main gig. Drew has been doing his sites full-time since 2003, and I have been doing mine since 2005.

ME: Do you have a self-imposed schedule, or do you just post stuff when you feel like it? If you have a queue of work that is scheduled for publication, how long is it?

NATALIE: All of the sites update every day except Superpoop, which updates Monday through Friday. We keep a pretty decent backlog of comics waiting to go up, usually 4-6 weeks worth. Sometimes we have more, though, like when we had a kid last year. I knew I was going to be out of sorts for a bit, so I built up an extra backlog so I was able to take a nice hunk of time off, but my site still updated. It ended up working out for the best, because I got sick a month or two before my due date and was hospitalized for awhile, then the kid was born prematurely. Through all that, I didn’t miss a single update.

The tone of our sites might be irreverent, but we take our work deadly seriously because we are professionals. If people like my stuff enough that I get to do this full-time for a living, then I would be a dumbass to not take it seriously. My comic updates every day, because that is the expectation. I don’t like to involve readers in my personal life, so I don’t let my personal life interrupt the schedule of my site. I wouldn’t be able to not show up a few times a week at a regular job and still expect to get paid, and I don’t do the same on my site.

ME: Do you each act as muse for the other, or are your works mostly self-inspired?

NATALIE: I think drew and I both go about making comics in different ways, and most of the inspiration we draw from each other is just when one of us comes up with something that would work a lot better on the other’s site, or would better match the tone of the other’s site. When I think of an idea for a comic that is political or that I think Drew’s readers would appreciate more, i suggest he take the idea. Likewise, if he comes up with an idea that would be more illustration-based, or that my readers would appreciate more, then he offers it to me. If drew started inspiring my comics, i would be worried because my comics are usually inspired by pretty dark thoughts or ideas, and that wouldn’t bode well for our marriage.

DREW: I ask Natalie about a lot of the Tweets I write, because you can’t really delete them, and if something occurs to you, it’s really easy to just type it into Twitter and hit the button. There’s basically nothing that grosses me out so I like to make sure that 13,000 people aren’t going to simultaneously puke when their phone beeps and they look down and it’s something sick.

ME: Is that the only kind of self-censoring you do? Do you generally keep your audience in mind when you Tweet, or do you mostly just Tweet for your own amusement, and the fact that others enjoy it is a convenient byproduct?

DREW: Well, the point of what we do is to communicate with people, so if I think of something that’s too terrible to write or draw, I won’t make a comic of it either. It’s just that Twitter is so immediate that if you type it in as soon as you get the idea, you can hit “submit” before you realize that it’s maybe kind of gross or insensitive. It’s also pretty easy to post lame jokes on Twitter, as anyone who has used Twitter for any length of time can verify.

It’s easier to throw out comics that don’t work because we make them weeks ahead of time, and go through the pile every month to pick out which ones to post, and that’s a good way to reconsider the ones that are too gross, or just not funny.

ME: You don’t (appear to) allow comments on your comics or your blog. How do you engage with your audience? How do you know you’re on the right track, or do you not care?

See, I had this whole line of questions about how you stay witty and up-beat in light of John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. It’s something we deal with all the time at CrunchGear: we post something reasonably interesting or informative, and the comments can get overrun by fuckwads. If you’re not allowing comments, you neatly sidestep that problem. What other hidden benefits are there from not permitting comments? Are there any drawbacks?

DREW: I totally appreciate feedback. We publish our email addresses, and people can Twitter at us or post on our Facebook fan pages. Having people leave comments directly on the sites just seems counterproductive. Anyone who wants to write about our work is welcome to embed our comics into their blog and talk about them, or link to them from Twitter/Facebook and
post their opinion, etc. But nobody’s going to put one of my comics on their own blog and write “First” underneath it.

The idea behind comments is that you learn what your readers think of your work. A more effective way for us to measure this is to see what people are linking to on Twitter, which images get passed around blogs, what shows up on Digg/Reddit, and so on. I have no doubt that a lot of our readers are funny and write well, but like you mentioned, these people get chased out when the signal-to-noise ratio drops.

NATALIE: There’s never a space under paintings in a gallery where someone writes their opinion. When you get to the end of a book, you don’t have to see what everyone else thought of it.

ME: As communication and networking gets easier and easier online (Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc), I think your point makes a lot of sense: you don’t need to provide the mechanism for interaction with people who like your work. They can find one another easy enough now.

But that wasn’t always the case. Twitter and Facebook are relatively new phenomena, and it’s only in the last couple years that setting up a blog became sufficiently easy for laypeople. To extend on your gallery metaphor, people at the gallery could discuss a piece together, and potentially engage the creator of the work at the gallery. Has the nature of your fanbase changed at all in the last couple years? Did (or do) you want to encourage your fans to interact with one another as much they might interact with yourself?

NATALIE: I think my fanbase has remained pretty consistant, obviously there has been immense growth in the number of readers, but the demographics of my readers has remained essentially the same. I would want to encourage my readers to engage each other MORE than they try in interact with me. I think they would get more out of interacting with each other, they could discuss what they like and don’t and bond with each other or whatever people do in fan groups. Frankly, I prefer to keep my interactions with readers to a minimum, because I think that when writers or artists get too involved in what their fans think about what they’ve done or what they think they should do, it spoils the project. It becomes less about the artist expressing themselves, and more about them trying to do backbends to make all their readers happy and make art that is dictated by the reader. I think an artist should be able to trust their own instincts and realize that sticking to their original vision will work better at attracting more fans. I mean, that’s how you got your original fans to begin with, and if your fans were so great at making comics, they would be doing just that instead of trying to be the ghost writer for yours. I don’t know ANYTHING about the people who write to me to tell me what they want me to do, so i can’t put too much credence in what they a demanding I do, and usually their ideas make me cringe.

ME: Looking at several other creative properties online, some very much strive to cultivate a community around the works. I guess the fundamental question I’m asking is: do you create for your own satisfaction, or do you create because you want others to enjoy it?

NATALIE: I create what i want to create, and there is no other option for me. I don’t do spec work unless someone is paying me directly for it. By staying true to what i want from my comics, my original idea is not diluted by what other people (who, incidentally, don’t have the insight into what *i* am working towards) want my comic to be. My comic is what it is, and it attracts people who are happy with it the way it is. If they want to read a comic by someone who will jump through hoops making comics about in-jokes they have with their comic buds, and put up polls and ask their readers if it is OK every time they need to take a shit, then they can pick from about a million other webcomics. That is not what is happening on my site, and i think my readers understand that and appreciate my comics as something that isn’t created by committee.

DREW: Nataliedee.com is, the last time I checked, the 5th-most-popular online comic. (Our other comics are less popular, Toothpaste For Dinner is somewhere in the top-20 and the others below that.) We’re not driving traffic in by hosting forums on the site, so that’s a pretty good clip, and I think it underscores Natalie’s point that our work stands on its own.

ME: If you weren’t creating for the web, do you think you’d still be doing this? That is, when the zombie apocalypse comes and the Interent goes away, will you still be creating stuff? How will you distribute it?

NATALIE: We were both creating art and comics and writing before anyone had the internet, so i think it is safe to assume that if there were no internet we would still do artistic projects, only distribute them in the same ways we did prior to having access to the web. If there was an apocalypse, i hope i would be among the dead, because watching the destruction on civilization and humanity, and then having to either wait to die alone or rebuild civilization myself would be a bummer, and i probably wouldn’t make comics as i would have no audience.

ME: Natalie: you said that if you couldn’t use the Internet, you’d still create. Do you think it would still be economically feasible for you to do so as a full-time gig, or would the costs of physical production and distribution change things?

NATALIE: I would still make stuff, but if the internet wasn’t around, I would probably work doing graphics work for a company rather than making my art as my main gig. I don’t necessarily think that everyone who makes art is 100% entitled to making a living making art that is completely self-serving like mine is. I don’t think that i am entitled to it, which is why I take it seriously and work as hard as I can, so I can take advantage of an opportunity that most people don’t have. I like creating stuff, and it is not necessary that I be the one who dictates what I make, I was perfectly happy doing design for other people, when I worked for graphics places and print shops prior to all this.

I think that businesses such as mine and Drew’s are a unique beast that exists on the internet alone. The comics are what we do, but we give those to our readers for free. We would never be able to have the reach, or be able to give our work to anyone who was interested in viewing it if the situation was different. By working on the internet, we can cast the net wide in terms of the people we bring in, because of the medium as well as us offering entertainment for free. We bring in so many people, and then a small percentage purchase merchandise, which is relatively inexpensive to manufacture and distribute in comparison to distributing daily content for free by traditional means. Perhaps I wasn’t totally clear when you asked before if I still would make stuff if there wasn’t an internet– of course I would, that’s what I do, but I don’t get my satisfaction from people looking at what I’ve made, I get my satisfaction from making what I want. So, yes, I would make stuff, but it is hard to say if anyone would see what I made, because when you are forced to distribute through traditional means you have to make a lot of concessions so none of your channels of distribution are interrupted due to conflicts of interest. I am more interested in making what I want, and potentially having nobody see it, than I am in capitulating for some publishing house or syndicate and making a name for myself making something that is cack.

ME: The Internet makes all markets local, in many senses. Specifically, it allows people to self-select what content they consume, which is great for unique content like yours. If you had to distribute without the Internet, how might that affect your audience? I’m thinking of other unique content, like xkcd.com, for example: the audience that appreciates that kind of humor is way too specific to allow xkcd to get distribution in most print publications (or at least newspapers). But the Internet makes it trivially easy for xkcd to reach people who appreciate it. I imagine the Internet has the same advantages for you. Would you change your work at all, or would you be willing to live with a smaller audience if the Internet went away tomorrow?

NATALIE: I think our sites are anything BUT local, and I believe the main benefit of the internet is that you can go from zero to global immediately. We get traffic from every country with internet access, and have shipped merchandise to every country with mail delivery. On the internet, you have a chance to showcase your work to absolutely everyone, all at once. In more traditional distribution models, you have to work from a local level, to a regional level, to a national level, and beyond. Every level is punctuated by some distribution point that doesn’t particularly care about what you are doing. On the internet, you can offer your unadulterated vision to everybody everywhere, without the input of people who are only concerned about numbers and cutting you out of your hard-earned profits. So, where someone using traditional means can reach 30 million people, they might only be making 1/4 of what i make with only a million readers, because everybody has their fingers stuck in traditional media’s pie. I am the only one who makes any money off my work, aside from the people we employ to manufacture goods and fulfill orders. I am not paying anyone 90% of my money to tell me I can’t do what I want.

The reason for my comics has never been to cater to a specific audience. I make comics every day with hundreds of thousands of readers and I made my comics every day when I had a thousand readers. I don’t pander to my audience, because it makes me hate my job, and I think it insults the intelligence of my readers, so, no, I wouldn’t change my comic to attract readers or have a larger audience. If i was unable to publish online, I would probably not pursue traditional publishing. All this talk of internet vs. other print options always sounds like an inferiority complex on the part of internet folks. Traditional media is shaking in its boots thinking about what we can do online that they could never compete with. The internet has dealt damaging blows to newspapers, book publishers, news outlets, retail establishments, and has changed the way we do almost everything. I
think that talking about the internet disappearing is about as fanciful as talking about what would happen if there were no radios, if not more so since the internet has changed things more than the radio or any other tech development ever has. We’re not going back. If some hell-pony galloped to Server Beach and laid waste to the entire internet, then oh well, I guess. I would still make art, but I would probably not make it as widely available because I hate dealing with people, and talking to them.

ME: What one thing do you wish people could better understand about your work or your process? For example, I’d like CrunchGear readers to know that I don’t always get to pick the stories about which I write. Most of them are assigned to me. Most readers don’t understand our process, so they feel no compunction against calling me an idiot or a poor journalist when I’m writing about something I’ve only just learned about. Of course, I’m sure some of them would continue to insult me even if they did know this. What are the frustrating aspects of your work?

NATALIE: I wish people more people would notice how much work i actually put into my comics. The overall style is childlike, but a lot of the comics are very detailed and take me a long time. I recently drew a nesting doll that took 2 or 3 days of sketching and planning and drawing. A lot of time, when people talk about my stuff, they are like OH SHE IS SO RANDOM WITH HER MS PAINT DRAWINGS, but nothing on my site is random, nothing is made on MS paint, and a lot of it took a lot of work. It is kind of insulting to work as hard as we do, then have people imply that it is just word salad because they don’t get what’s going on. It can be appreciated on the superficial layer, but also has more to it. If you think about what i present, you will see that most of my site is not about hotdogs or whatever, and is really just me holding a mirror up to society, and showing how disappointing it really is. That’s where my comics come from a lot of the time, and i think people’s expectations of what a comic is supposed to be stops them from reading more into what i’m doing.

Aside from that, i just wish people would be able to appreciate my work, and drew’s work on it’s own merit, instead of having to frame everything in our personal relationship. When drew has a new album, i don’t think people should want to interview me, because i had nothing to do with it. Likewise, i don’t think drew has any more insight into my thought processes as any of my other readers, because i make my comics and write alone, without his input. I realize it is a point of interest for people, but the way our sites are linked up, and our stores are linked up, is just a convenience thing since we file taxes together, not a suggestion that none of the sites stand alone on their own strengths.

DREW: Neither of us are programmers in any capacity. I can poke my way around a PHP file, but that’s about it. We have a part-time developer who codes new features for the site and fixes things when they break, but we don’t have the budget or time to jump into every new format of delivering comics. I appreciate the sentiment, which at its heart is just people wanting to look at our comics (albeit in a very specific way) but it’s impossible for us to code new platform-specific applications every few months. Thankfully, almost every new computer or phone coming out now has a web browser, which means that if people can read any other website, they can continue to read ours.

ME: What do you do to relax?

DREW: I like to cook, hang out with my daughter, make music… pretty regular stuff. I do not relax by doing yardwork. My neighborhood is all about yardwork. I’m allergic to everything so yardwork is always me out in the yard, covered in poison-oak welts, wearing a dust-mask and trying to breathe. There’s actually a picture of this exact thing somewhere. I won’t include it out of self-respect.

NATALIE: Hahaha i work. I spend most of my time taking care of the kid, so my comic-making time is the most pure, uninterrupted chill-out time i get.

ME: What are your favorite online diversions? What websites do you frequent?

NATALIE: I just read jezebel, and talk to my friends on facebook. I am not really the cutting-edge of web-surfing.

DREW: I mostly just read the news and flip thru image aggregators / synthesizer websites. Nothing too unusual. Once you get through the actual news it’s a long slog through Top Ten Ways Ninjas Are Better Than Pirates.

ME: Who is cooler, Macguyver or Thomas Magnum?

NATALIE: Francis Bacon

DREW: Hopeton Brown

ME: Are you each a Mac or a PC?

NATALIE: Straight Macs. I never even had a computer of my own until 2002 or 2003, and that one and every one since has been a Mac, and the only computers I used in school and doing graphics/design work were Macs. I am not computery and can’t program or anything, and PCs are just terrible. I get on one and I feel like an 80 year old woman, or like I am trying to find a place to enter type on the menu at McDonalds or something.

DREW: My dad brought home an Apple II and showed me BASIC and LOGO in 1983, and I started calling BBSes in 1989. It’s been Apples & Macs from then to now. At some point they changed the apple key to a command key.

I only watch a handful of the 200+ DirecTV channels I pay for. To see whether I could survive without the pricey service, I simply went without it. I soon wondered why we all don’t just turn off traditional TV.

As illustrated in a few of our surveys, many of you have already made the jump, catching fresh TV via broadband instead of actual channels or even DVR. But the vast majority of us are still watching TV the old fashioned way—paying for packages from cable or satellite providers. But from what I’ve seen in my own house lately, I suspect that it won’t be long before this practice is as archaic as owning a landline. Many of you refuse to pay for a phone twice, so why are you paying for two or three different ways to see your favorite TV shows?

There are, of course, drawbacks to a life without a broadcaster-friendly set-top box, so I spent a month trying to find out whether or not these drawbacks were significant enough to justify the huge additional cost.

The Experiment

Since this is Prof. Dealzmodo, you already know the impetus for this experiment was money. In particular my 12-month introductory package runs out soon, and the same channels will soon cost me nearly $80 per month. But why? The channel lineups are bloated and padded with filler—a veritable hot dog of entertainment where the real meat is mixed in with a lot of hooves and snouts. I mean, 70 music channels? Really? Isn’t that what services like Pandora—and about 100 others—are for? Speaking of services, I decided to play it straight. I didn’t get shows via BitTorrent. For a month, I simply used easily accessible, generally legal alternatives like Netflix, Hulu Desktop and network websites, plus Windows Media Center, which comes “free” with most PCs these days. The idea here is to prove that you don’t need to spend tons of money, use complicated software or go to extreme measures to watch what you want.

Hardware

First let’s talk about hardware. I don’t see the point in spending money on niche players like Apple TV , Vudu, and Roku to get internet content onto your television. These players only handle a fraction of what any home theater PC can deliver. Also, sticking with a computer makes it easier to roll with new services and software platforms as they’re released. (Hulu isn’t on any set-top box yet, but it’s available to every Mac and PC, in several ways.)

You don’t need something elaborate here—an HTPC’s main purpose is to browse the web and stream video. Just about any computer will do—including the old laptop you’re thinking about replacing anyway. Back in the day, I used to attach my laptop to the TV with a simple S-video connection, but a lot of today’s laptops and home-theater PCs make things extremely easy with an HDMI port.

If you don’t have an HDMI port, there are simple workarounds. For older computers in general, there are DVI-to-HDMI (video only) and VGA-to-component cables are also doable for older PCs, and if you already have some video cables, there are adapters out there that might do the trick for less money. Owners of new Macs have to fudge a bit with Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI converters, but even those, from Monoprice and others, are getting better.

There are plenty of products out there designed for the home-theater market that cost less than $500—including the Asus’ EEEBox line and the Lenovo IdeaCenter Q700. Plus, there is always the option of buying refurbished or upgrading a cheap PC yourself to control costs.

If you want to cheat and record broadcast shows, you still don’t have to pay for cable—you can get an over-the-air HD TV tuner. Generally, a USB dongle TV tuner or PCI card like those from Hauppage will cost $100 or so, and they work reasonably well, though you may need an external antenna for best results. You don’t have to pay for service, and you can be assured of local news and other local programming, if that’s important to you. Just don’t come crying to us if you can’t get your rabbit ears into just the right position.

No matter what computer and accessories you use, the added cost will probably pay for itself pretty quickly when you start canceling all those expensive subscriptions. As I mentioned earlier, going broadband-only will save me about $80 a month in satellite fees—in 8 months, I will have recouped my $600 home-theater PC investment.

In the end, my entire monthly TV entertainment budget runs about $60—that’s $50 for basic broadband plus $10 for Netflix. Compare that to the $140 I would have paid starting in February for the combination of all that plus DirecTV. (As a sports fan, there are online programs that I do pay extra for, but you get what you pay for—as you’ll see below.)

How To Manage and Control Your TV Content

You will have to sacrifice the basic (if not exactly pretty) UI you are used to. Fortunately, things are getting better. Hulu Desktop looks more like what you would find with a broadcast set-top box, and with Windows Media Center, having Netflix and other plug-ins makes finding and watching on-demand shows a whole lot easier. And there’s at least one new website, Clicker that is taking a crack at organizing internet content into an easy-to-use programming guide.

Fortunately, I managed to keep the number of remotes on my coffee table to a minimum. I have a Windows Media Center remote to handle Netflix, DVDs, Hulu Desktop and downloads. Mac users have their own little white remote which handles much of this functionality, too. (A wireless keyboard and mouse are essential for more intricate navigation and many PC functions, but those can stay out of sight for the most part.)

iPhone/iPod Touch apps like Air Mouse and iTunes Remote have made my iPhone an all-in-one solution for controlling my computer and its software.

Watching Your Favorite Shows

I’m not a TV addict by a long shot, but there are shows that I watch religiously. These shows include 30 Rock, Lost, Family Guy, Californication and Dexter. The following graph illustrates the pluses and minuses of viewing a handful of different shows—not just my favorites—from popular networks.

The newest episodes of many of these shows are on Hulu, which mostly hosts fresh content—there isn’t a huge back catalog of shows. The catch with new shows, on Hulu or on network websites, is that you usually have to wait a day to see them. (For many DVR devotees, that’s not a big deal anyway.)

It’s also important to point out that certain networks tease their new seasons in many locations online—NBC has been offering free HD downloads of many new shows on iTunes, in hopes you’ll buy the season pass for $40 or more.

Netflix is another place where networks promote new shows: I was able to see the first episode of Californication and Dexter on Netflix during their limited time Watch Instantly preview. Speaking of that, Showtime shows, if available at all, do tend to appear on Netflix, but mostly only in re-runs.

As you can see, not everything streams in HD quality, although this appears to be changing. ABC is already streaming in HD, and others like Hulu and Netflix are dabbling, so it’s only a matter of time before HD content is widely available for streaming online.

What’s Not Online

CBS, HBO and Discovery: I’m talkin’ to you. I couldn’t care less about CBS programming—though it’s the #1 rated network, so clearly somebody does. CBS.com (and TV.com) offers a handful of full episodes (CSI and NCIS), and some of those show up in Netflix too, but until CBS decides their agenda, you may have to wait for new seasons of Big Bang Theory to show up on DVD, or try to record over-the-air broadcasts (see above).

I love History Channel and Discovery Channel, and these guys are also reluctant to accept reality, move away from old revenue models and look towards the future. Nonetheless, I still get my fix though Netflix. Early seasons of some of my favorite shows (Deadlest Catch, Man vs Wild) are available for streaming via Watch Instantly, and more recent seasons are available for rental. I have the patience to wait for some of my favorite shows to arrive on DVD or Blu-ray—it’s a virtue that could save you lots of money.

Let’s Talk Live Sports

Traditionally, one of the major drawbacks of internet TV is a lack of live sports. Again, I don’t know what sports and teams you are interested in, but for me it is all about football. For example, a few days ago I checked out the Steelers/Chargers game on NBC Sunday Night Football online. The streaming content is “HD” quality (at least it’s in the realm of HD) and the service offers a viewing experience that is actually deeper than a standard broadcast. Users have access to DVR style controls, four separate camera angles, highlights and live analysis.

I also have the privilege of access to my beloved out-of-market NY Giants games each week with DirecTV’s online Supercast service. It broadcasts all of the Sunday Ticket NFL games over the internet, but access to the online content requires DirecTV service and the full SuperFan package that runs a ridiculous $400 per year (Manhattan residents can access Supercast without DirecTV service). However, if you know someone with a Supercast account, you can piggyback.

If baseball is your thing, MLB.com offers a service similar to Supercast for around $100 per year depending on the package—although it only includes out-of-market games. Live golf can be viewed for free on PGATour.com; college sports, baseball, tennis, soccer and more is free on ESPN360 (if you are affiliated with an ESPN-approved broadband provider) and streaming sites like Justin.tv offer plenty of free sports viewing options, including live ESPN. Windows Media Center owners can also get SportsLounge, with Fox Sports.

The Future?

This is still the wild west, and things are apt to keep changing. I already mentioned services like DirecTV’s Supercast and streaming games from MLB.com. Little by little, you will start to see primetime shows or packages offered a la carte online too. I hope we don’t get to a point where we are paying more for access to online content than we now pay for cable content, but there has been serious talk by executives from Time Warner (HBO), CBS and Hulu (Fox, NBC, Disney) about that very thing: Either charge subscribers for premium content on demand, or simply verify that they are already paying customers of cable and satellite, and grant them access to stuff others can’t see.

If the broadcasters have their way, you’ll pay for it one way, or you’ll pay for it another. Still, technology has a way of keeping pace with the dreams of media execs, and the experiments conducted by YouTube and Hulu and others with advertising may lead to some kind of compromise, too. It is really all up in the air, but for now…

What You Should Think About

When all was said and done, I found my experience without standard cable television to be more liberating than anything else. Sure, streaming video isn’t always HD quality, not all of my favorite shows are readily available, and I have to search around a bit more for the things I want to watch—but I didn’t suffer and I didn’t feel like I was missing out. The added expense was not justifiable—especially when I was paying for a bunch of things I never watched. The best part is that I was able to get pretty much everything I needed with a basic set of tools that anyone with a computer can take advantage of right away.

Not everyone shares my taste in television but, at the very least, you should take a good look at your cable or satellite bill and ask yourself if it’s really worth all that money.

The Register has a nice piece on hacking the Sony Reader, allowing you to install all sorts of goodies onto the Linux-powered e-reader. I’ve never been a big fan for the Sony Reader but clearly hackers prefer this device over the closed Kindle.

Some is simple customisation: you can change the fonts, icons and logos, or add your name and contact details to the About screen, for example. Buttons can be reassigned, or disabled too, so if you prefer to shut the Reader down rather then send it to sleep, then you can add that function to an easily accessible key, instead of having to work through a few menus to find it.

It’s actually possible to go a lot further than that. The reader is controlled using JavaScript and XML, and there are even applications such as dictionaries and Sudoku that can be run from an SD card.

Interestingly the device can run programs right off of an SD card, ensuring you don’t totally hose your device. You can add new firmware with a program called Universal Flasher, a program that sounds like something that happens when Dad gets drunk and then goes on the Shrek ride.

I just wonder if they’ll ever be able to crack into the Kindle. I suspect since it’s not very European right now there’s really no impetus to play around.