Rental fees for equipment is ridiculous. I have Comcast and my equipment charges look like this: "Additional Outlet" = $19.90 "Additional Outlet" = $3.99 DVR = $9.95 "Digital Converter" = $2.50 "Does Not Print" = $1.50 = $37.84 Equipment Fees I then pay sales tax on this stuff, so add another $3.12 and we're looking at about $41/mo in rent on their crappy devices. I have an HD DVR box and 2 satellite "companion" boxes (basically just MoCa clients to the actual HDDVR). I have yet to get a straight answer on what all these items are. WTF is "Does Not Print"?? Anyway, this hashes out to about $490 a year in rental fees. I own my own cable modem, otherwise that would be another $14/mo. tacked on. At my previous residence, I used WMC and a Ceton CableCard tuner, with Xbox 360s at each TV as clients. I was a little spoiled with that setup by not having to pay for additional outlets to access the content I already pay for. Since the move, I have spent 4+ hours on the phone trying to get the CableCard functional again and have yet to succeed. I opted to rent set top boxes to keep the wife and kiddo happy. Their X1 platform is a joke too, as I can't remove listings in the program guide for channels I don't receive. I might just take the hit and get a Tivo Bolt and 2 minis. While that hardware/subscription would be paid for in 2 years, who's to say I won't have the same issues trying to get the CableCard to work in it too.

So, to get into the guts of Destiny, it really requires you to play with others. What sucks about this is that most of those people are my coworkers and family (random screaming teens are not an option for me). Kinda makes it hard to play hookey from work when my activities are splashed all over the feed!

LOL! No, we don't have a "Tim" here. But we do love Tech Note 454 when someone totally hoses their system(s).

Man... I guess I there's a good point to having grown up in the 80's. I used to make pressure bombs with Drano and aluminum foil in Shwepps Club Soda bottles, drop chlorine tablets into mason jars of brake fluid, this dry ice stunt, nitric acid and sulphur mixes... played with a lot of black poweder and model rocket engines.... it all fueled my love of chemistry at a young age and I never had the cops appear. Have you seen the constituents of today's chemistry sets???? Pathetic. Is model rocketry with solid propellent engines still allowed as a hobby anymore? I was shocked to go to a Wal-Mart recently and discover they didn't sell Testor model paints!

I love my Mini 10... There are others coming down the pipe though... http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet http://www.androidcentral.com/vega-android-tablet-runs-android-20-looks-great

The US doesn't use the conventional mine anymore. They don't have guys digging holes in the ground and burying them. They use the Volcano mine system. My unit actually got to test them back in the day. These are deployed from 5-Tons, helicopters and artillery shells. They have internal timers in them to auto-detonate after a specified time. The US uses them more as a deterrent than a killing method. They used to come 5 anti-tank, 1 anti-personel per tube. Since '93, they've been changed to all anti-tank, requiring substantial weight/pressure to set them off. As for mine-clearing... it's hard to beat the MICLIC. This bacteria seems most useful in an jungle/urban environment.

Please... go ahead and gain more market share... then all of this "Can't Get Viruses" banter with be a thing of the past. Go ahead... make yourselves a target.

I think new subscribers automatically get the Silverlight player. I use NetFlix streaming quite a bit. I use a plugin for Media Center that allows me to browse "Watch Now" titles, add them to my instant queue and play them... all with a pretty slick interface. Additionally, this plugin works with Media Center Extenders. However, the Silverlight player breaks the plugin. I'm still using the WM version and wonder when the other shoe will drop and force me to use the Silverlight one. I'm also wondering about something that maybe someone here can educate me on. When they rip these titles to make them available for streaming, do they have to rip them to a Silverlight format or are they parsed or transcoded depending on the player the end-user has? I'm asking because if they have to maintain 2 different server farms due to format... I see my streaming bliss coming to an end soon. Side Note: The quality thus far has been quite good and seems to be improving. We watch a lot of "Watch Now" on a 37" LCD from about 10-11 feet away and it's hard to tell it's not a DVD.