Cable Freedom Is a Click Away

Evan Sung for The New York Times

Danielle Bilton, the writer's wife, using a wireless mouse called the Loop to operate the couple's television set.
Welcome to our living room. Take a seat, make yourself comfortable. Would you like to watch a movie, or the new “Family Guy” episode?

Oh, that, over there. You want to know why there’s a pile of gadgets and wires on the floor? My wife and I usually don’t talk about that clutter. We actually refer to it as the Gadget Graveyard. Mostly, we pretend it doesn’t even exist. But since you asked, I’ll explain.

This digital necropolis isn’t your typical sanctuary for retired devices. Instead, here you’ll find technologies that tried to provide the best viewing experience and program options with a television, but ultimately fell short. Everything is relatively new, and comparatively unusable — to me at least.

Among this pile you can find my old remote controls and wires from my cable box. Then there’s the dreaded Apple TV, now a $250 paperweight. There’s also the $80 Roku box, a device that allows you to stream video from Netflix, Amazon.com and other sites directly to your television. But wait, there’s more! A Vudu player, a Slingbox and a handful of other single-serving contraptions.

Those devices are all behind me now. I disconnected everything, threw it to the side and canceled the cable months ago. Instead, now I have a Mac Mini, wireless mouse and a Microsoft Xbox hooked up to my television.

This quest for cable freedom has been a couple of years in the works. Before I called the cable company to bid my farewell I imagined that I would need a vast array of devices to fill the entertainment void: a device for games, something for television shows, a contraption for streaming movies through Netflix and, finally, something to control all of the above. But it turns out a computer can do all those tasks with some software upgrades and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I have to be honest, this isn’t as easy as just plugging a computer into a monitor, sitting back and watching a movie. There’s definitely a slight learning curve. One difficult part of this equation was getting used to the wireless mouse. We use a mouse called the Loop, made by Hillcrest Labs, that costs $99. The Loop looks more like a chocolate-frosted doughnut with buttons than something that navigates a television set. To navigate the screen you hold it out and wave your hand from side to side as if you are conducting an orchestra.

As for the computer, you don’t specifically need a Mac Mini. This set up can work with most inexpensive PCs; just make sure the video card can handle the streaming video requirements. Our refurbished Mac Mini cost $380 online.

Although the initial investment was costly, totaling $550, it took only a few months to recoup the money. Back in the olden days of cable we were forced to shell out a relatively standard $140 a month, for television service alone. This cost gave us access to a digital video recorder and hundreds of unwatched TV channels.

Contrast this with today, where our only expense is $9 a month to stream Netflix videos from the Web and the $30 a month that we always spent on an Internet connection. O.K., maybe that’s not completely accurate. When the wireless keyboard died a few weeks ago I was forced to spend another $4 for two new AA batteries. We’ve not yet recovered from that financial loss.

We still come home from work and watch any number of shows, just like the people who continue to pay for cable. We just do it a little differently, starting the computer and then using services like Hulu, Boxee, iTunes and Joost. Another interesting twist to this experience is that we’re no longer limited to consuming traditional programming. With these applications we can spend an entire evening flicking through videos from YouTube, CollegeHumor or Web-only programs.

Here are a few of the applications on our home setup:

Boxee is probably the most clicked icon on our television. You can download this free open-source application from Boxee.tv. It’s important to note that it’s still in test phase and a little rough around the pixels, but over all it allows you to access almost any type of video content online. You can easily stream CNN, Current TV, PBS and more. Most important for us, Boxee easily allows access to the Netflix streaming service, which offers up thousands of movies and television shows (just not always the most popular options).

Next there is Hulu Desktop, the joint venture among Fox, NBC, ABC and many other mainstream programming outlets. This service allows you to watch more than 1,700 television shows, including traditional favorites like “30 Rock,” “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Office.” Hulu’s downloadable desktop application, as opposed to hulu.com, works extremely well with large screens. Apple’s iTunes application replicates all the features of Apple TV, allowing you to buy or rent movies and listen to your music collection.

Be warned though that iTunes can get expensive. If you watch premium-cable television shows, you can pay more than $40 for the season of a single show. But even that is less than one month of cable. Since there are so many other entertainment options online, we just skip “Dexter” and “Weeds.” Trust me, there is a lot of great free or ad-supported content out there.

Finally there’s Joost.com. Although it’s not a downloadable application and only accessible through a Web browser, Joost offers free streaming movies and a strange variety of cartoons.

While Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (starting at $200), is not absolutely necessary for this setup, it delivers an array of lively entertainment options. I can, of course, play video games, but I can also rent movies (through the Xbox marketplace or through Netflix’s online viewing service), and browse Twitter and Facebook, with a new feature that lets you watch a streaming interface of your social networks flow across the screen.

I understand this kind of living room experience isn’t for everyone. It’s a lot less work to just click a button up or down on a standard remote control. And it can be difficult to explain how to use this unfamiliar toolbox of buttons, programs and devices.

Over Thanksgiving a friend graciously house-sat at our apartment. It took my wife more than an hour to write a detailed description explaining how to use our new TV setup. After explaining how to use the mouse and keyboard, we had to describe how to switch among applications. The instructions read:

“If you want to watch “Ugly Betty,” or “Saturday Night Live,” you will need to load up Hulu. If you’d like to watch some of the movies we’ve downloaded, you will have to quit Hulu, open up Boxee and navigate to the movies folder. To use Netflix, you’ll need to switch to the Xbox and. ... ” But after a few hours of randomly clicking into cyberspace, our friend figured it out.

There is one other showstopper. I know the sports and technology enthusiasts don’t often mix, but if you’re one of the few people who live in both of those worlds you might have to look for other options. To watch baseball you can buy a little dongle that plugs into the back of your computer and streams free over-the-air high-definition channels. I bought this for the Yankees games and it worked perfectly. If you’re an ESPN fan you have two options. Stick with cable, or go to a bar to watch the basketball games.

Over all, I couldn’t be happier with our computer television setup. Now, I just have to figure out what gadgets I’m going to buy with the $1,600 a year I no longer send to the cable company.

Hamstrung by Delays, Fitbit Explains and Tries to Deliver

Nicholas Cole was determined to shed a few pounds after the holiday season. So when he heard about a nifty new fitness device called the Fitbit Tracker, a wearable sensor that tracks movement, distance traveled and calories burned, he decided to take the plunge and order one.

That was 13 months ago. Mr. Cole is still waiting for the $99 gadget to arrive, as are legions of other eager customers.

“I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get it in a month or two,” said Mr. Cole, a 20-year-old student living in New Brighton, Pa.

Others, unwilling to wait any longer, have forked over as much as $350 to buy a Fitbit on eBay from other consumers.

That was 13 months ago. Mr. Cole is still waiting for the $99 gadget to arrive, as are legions of other eager customers.

“I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get it in a month or two,” said Mr. Cole, a 20-year-old student living in New Brighton, Pa.

Others, unwilling to wait any longer, have forked over as much as $350 to buy a Fitbit on eBay from other consumers.

Fitbit’s tale of expectation and delay is a classic start-up story: a couple of entrepreneurs with a hot idea generate excitement, then run into a range of real-world problems in actually trying to make their product and get it to customers. With bigger companies like Nike and Philips Electronics making similar fitness devices, Fitbit runs the risk of getting stomped by competitors before it can really get going.

But the company’s unusual frankness about its problems may also help it survive its growing pains.

“They’ve been really open and transparent about where they are in the process, and that’s made it easier to tolerate the wait,” Mr. Cole said.

A prototype of the Fitbit Tracker was introduced in September 2008 by the co-founders, James Park and Eric Friedman, at TechCrunch 50, an annual showcase of innovative products and Web services.

The thumb-size device uses an accelerometer to sense a user’s movement, then translates that into calories burned. In addition, users can wear the device at night to track the quality of their sleep and can manually input their food consumption to get a better grasp of their overall health and well being. A home base station collects information each time the user passes by and uploads it to Fitbit.com.

The concept appealed to fitness enthusiasts, and Fitbit began taking preorders right away, expecting to be able to ship them within a few months.

Instead, the company, which is based in San Francisco, found that it took eight months to refine its prototype into something that was ready to manufacture, Mr. Park said in a recent interview.

Mr. Park and Mr. Friedman are experienced entrepreneurs, having started two previous tech companies together.

But this was their first foray into hardware. The Fitbit has more than 100 electronic components and 22 plastic and metal parts. Its complexity resulted in unexpected problems in making everything work together.

For example, “we would discover the product used more power than we’d originally thought and have to decide if we wanted to include a larger battery,” Mr. Park said, “which meant going back to the drawing board to figure out how that impacted the size and form factor.”

The company also encountered setbacks during the testing phase, including equipment that at one point got stuck in customs in Indonesia.

Even now, once the products arrive in California from the manufacturer in Singapore, Fitbit employees must spend several minutes updating the software on each device before sending it out to fulfill orders.

To assuage the growing restlessness of its customers, Fitbit has been e-mailing them and posting updates on the company blog about the progress of the Fitbit Tracker, including photos and videos showing production and testing of the devices.

“It’s definitely a way to help people stay interested,” Mr. Park said. “Most products on back order are in a black hole of information.”

Some customers who have received their Fitbit, like Andrew Chen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, say it is worth the wait. “I love how simple and convenient it is,” he said. “I just put it on and don’t think about it.”

However, Mr. Chen managed to get his device only after complaining on Twitter about his mounting impatience over his back order. One of the investors in the company then shipped him a unit directly.

Now, Fitbit says it is planning to ship the remainder of its back orders by the end of January, when the stand-alone devices will also be available in retail stores.

Jon Callaghan, founder and managing partner of True Ventures, which led a $2 million round of seed financing to Fitbit, acknowledged that it would have been better not to miss the holiday shopping season.

But it was more important to get the product right. “I would not like a warehouse full of products customers didn’t like,” he said. “That would be disastrous and short-term thinking. We’re going to be around for next Christmas.”

Bernie Tenenbaum, an expert on small businesses who has no connection to Fitbit, said the delay was not likely to do permanent damage to the company’s reputation.

“Yes, they’ve missed some sales and some revenue opportunity” and created some excitement prematurely, “but that’s not fatal” compared to shipping a flawed product, said Mr. Tenenbaum, managing partner of the investment firm China Cat Capital.

Still, Fitbit may have lost valuable momentum, he said. “It’s not as if there aren’t enough other shiny new tech things floating around at this time of year. That’s not to say the passionate aficionados won’t be there with bated breath, but for everyone else, there are too many other choices in the world.”

While the Fitbit struggles to fill old orders, the competition has moved in.

Many Web sites allow users to track various aspects of their health, similar to what users can do on Fitbit.com.

And other companies are getting into the gadget side of the business. Philips, a consumer electronics heavyweight, has introduced a fitness tracking device called DirectLife. And other rivals have come out with the BodyBugg, a calorie-tracking monitor worn on the arm, and WakeMate, which monitors sleep cycles and selects the ideal time to rouse its wearer within a given time slot.

So far, none of this appears to have diminished demand for the Fitbit — which does not surprise Jim Silver, an industry analyst and editor in chief of TimetoPlayMag.com.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, word of mouth operates on hyperdrive, whether it is for the Fitbit or this holiday season’s hot toy, the battery-powered hamsters called Zhu Zhu Pets.

“Even people who aren’t parents or associated with toys know what they are, which opens the door to more sales, just because it’s a hot item,” he said.