Do you feel like there is nothing on cable or dish that you would like to watch? I got the same feeling a few years ago, there were over 300 channels and nothing to watch. On top of that, I was paying so much money to the provider but still if you wanted to watch a movie you had to shell out some more dough for pay per view!

You know where I'm going with this, and yes I got rid of cable and the cable bill a few years ago. Last time when I wrote about my experience with home theater systems and handling media was about a year ago. Things have changed a lot since then and many technologies have matured.

I won't discuss the front end systems, the projectors or TV's or entertainment systems. No, I'll discuss more of what goes on behind the scenes, something that you can cook up to provide you instant gratification of watching any movie/show you want.

Google is busy working on Google TV, which will be an Android OS based box to play content on TV but it's not available right now. Right now there are a lot of UPNP boxes you can buy, or you can also use your gaming consoles like PS3 or Xbox360 as your set top box.

A better option maybe to make your own box. You can do this with any older model PC that you may not be using. All you need is to download XBMC (free. I won't post links here but Google can be your friend) install some free OS on the PC (any version of linux will do well and you won't have to have a Windows license). Once setup, you can either buy a remote (few dollars expense) or you can simply use your iphone/handheld as a remote control to XBMC. The latter, I believe is a better option as you see the thumbnails/description of movies you want to play on your handheld before you actually play them.

Next you need something to stream the content. I like Mediatomb (free) that you can download, and I prefer to run it on a linux machine but you have many choices here as well. You can use Windows or any other OS, you can use applications like Mediatomb, Tversity or paid applications like Playon, etc. They all achieve the same result, Mediatomb is open so you can modify it and add any type of content if you are okay with a little scripting, etc (there are plenty of examples on the internet so you don't have to be a programmer for this.)

Once you have your front and back end setup, you need the actual media. You can either purchase media, from iTunes (reasonable prices and cheaper than pay per view), or other places or you can download via torrent. I won't go into the legality of things, but leave this up to you. If you do get into downloading media via torrents, you will be surprised how movies that are not even out yet can be downloaded and for free. But do get into this with caution and baby steps or you may end up with a warning from your ISP about downloading copyright media, three warnings and the ISP may cut you off.

Now you have everything in place, simply browse through the media you have downloaded and simply click to play what you desire. No getting up to change disks or looking for the movie on a shelf. Instant gratification!