I suggest you check out a Samsung SMART TV. That is about as easy as it gets.

Yes, almost any decent big screen tv will have the capability of picking up a signal from your wireless router. However, if there is a great distance between the router and the tv or some electronic obstruction, you might have trouble with the tv being connected. If you can get a decent wireless signal to a laptop in the vicinity of the tv, then it should be fine. Setup should be simple.

In any case, you can also just run a cable from the router to the tv if that's physically possible.

In my situation, my 6-year-old plasma tv is not wi-fi capable and I can't run a cable to it, so I have a Roku box (about the size of a hockey puck) that plugs into the back of the tv and transmits the wireless signal from my router to the tv.

I was just visiting last week with friends who shared they had just networked their new HDTV to the web. After the first month the Internet cable bill came. They were shocked. They had easily gone over their maximum contract usage, and had to pay extra for the substanial overage. So be careful. It's a whole new world so know your contract limits.

DA

Interesting point. Were they networking through their cell phone data plan? I've got no cap on my ISP plan so I never pay attention to how much I use it.

I have read accounts of persons exceeding contract limits.

I stream old movies from Netflix and old TV shows from Hulu. I have probably never done any HD or blue ray. I probably average two movies and one TV show nightly and have never exceed my most basic AT&T contract.

I do have a cap on my ISP plan, so I will definitely have to monitor it. I talked to a rep about the next higher plan and she said I would probably go over the cap even with changing to it unless I monitored it. I will only be watching TV shows though so it won't be as bad as watching whole movies, but I am able to check the usage daily. I live in a very rural part of the state with not many options. I have a question though about running a line from my router to my TV? I don't run a line from the PC to the TV, but from the router? When I replace my 5 yr old TV with the new wi fi cabable TV, I'm going to move that TV into the room where my PC is. It does have a plug in for PC. So I run a line to the router? I'm going to check on one of those hocky puck Roku things. Many years ago I had a Zenith product that enabled me to watch the same program as a TV in another room. We had Dish or Dirct at the time and it saved us having to get an additional receiver. Sounds like this might do the same thing?

Casi,

Take a peek at the page below as a basic reference. This is my cellphone and 3G network provider.

DA

Here is a link that might be useful: ThumbCellular

Interesting point. Were they networking through their cell phone data plan? I've got no cap on my ISP plan so I never pay attention to how much I use it.

Many ISP's now cap data usage, not just cellular companies. A list I found here.

I happened to own a company that provides both Internet connectivity and television service, I might have an interest in limiting the amount of data that could be downloaded from a competitor...

My 3G cap is 15GB. Previously my monthly use was regularly reported as 1GB. Last month tweaks and improvements were made on the provider's system to improve the signal quality in my area. I was able to watch two episodes of Castle on the TNT portal. My bill just came and my usage was 3GB.

DA

My 3G cap is 5GB for $35. Recently, I've been going over almost every month. No throttling, just an extra $10 charge per gig. No, I've never streamed a movie because my speed will not support it. That's Verizon for you.

Data caps are most often seen with ISPs that have bandwidth limitations - cell carriers, satellite providers, etc. I don't see this becoming a trend, cable and telephone company providers have enough infrastructure in place to handle reasonable customer use that includes video streaming. It's because of the outlier extreme users - the 5 percent or so - that traditional providers have any caps at all, and they're usually in the hundreds of GBs per month. Few need to be concerned with that.

Is it because you folks live in a small town or rural setting, that only RF providers are available?

Yes. I had satellite for five years, and even though it had a higher cap, I switched to gain some speed. Not sure the switch was worth it, though. My county received a Federal grant of 9mil. to lay fiber optic cable to underserved areas. Now AT&T is busily laying cable all over the county, too. But guess what? No cable is being laid down the major road that serves the valley where I live. I'd love to have cable, or even DSL, but no go.

It's not the end of the world, but I would find your situation frustrating. If it's the best you can do, then that's what you go forward with.

Good luck.