Best DVR for cord cutters

[TeleFragger]

Thank you Jeff!

I have DTV here too and AT&T wrote about updating stuff (free).

yeah.. I got the beta android box.. it was ok but lately very buggy, laggy and flat out getting annoying.


Also they cancelled every package and grandfathered in people and if you touch your package your out. I am on the "Live a little" package which is a ton of channels and used to be their smallest package. Now its more $ and from what I recall, one of their larger ones.

also I was paying $20/m for DTV after a $15 ATT unlimited customer discount... then went $25 with Beta DVR (that is still Beta after 1.5y !!!!), then went $30 and now I believe $35/m....

if it keeps going up, I have to see if PlayOn will DVR Sony PlayStation Vue as I may change as my neighbors have it and love it.

what is Nice about PlayOn is that it is seen as a browser so if you record a show.. a 1h show.. it takes 1h. so on the other side, they only see it as a playing device. Albeit it has been running for 98h straight!!!! HAH...

I then have MCEBuddy rip the first and last 5 seconds off as it puts the PlayOn legal disclosure that this was recorded for you with your email address and for personal use only.
Well Im not sharing out my stuff and I don't want to see that on the beginning/end of every show... so I rip it out...

MCEBuddy also rips out the commercials (if any) and transcodes it into a different compression as PlayOn seems uncompressed.

now what I haven't done was...
have MCEBuddy auto watch my DVR folder, so when stuff is DVR'd, auto converts, cuts, etc then have FileBot watch the output folder from MCEBuddy and auto renames and moves to Plex...

all of that is still manual, for now...

[Pete]

Thank you Jeff!

I have DTV here too and AT&T wrote about updating stuff (free).

[TeleFragger]

So you are using PlayOn TV? I have a license but have not used it in a few years now.

Were you asking me?

I have mixed feelings...
IF I choose to do Live TV... you go to the channel you wish and click record. It then asks you for how long. Well what sucks is that it doesnt pickup the show name there and you cant select subscribe. so that is just more of a 'more hands on' dvr type deal

now you can go into "on demand" style of the channels and you can go in via either channel or show or different things.
Now... IF I go into say Spartacus then Season 1 and click Record All it will go fine. I can also choose "subscribe"

now the subscribe feature - good for just that season so for Spartacus (is already done but)
you could go into
Season 1 - Record All
Season 2 - Record All
Season 3 - Record All
Season 4 - click record on E01, 2, 3 then click Subscribe and when 4 and up come out it will auto DVR it.

wish you could just go at the high level and click subscribe

also DVR max 720p

now you can do NetFlix, Amazon Video, AT&T Live TV (which I have), Hulu and Disney+ - there are more i think but that is off the top of my head

on PC PlayOn
now I went into AT&T Live TV and went into Dirt Every Day Extra 2019 and clicked Record All. Once it was done, I was left with episodes say...
S28E552

Well when i go to look on the AT&T Live TV box on my tv, and that episode doesnt exist. then there are episodes that exist on the tv but not on PlayOn...
not sure why. I plan on looking into it better then going on their forums to ask questions...

so more to come on that.

ill do a live demo of PlayOn soon - as im taking off of work from Dec16 till Jan2.. WOOOT!!!!

[Pete]

So you are using PlayOn TV? I have a license but have not used it in a few years now.

[BlairG]

In Phoenix I think we get about 10 HD channels. Some good old movie channels and 65 more.... We're using a outdoor $45 roof mounted antenna. We tried using a Cable Card version and our cable provider had trouble getting it setup on thier end. Sold it off on Ebay.

[jim@beersman.com]

I have an older 2 tuner HDHomeRun Extend device that I have had for about a year. I have been very happy with the picture quality and it's reliability. I do agree with others that the UI is not the best but it is functional. Works with Windows, Linux, KODI, Android, XBOX and Roku devices around the house. This older model did not have built in DVR which is why I'm upgrading to the scribe device, plus going with the 4 tuner version. Once it arrives and I get a chance to play with it I will update this post.

You can also try this link which should give you several articles to view. https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/?s=H...&submit=Search

Received the HDHomeRun Quad Scribe this weekend. Setup was very simply just dropped it in place of my HDHomeRun Dual Extend box and had it scan for channels. Where I live I only get 27 channels with only 5 being HD. Picture quality is very good, watched one football game on my regular TV using Roku to HDHomerun and my Amazon 10" tablet to HDHomeRun for another game. No issues at all with picture quality or stuttering.

Have not played with the recording aspect yet try to get to that later this week.

[Pete]

Always in to radio stuff here ....

For a while a few years back I would watch satellite stuff broadcast from Canadian Bell TV.

This started a bit with BUD DXing in the 1980's.

Helped my sister's father in law that was an engineer for a television station locally. At that time many old reruns were just broadcast on satellite and downloaded / recorded. Used a Commodore C-64 with software (written to tape) to move the BUD for downloading broadcasts. Later on switched the TV station over to using the Amiga Toaster / genlock for their broadcast TV news.

Really though it was more relating to DXing than anything else mostly to see if it worked.

Today it is internet DXing of different countries television news broadcasts. It is very interesting and entertaining to watch.

[mbdirtfarmer]

We have no OTA worth viewing here in the butt crack of Canada. Cord cutting is not an option using OTA. I retired my SageTV setup years ago and have been on the local Telcos Fiber with DVR for years. My wife watches 80 percent of the TV.

I am testing an alternate DVR solution and it has been working quite well. The solution I have set up uses Unraid Server software on a 3rd Gen i5 platform. It's kind of a software NAS with really cool features to run Docker Containers and a nice front end for KVM virtualization as well. I am running Plex Server (with plexpass) on Unraid in a docker container. The TV shows are found by using Usenet indexers via Sonarr. Then Sonar sends to the Usenet downloader SABnzbd. These are also running in docker containers. The services are running through VPN service. The shows are downloaded and renamed/tagged to a folder which is then scanned by Plex after download is complete.. Sonarr's sister application that is used to find movies on UseNet (or via torrents) is called Radarr. It works as well. Plex clients can then watch this from anywhere.

Of course, it goes without saying that I would never download anything that I don't already own or subscribe to.

There is a fine fellow named SpaceInvaderOne on the unraid forums/youtube that has an amazing amount of videos that helped getting up and running.

Ballpark cost of this venture includes:

$free / Repurposed 3rd gen i5 PC with 8GB Ram and 2 x 2GB Hard Drives and a reliable Sandisk USB stick to boot unraid
$220 / 2 x 4TB NAS Drives
$70 / 1 x 500GB SSD
$60 / unraid basic software license


Annual Subscriptions:

$40/yr for VPN
$60/yr for Usenet provider
$90/yr for Usenet indexer

[Pete]

In the midwest here see around 75 public view HD channels and lately many private view by subscription channels. Worth watching though is only about 4 channels ...rest is junk TV.

I am seeing future OTA broadcast HD TV as a pay per channel endeavor in the future.

This came to be an issue as OTA adopted HD or were forced to broadcast HD. Mostly because they didn't want to pay for the upgrade forced by the FCC.

The give back was to allot private HD channels.

[TeleFragger]

[QUOTE=BlairG;n1344777We pull in close to 90 channels. [/QUOTE]


impressive.. we barely get any... and we get abc only in the winter when the trees have no leaves... HAH

[BlairG]

Here we built a Plex server, turned into a living room Media server. Plex is running on a 1T mSata drive on an itx mothboard, i7 processor, for storage we got three - 4T drives and a Blue ray burner. Has two on board ethernet and Intel Bluetooth/WiFi on a mSata card. In the one expansion slot we put in a HD capture card, and that allows us to save VHS tapes and lots more.... Up on the rooftop is an ota antenna hooked up to siliconDust Duo. We pull in close to 90 channels. It also got a custom air filter/cooling system. It often runs all 8 cores to 100%

Plex Pass, my vote., HDMI direct to large flat screen TV

[rmiles7721]

I use Plex media server which records off a HDHomeRun dual tuner. Plex launched their DVR feature years ago but it's only recently reached an acceptable standard imo.

Another vote for Plex with Plex Pass.

[pcburcham]

I use Plex media server which records off a HDHomeRun dual tuner. Plex launched their DVR feature years ago but it's only recently reached an acceptable standard imo.

I'll have to give it another shot. I haven't really used it since the Beta, but I know they have continually improved upon it.

They (Plex) have also recently launched an ad driven content on demand feature.

That one took me by surprise. I only saw it yesterday.

[TeleFragger]

well I have a habosh of stuff...

hd homerun connect quatro - ota quad tuner
hd homerun prime - cable card - requires subscription but 3 tuners on network
nextpvr - app on windows that has a great dvr feature to record - had to subscribe to channel guide
plex - setup for all the dvr recordings
mce buddy to rip commercials out and reencode, drop on plex

while I had all of this working, I dropped comcast cable tv and went with DirecTV Now which is now renamed to AT&T Live TV. They keep jacking up the prices, just cancelled plans but im grandfathered in but if this crap keeps up... im gonna switch...

since I went att live tv, I don't dvr or do any of that anymore but may start looking back at it.

at&t live tv dvr has been beta for over a year and also it only does 20h... so I went playon and now dvr that way...

[Fellhahn]

I use Plex media server which records off a HDHomeRun dual tuner. Plex launched their DVR feature years ago but it's only recently reached an acceptable standard imo.

They (Plex) have also recently launched an ad driven content on demand feature.

You can setup and run Plex locally on your LAN for free, though I think DVR recording is a premium feature. Remote streaming of content outside your own network will require a premium sub (they call it Plex pass). I bought a lifetime subscription years ago, not sure nowadays but the lifetime sub used to be equivalent to ~24 months in cost.

It's a solution similar to Pete's, for people with their own server and storage hardware already in place who want to roll their own, it's not an off the shelf solution.

A third entry also in a similar field to Kodi and Plex is Emby. This used to be a totally free open source alternative to Plex, which bore a lot of similarities. But they've recently forked the project and apparently new features going forward will require a premium tier. With a pricing model again very similar to Plex...

Plex decouples the server and client components and has clients available on all platforms (including consoles and Roku boxes) as well as practically every smart TV.

Kodi (used to be called XBMC when I used it) is the server/storage and player on the one PC. So you typically have a media PC/HTPC connected directly to your TV.