The thing that made me cancel wasn't the DVR hardware or software sucking - it was actually decent, especially after I upgraded the hard drive to a 2 TB WD Purple. What killed it for me was the schedule not matching the recordings. I'd miss 5 minutes on either end of an episode, or for one show I'd be one episode off.
Since they also expose streams as http in addition to DLNA, I've used a Tailscale subnet router and VLC to stream live TV from my house while away. It works decently over shockingly poor connections too.
Edit: Oh, and a photo out the window of their home. This is almost certainly trivial. Not that anyone should.
The three 3 oligarchies (Rogers x 2, Bell/BCE, Corus), CBC and a religious network. CBC doesn't even broadcast the NHL finals [1].
At this point, what's the point? Renting Blurays at the library is much less annoying (even when they skip at pivotal scenes).
[1] Incidentally, the actual broadcaster for the playoffs, Sportsnet, is a morally compromised network that specialises in showing gambling ads to children. Shame, but unsurprising given Canada's business "culture".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWleK1dvRF0
This specific advertisement used to play over TSN 10-12 times per hour, to the point where it became a pre-internet video meme for me and my friends.
The gambling ads in sports are deplorable, but pretty much ubiquitous in any non-amateur sport broadcast in the country now.
* A Hauppage WinTV HVR-950 tuner, connected to a Kubernetes cluster in the basement.
* NextPVR, scheduled on the appropriate node in the cluster (yes, it's non-redundant, even though I have three nodes). This handles DVR scheduling, and transcoding should I want to watch TV off-network.
* Kodi Media Center, running on a PC in the living room, and a Raspberry Pi 3A in the kitchen. Both pass through the full MPEG-2 stream. I additionally have an XSPF playlist link on my laptop and phone that open VLC to the transcoding-capable playback URLs for NextPVR.
* FreeNAS with a _significant_ amount of buffer available (at least for my one-hour-daily recording schedule), backing the DVR capability over NFS.
I'd argue this setup is actually _better_ than what I'd be able to do with a simple VCR/DVR. It's like having a robotic tape library, but without the physical space required.
Even Tour de France just looks better on cable. It might just be me, but in terms of specs I should have the better TV between me and my dad, but the details just gets lost somehow in many sports. Only difference I can think of is cable vs. streaming.
Fast forward and OTA started instead using their bandwidth to instead run 4 or 5 lower-bitrate channels. Bummer.
If it caused any difficulty at all to use different viewing programs on their different boxes, it would be trivial to cut down to one. If using NAS network storage caused problems, it would be trivial to remove it. And they're running kubernetes entirely for fun, making it the opposite of "have to maintain".
The part that actually makes this system tick is quite low maintenance.
It's a simple solution, if you have a decent enough computer. Buy a TV tuner card (I have one with 4 channels). Plug the antenna in it, and buy a lifetime (or monthly) Plex subscription, and you're done. You can easily watch on your TV. You can watch local channels even while you're away from home.
It. Just. Works.[1]
I just don't know if they support EPG.
Never understood why people use Kodi.
[1] Well, it did before they decided to revamp the Android app.
Free, self hosted, and I don't want to watch TV, I want to watch tv shows, in the format and language of my choice and the subtitles of my choice.
This submission, however, was about getting broadcast TV.
Kodi was ok, but kind of clunky on my chromecast. I used VLC for a long time to play off a network drive but it's kind of buggy and a little annoying to control.
I wonder about this part. I think it's probably still true for the "main" station, like full 1080i for 9-1, but the "extra" stations like -2, -3 ... -6 are usually noticeably compressed.
From my limited understanding, all the extras are sharing the same bandwidth, and more channels = more ads, so it's more like 1080i + 5x 480i. Some channels will look 1080i on both -1 and -2, then maybe 720i on -3.
I don't live near an ATSC 3.0 station, but it would be cool to get 4K/2160p. Soon ... (naturally, I'm curious)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ATSC_3.0_television_st...
I pay $20 for a server with nothing but 4K remuxes (zero-quality loss from 4k blurays). 5 streams, no transcoding allowed, so you need an nvidia shield because after testing a bunch of devices those are the only ones that play _everything_ without transcoding, even DTS and Dolby Vision.
Use RabbitEars instead.
Never minds "cutting the cord" generally meant getting rid of your cable service/bill. Wild that cable came with commercials and you paid for that ... privilege? (And, again, if you are mostly there for PBS and it is being broadcast digitally over-the-air, why are you giving money to Comcast?)
The electrical supply for a whole house can make pretty sparks, you don't want to be near that as it could definitely kill you.
The electrical supply for a whole street can tear a noticeable crater in the street, which is why after my street lost power last year actual street repair people turned up to fill the hole and lay more asphalt as well as the electricity network people.
15A at 110V is enough to weld your tool to the wires carrying the current.
The mother probably got lucky and the neutral wire pulled away as it was cut and didn’t complete the circuit to the live wire.
The scissors must have had plastic handles that prevented the mother from becoming part of the circuit.
Do you remember if it blew a fuse or tripped a breaker?
mikestew•1d ago
I was also wondering why it should be an "adventure". Yeah, back when we cut the cord some fifteen years ago, things were a bit rough. Mac Mini with a tuner dongle, and a bunch of hacks. Now it's just turn on AppleTV that outputs to unconnected TV, sorted. (Or sail the high seas if my money is inexplicably no good.)
dangus•1d ago
What I do think was true back then and is even more true today is that this kind of effort just isn’t worth it. Antenna channels absolutely suck except for the increasingly rare sports events that haven’t been moved to pay TV. And that sucky experience gets even worse if you don’t live in a large metro area close to the broadcast antennas.
Television isn’t even enjoyable enough to go through all this effort. I’d rather just not watch TV at all. And honestly, I think a significant number of former TV customers may have made that exact choice - not just cutting the cord but finding other activities entirely. Gaming comes to mind, which I immensely prefer over basically any television show.
Another little note, I think a lot of cable and streaming providers have done a good job resolving the issue of streaming bitrate being inferior to antenna bitrate. My local OTA market has a grand total of one 4K demo channel and everything else is broadcasting at a bitrate that appears inferior to modern streaming platforms.
Marsymars•1d ago
I don’t watch much, but at the cost, I get enough value out of watching basically just olympic and election coverage.
seethishat•19h ago
I agree with you about gaming, Twitch and YouTube as being replacements for mindless/relaxing viewing.
JKCalhoun•16h ago
_factor•1d ago
It took a couple hours in the evening, most of which was just fiddling with the antenna mount and scanning the channels. It’s a lot easier than it used to be. Granted I planned and ran ethernet to the attic years earlier, but it’s not rocket science.
lotsofpulp•1d ago
tylerflick•1d ago
fragmede•22h ago
opello•1d ago
I think the only concern might be subjecting the HDHomeRun to attic temperatures in the summer.
lotsofpulp•1d ago
_factor•1d ago
colechristensen•1d ago
ascagnel_•18h ago
I'm also long-term concerned about how Plex as a company is moving away from its server product and towards FAST (free, ad-supported TV), a feature I almost never use. I'd love to see Jellyfin get some equivalent features.
BolexNOLA•17h ago
enobrev•17h ago
I'm also quite displeased with plex's new direction. Would love to see some real competition.
paul7986•1d ago
Finding eDonkey2000 (2002) and then later BitTorrent prompted me to connect computers to TVs. Nowadays I very, very rarely watch pirated webstreams (totally legal) just YouTube almost always; rarely use my HBO Max or Disney subscriptions. Got them again recently only because they offered a $2.99 deal. Will cancel them once they go to full price!
The studios need to put everything on YouTube it will continue to take share away from them! Im so use to watching 10 to 15 minutes clips cause of YouTube that i have hard time watching long format content unless it's in a social setting and Im old-ish lol
jonpurdy•15h ago
There was never a cord for me to cut (and I refused to pay for cable when in uni since I downloaded everything anyway).
Now just have the Mini in the closet and serving files via SMB to an AppleTV connected to the TV HDMI.
JKCalhoun•16h ago