HDHomerun is so great, easily one of the best, most reliable pieces of tech I own. I agree though cord cutting has become kind of hard for the layman.
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.
It should be noted that TVFool hasn't been updated since 2017. It will give incorrect results for stations that changed frequency after the 600 MHz auction in 2016-2017.
Use RabbitEars instead.
I'm going to give you guys the keys to the kingdom. If you do a reddit search for "plex server sale" you will find dudes that share membership to their curated Plex server.
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.
TiVo was one of the most delightful products I ever owned. It had near-perfect UX, including the audio effects: to this day my wife and I still talk about "be-bipping" through video when we want to fast-forward. Now I can watch any episode of Star Trek I like, anytime I like, and yet somehow coming home to a TiVo with some freshly recorded episodes was vastly more satisfying. The first algorithmic feed I actually loved.
I can wholeheartedly recommend an HDHR and Channels DVR (https://getchannels.com/dvr-server/), I've found it to be parent proof. Run a Docker container on a low powered PC somewhere and then install the apps on Apple TV or Chromecast. Job done, provides a Sky Q like experience for like £5 a month?
Personally I like Channels DVR which is a single go binary that can run anywhere and they have excellent client apps for every platform. There's even an API and a Home Assistant integration. https://getchannels.com/dvr-server/
My "stack" for watching TV consists of:
* 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.
My Shaw DVR actually kept working after I ended my TV subscription. It was purchased, though, not rented (still tied to Shaw only though!)
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.
Does Plex TV Guide not work in Canada?
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.
I travel with an HD antenna (the plastic square that attaches to a window). I arrive to the airBnB, I connect my antenna program the Roku crap TV to real Live TV. I was saddened when I find out the French Open sold-out to cable TNT for the next 10 years. I rather watched Fraiser re-runs that any cable TV.
Speaking of cord-cutting. My mom used scissors to cut the _power_ cord to our TV that I was watching when I was... nine years old, I think?, and I was shocked that nothing happened other than cutting power to the TV. I still am shocked that there was no short-circuit.
I was so curious about this that I actually took a look at the site he mentioned (tvfool) and tried to see what channels were available in Calgary where I live.
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".
I ended up going all streaming, but a few years ago we tried a roof top antenna and a Fire TV Recast for DVR. Worked well enough, with the usual caveats about using a closed solution.
> one clear, sharp picture. Better than cable. Here's the reason. OTA broadcasts must meet a legally defined broadcast quality: they're all at the top quality that HD can provide
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...
This sounds like a lot of effort to keep watching commercials.
Anyone else look at stuff that’s <2021 and goes: “ha, this is pre-AI”
TV and then YouTube and then TikTok have drained my creativity. Fully.
I wonder, and I'm sure it's probably trivial, did this person dox their home address by listing the distances to multiple known broadcasting points?
Edit: Oh, and a photo out the window of their home. This is almost certainly trivial. Not that anyone should.
Needs a (2020), and that's just when it was last updated. Because the whole way down the page I was wondering, "what decade was this written?"
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.)