OT: Sports Fans without Cable

[wizwor]

Eventually the TiVo will crap out so I will be looking at the alternatives. It's encouraging to hear that the competitors are offering good prices especially on the program guide.

Don't wait for the TiVo to crap out before you start looking for a replacement -- especially if you want another TiVo. A TiVo with Lifetime is close to $800 most of the time. TiVo's business model is all about the monthly fee, so think of these deals as a Trojan Horse to establish a beachhead in your household.

“Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.” – Yoda.

 

[Brady_to_Moss]

With Kodi, do you get the new episodes of TV shows immediately as they are shown on Broadcast? I know nothing about it so that is why I'm asking..

Yeah it will. Usually an hour or two after. But I usually check the next day.

I think the app I use ( I have 20 movie apps and 12 sports and TV apps loaded on Kodi) has 65,000 movies and TV shows. If a movie comes out in theaters..it takes a little bit for it to come out in HD quality.

Get Out is on Kodi..but it's cam quality

 

[wizwor]

Here is a link to a 72 hour TiVo sale. 500g TiVo Roamio/OTA. Outstanding value!

TiVo Roamio

Don't wait for the TiVo to crap out before you start looking for a replacement -- especially if you want another TiVo. A TiVo with Lifetime is close to $800 most of the time. TiVo's business model is all about the monthly fee, so think of these deals as a Trojan Horse to establish a beachhead in your household.

“Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.” – Yoda.

 

[bbobbo]

I'd give Tablo a go for something like this. Less moving parts, flexible storage, and less money to build/support. $240 for a four tuner unit from Walmart plus $70 for a 2t disk and $150 for Lifetime service, then a streamer for each television.

interesting, never heard of tablo. ever since i set up my system years ago, i haven't really kept up with the latest stuff to come out.

after reading up a little about tablo, i wouldn't choose it for a number reasons:

1) no native ability to export video files. i save all the patriots games, so not being able export the videos is a non-starter.

2) there do seem to be some user-solutions for stitching the video files together and exporting them, but the result is an mp4 file. i haven't found any good (free) tools for editing mp4. mythtv + hauppauge stores videos in mpeg2 format, which is much easier to edit.

3) tablo seems to have a maximum storage bitrate of 10mbps. OTA HD can be up to 19mbps, although it's usually less since stations usually multiplex their channels. even so, my mythtv + hauppauge captures are usually 14-15mpbs.

4) since i already have a RAID6 for other purposes (saving other media content, general fileserving), i would rather save video files directly to the array rather than to an attached USB drive. tablo doesn't seem to have the ability to mount an NFS share.

tablo looks like it would work for a lot of people, but not for me. still, it's interesting to see new options coming out for cord-cutters.
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[bbobbo]

Holy damn..
the drives alone are $1200..
The Hauppauge Tuners aren't bad, totalling $160 or so..
Not sure which SiliconDust HD tuner you are referring to, but they seem to have revamped their products..

I'd still need to add the case, mobo, processor, at least 8GB (probably 16GB) of memory, and the video card..

So, I'd probably be looking at $3K easy. An outdoor Antenna might be an issue because I will be right in the storm belt of Texas.. I need to look at the report from TVFool.com and see what my options are..

i saved some money on the drives by buying 4tb external drives and cracking them open. i think i got them for anywhere ranging from $109 to $139 over the years.

my server has a core i7-4770k with 32gb of RAM. that's way overpowered for a media server, but i use the server for multiple things:

• general fileserver
• email server
• web server
• MySQL server
• GitLab server
• ownCloud server
  
• asterisk PBX server running in a virtual machine
• windows 8.1 virtual machine (don't have any windows desktops, so i use it when i need to run windows applications)
• plex server running in a virtual machine
• mythtv

basically, i like to roll my own. in the future, though, i'm going to move away from having everything on one server--not fun when you have technical issues and lose phone, email, and entertainment.

anyway, for a media-only server, i think you could do it for a lot less than $3k.

this guy has recommendations for different components depending on how much you want to spend:

Updated Home Theater PC Builds for 2016 (and 2017)
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[stinkypete]

I have been streaming games since 2013. There are a number of sites that stream the European feeds. If you have a good internet connection and a modern laptop, you can get a pretty reliable stream.

Caveat, you will have to deal with glitches, pop up ads, and fake download pages that probably install viruses if you click the download. You will also get pop up ads that claim to be viruses. On the plus side, you get very few commercials,

 

[rads2005]

As another option, I've heard of people asking friends or family to get an extra cable box on their subscriptions (which I think would cost $10-20 bucks a month) and then using a Slingbox on it. It would require a friend/family member with enough bandwidth because you wouldn't want to affect their internet at any time, i.e. if they were downloading or streaming something. IIRC however Slingbox does not use that much relatively speaking.

 

[dafoe2016]

As another option, I've heard of people asking friends or family to get an extra cable box on their subscriptions (which I think would cost $10-20 bucks a month) and then using a Slingbox on it. It would require a friend/family member with enough bandwidth because you wouldn't want to affect their internet at any time, i.e. if they were downloading or streaming something. IIRC however Slingbox does not use that much relatively speaking.

If you don't care about legality my boss used to split his DirectTv with two other people. They all lived in different towns. As long as you don't connect the box to the internet they have no way of knowing where you are. That was ten years ago. So maybe they developed a way to stop that. I have no idea.