So you cut the cord, use an over-the-air antenna for FREE TV, but can’t record your favorite show to watch at a later time. If you have an over-the-air DVR, tell us about your experience! Why do you use it, or why have you chosen not to buy one?
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I’d like to hear what subscribers say about YouTube TV.
We love Peacock because we watch Olympics, ice skating, and European bicycle racing (Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, Vuelta de Espana, Paris Roubaix, etc)
I use an OTA antenna an Amazon Recast and completely free streaming services. I pay nothing for TV and have more content now and am happier with my selection than when I had cable. Sorry I did not cut the cord sooner. Saving a ton of money.
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We had TiVo with cable for many years. We liked it.
That was probably why when we cut the cord, we went to Youtube TV and unlimited DVR.
YTTV has another benefit in that we can start a program like news from the beginning whenever we start dinner and switch to the Family Room TV seamlessly as dinner ends. We could not do that with TiVo.
I am still finding things that YTTV offers… like a movies section that shows all the movies that will be on the various YTTV provide channels for you to mark for recording w/o going to each channel individually.
Sports is about all we watch live… the rest is DVR and skip commercials. I am so tired of those Fund raising ?charity? commercials on the news channels.
I use HDHomeRun for over-the-air recordings. It runs on all my TVs and LAN-attached devices.
For Internet streaming recording from PBS and Paramount I use PlayOn which runs on PCs, phones, tablets, etc and casts to my TV sets from any of those devices.
The storage is on a NAS for HDHomeRun and a small-format PC for PlayOn.
Over the air antenna for sure! Love it. I strung up a wire dipole (rabbit ears) in the attic. Works fine for $0
You’re not even on the same topic.
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Yes, I get over 40 local channels and can record them all. Mine is outside, run through existing coax cables throughout my house.
But what do you use to record?
Igot one with my Spectrum streaming subscription.
Record the news every day automatically so I can time shift my viewing.
Record my crime tv shows so I can fast forward through ads.
I have to manually skip ads with the HDHomeRun DVR, but the PlayOn DVR has an auto-skip feature.
Both record in standard, (MP4 and MPEG,) editable video formats and you can get ad-skip software and batch-process them offline before viewing them.
Back in 2017 I finally got rid of my old, manual, non-HD DVR and decided to try a TiVo Roamio OTA with lifetime guide for $339. I have been very happy with it and bought my Mom and future Wife one as well. The only drawback I noticed was that the tuner might be a little weak if you have a weak station since there are 4 tuners in it but usually no problems since I have an antenna on the roof now. One of the reasons I wanted this one was that I had a very slow internet connection and couldn’t really stream in very good quality and am happy just watching the major networks OTA. Fast forward now and in a few more years we will be going to ATSC 3.0 which I think might mean my Tivo tuner will not work anymore. I am beginning to think there might not be any use for a stand-alone DVR anymore since most shows you can stream and if you have access to you tube tv it looks like you can use their DVR, will have to figure out how to someday. Sorry about not using paragraphs, I don’t know how to on here and am posting some so I can figure out how to use this new message board. I have found very good information over the years here and appreciate people’s comments.
YouTubeTV includes the Olympic channel, USA, CNBC, MSNBC, and NBC so you can get a lot of Peacock sports.
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HDHomeRun for the tuner then plex with their lifetime pass for DVR function then a Synology nas for storage. Which sounds like a ton but had it for years and works flawless and has no payments plus plex does so much more and Synology also does a ton other things
When I first set up my home theater 10 years ago I tried Plex but it was too flaky and had problems interfacing with HDHomeRun and PlayOn.
I’m sure Plex has improved since then. Are you running the Silicondust DVR software on your Synology NAS?
Are casual users operating the DVR recording and playback?
BTW: The HDHomerun app on my OLED LG TVs work great with tuning and DVR record and playback. Also Silicondust has a decent programming guide for $35 a year.
Synology has a Plex package that you install. And through Plex they now can detect your tuner and scan all the channels and just shows them on Plex as live TV and Plex has its own TV guide plus it can scan and delete the ads so when I watch it later on there’s no ads .It’s been flawless watching haven’t had any issues. Have my family across different city’s accessing my Plex and they have no issues. But for dvr you need the lifetime pass which is 80$ .
I use the Amazon Fire Recast with a Clearstream 4 Max with a preamp. I receive close to 50 stations including all 5 major networks. The reason I choose Amazon is the Recast is the only DVR I have found so far that does not charge your for the guide data to set recordings.
Yes, for a few years Zenith and Sony made a few non-subscription based HD DVRs that used the free TV Guide signals for scheduling. The Sony’s even had cable card slots but cable companies didn’t support them until the FCC forced them to. By that time they had stopped making them, probably since the TiVo and the Satellite & Cable Companies owned the market with subscription & rental products.
There are many complaints about the SlingTV AirTV 2 player. I agree with most of them as I own one!
I got mine FREE as I had the old AirTV and was informed by Sling that it would no longer work after
June 2022 so they sent me the new one. This was because they integrated the AirTV 2 into the Sling app which has to be used on a streaming device (I use a Roku Ultra). Well, the old one worked fine, the new one does not! It seems from the many complaints I have read (Reddit and elsewhere) that the tuners are not as good as the one in the old player. If you do not have a very strong signal you will have weird glitches. Such as when you try to fast forward it will jump back instead of forward. A lot of buffering even though I have Comcast 100Mb plus broadband connected through ethernet. Programs scheduled will record and then disappear from the schedule. Record but can’t be watched with a cannot connect to the internet error message? The guide can’t be arranged in the order I want, like the
old one. You have to use the app on your smartphone to set it up and scan for and add or delete channels. I could list other problems.
I have a Fire TV Recast, a HDhomerun, a Channel Master OTA recorder, and an AirTV Anywhere recorder. All are useful but the AirTV Anywhere is the best one that I use. I bought mine for $99.00 by signing up for 3 months of Sling TV, otherwise it cost $199.00. If you use it for Sling TV service, it will merge your local channels with your Sling channels. Unlike my other devices, I can watch my locals and Sling channels from anywhere on all my devices simply by downloading the Sling App. You also don’t have to subscribe to the Sling TV service to use the AirTV Anywhere but you will have to sign into the Sling App for free to use the device. I use an outdoor antenna for my locals which eliminates worries about disputes between streaming carriers and local TV stations. I have tried cable, satellite, and many of the streaming services. My choice is Sling TV and the AirTV Anywhere DVR.