Cord Cutters

**usmccharles** · 09-08-2020, 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by Vlad the lad

How much do you pay per month for all that. And you still have to pay for internet.

Netflix 13
Amazon prime 13
Hbo 15
Showtime 11
Hulu canceled
Internet 60. I game a lot so I want good speeds

So 110ish. I also may cancel hbo and showtime, I need to check go ass if any shows are coming out thst I'm interested in.

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**BustOfPallas** · 09-08-2020, 09:18 PM

Originally Posted by BustOfPallas

So I bought a ClearStream 2MAX Indoor/Outdoor HDTV Antenna just now from BestBuy for pickup. Didn't want to wait for it to be shipped/online. It was actually cheaper to buy from Best Buy.

Thanks to everyone who gave me input on this. It has been a fun project.

Okay, I ran over to best buy and grabbed the new Antennae and it's like night and day with CBS. I don't even have it hung on the wall. It's just sitting on the table by the TV. It's kind of a clunky thing so I will likely hide it somewhere, maybe up in the garage attic space which is easier to get to. The antennae is clearly a very key part of any OTA setup so don't cheap on that. I'm all set to DVR the Ravens on WUSA now. If I get another one it will be for WJZ only. I can see possibly having two hookups, one for just WJZ for when the Ravens games get blacked out. Anyway I'm finally all good for Ravens games on Sunday DVR.

**BustOfPallas** · 09-09-2020, 10:10 PM

Btw, if you want to send a message to the NFL. Cut the cord. They get a lot of their revenue from the exorbitant cable fees forced upon cable tv customers in obnoxious bundles.

Cable TV money is one of the reasons Maryland is now in the Big 10 i.e. the Big Ten Network.

It's cheaper and easier than you think.

**BustOfPallas** · 10-30-2021, 08:40 AM

I updated my Plex DVR solution yesterday and wanted to share the preliminary results here.

I bought a basic 2 bay Synology NAS and a couple of 4TB hard drives and set them up in a RAID1.

I installed Plex and reconfigured it to use my existing HD Homerun 4 channel tuner.

From what I can tell it's working very well and I'm hoping it's more stable than the old EBay Dell PC I was using as a Plex server.

That PC it seems was the weak link in my solution even though I tried to pick a model with a chipset that had Intel's QuickSync capability on the theory that would help it transcode video.

Maybe I just didn't configure that PC and Plex optimally but it was prone to rebooting so it's probably just as well.

I already have the new Plex NAS set up to record the Ravens next two games on WUSA 9 which I get super clear from my house along with the local FOX and ABC affiliates.

One observation I'd also like to share is that the cheap Roku Express I have in my bedroom did not work well and was buffering like crazy when I first tried it which had me freaking out a little. I went online and did some research. There is a setting called "Direct Play" that was set to "Automatic" on my Roku Plex app. I set that to "Force" as in "Force Direct Play" and I also kicked up the bit rates to 12Mbs 4K and that seemed to do it as this morning it is working great. If you don't have the bit rate high enough and do not have force direct play set that can cause the plex server to try to transcode the video to whatever negotiated format the Roku wants and that can cause the buffering apparently. That seems counterintuitive at first but I think a lot of the OTA TV streams come in at fairly high bit rates and just passing them through is easier for the server than trying to do the work to reduce the bit rate.

We cut the cord a year and a half ago so this likely cost me no more than I've saved already and I plan to sell the dell PC I bought on EBay to recoup some of those costs. I also plan to dump all of my images and video and other documents I care about on the NAS to for safe keeping as well as using One Drive as I currently do. I also plan to add 4G of RAM to the NAS as I've read that helps a lot for Performance.

So the Synology solution with Plex and HD Homerun seems to be a decent configuration as far as I can tell. The other configuration I'd like to try one day is one involving the NVidia shield. I think I saw online a guy using Plex on NVIDIA Shield and using his existing NAS as storage for the OTA DVR set up on the shield.

**Greg** · 10-30-2021, 05:53 PM

That all seems pretty complex for over the air DVR. I have a Tablo hooked to the router via ethernet and it works well. The configuration was easy and it plays well with my Roku TVs and boxes. I only wish the cheap Roku boxes could be hooked up with ethernet which works better than the wireless.

**BustOfPallas** · 10-30-2021, 06:03 PM

Hey Greg. I was going to add Tablo to my wishlist of things to try to because I know you are happy with yours and it's more of a turn-key solution. I'd like to compare all of them but dont have silly money to throw around just to satisfy my curiosity.

I wish more people would go back to OTA media and away from national corporate media. I have fond memories of warching the local affiliates as a kid. Maureen Bunyon, Gordon Peterson and Sue Palka.... Your news and weather people become like part of your family.

Who wants to subsidze the douchebags on CNN, MSNBC, ESPN and FOX for that matter.

**Greg** · 10-30-2021, 06:51 PM

Agreed, though we do have YouTubeTV.

The Tablo is easy. I bought the two receiver option which required an external hard drive. I have a 1 TB hooked to it which holds plenty but I have filled it. I do like old TV shows and record the crap out of them.

**BustOfPallas** · 10-30-2021, 07:03 PM

Life was better back in the antenna days. Less centralized corporate control and FREE!!!

Most people alive today don't understand TV was originally free and you didnt have to pay for a bunch of crap you didn't want or need.

Who tf would pay for both Maddow and Carleson, lol?

Long live cord cutters.

**jonboy79** · 10-30-2021, 09:49 PM

I still have an antenna hooked up, though I only get ABC and CW…
Verizon good internet, Netflix, PeacockTV and YouTube is enough for me:
ESPN/NFL network games get watched at bars or friends houses…

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**BustOfPallas** · 11-01-2021, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by Greg

That all seems pretty complex for over the air DVR. I have a Tablo hooked to the router via ethernet and it works well. The configuration was easy and it plays well with my Roku TVs and boxes. I only wish the cheap Roku boxes could be hooked up with ethernet which works better than the wireless.

I wanted to say here it really was not that complicated to set up. The NAS is your software/brains and storage all rolled into one. The only external piece is the HDHomerun tuner which is just an ethernet device that plugs into your existing hub/router. Once it's there it's accessible to not just plex but the HDHomerun software that comes bundled with most smart TVs so you have a shared antennae that can serve up the signal from one antennae to 4 devices simultaneously without the need for any OTA DVR software of any kind. The Plex "sees" the HD Homerun on the network and with a click of the button uses it. It's a very cool set up. The other nice thing I never knew about a Synology NAS is it's really like a PC/server and gives you right out of the box surveillance software with 2 camera licenses, web hosting, a SQL server, FTP server etc. all accessible via a free domain name from synology so you can get to your files anywhere. It's pretty cool.

**Ortizer** · 11-01-2021, 08:30 PM

Originally Posted by BustOfPallas

I updated my Plex DVR solution yesterday and wanted to share the preliminary results here.

I bought a basic 2 bay Synology NAS and a couple of 4TB hard drives and set them up in a RAID1.

I installed Plex and reconfigured it to use my existing HD Homerun 4 channel tuner.

From what I can tell it's working very well and I'm hoping it's more stable than the old EBay Dell PC I was using as a Plex server.

That PC it seems was the weak link in my solution even though I tried to pick a model with a chipset that had Intel's QuickSync capability on the theory that would help it transcode video.

Maybe I just didn't configure that PC and Plex optimally but it was prone to rebooting so it's probably just as well.

I already have the new Plex NAS set up to record the Ravens next two games on WUSA 9 which I get super clear from my house along with the local FOX and ABC affiliates.

One observation I'd also like to share is that the cheap Roku Express I have in my bedroom did not work well and was buffering like crazy when I first tried it which had me freaking out a little. I went online and did some research. There is a setting called "Direct Play" that was set to "Automatic" on my Roku Plex app. I set that to "Force" as in "Force Direct Play" and I also kicked up the bit rates to 12Mbs 4K and that seemed to do it as this morning it is working great. If you don't have the bit rate high enough and do not have force direct play set that can cause the plex server to try to transcode the video to whatever negotiated format the Roku wants and that can cause the buffering apparently. That seems counterintuitive at first but I think a lot of the OTA TV streams come in at fairly high bit rates and just passing them through is easier for the server than trying to do the work to reduce the bit rate.

We cut the cord a year and a half ago so this likely cost me no more than I've saved already and I plan to sell the dell PC I bought on EBay to recoup some of those costs. I also plan to dump all of my images and video and other documents I care about on the NAS to for safe keeping as well as using One Drive as I currently do. I also plan to add 4G of RAM to the NAS as I've read that helps a lot for Performance.

So the Synology solution with Plex and HD Homerun seems to be a decent configuration as far as I can tell. The other configuration I'd like to try one day is one involving the NVidia shield. I think I saw online a guy using Plex on NVIDIA Shield and using his existing NAS as storage for the OTA DVR set up on the shield.

Plex on Nvidia shield is awesome. It's also the best streaming box you can buy, and has some fun benefits if you game.

Fwiw, if I remember correctly, roku previously did not include the mpeg codec needed for live TV. That was why hdhomerun didn't have an app for them. Not sure if that has changed since I was looking at it 4 years ago or so.

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**Ortizer** · 11-01-2021, 08:33 PM

Originally Posted by BustOfPallas

I wanted to say here it really was not that complicated to set up. The NAS is your software/brains and storage all rolled into one. The only external piece is the HDHomerun tuner which is just an ethernet device that plugs into your existing hub/router. Once it's there it's accessible to not just plex but the HDHomerun software that comes bundled with most smart TVs so you have a shared antennae that can serve up the signal from one antennae to 4 devices simultaneously without the need for any OTA DVR software of any kind. The Plex "sees" the HD Homerun on the network and with a click of the button uses it. It's a very cool set up. The other nice thing I never knew about a Synology NAS is it's really like a PC/server and gives you right out of the box surveillance software with 2 camera licenses, web hosting, a SQL server, FTP server etc. all accessible via a free domain name from synology so you can get to your files anywhere. It's pretty cool.

Intel processor or the arm?

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