Plex TV Alternative?

[PeterPorker3]

Hello, I am looking into getting rid of the set-top boxes we are renting from Spectrum (my cable TV company), and instead running a network DVR that my family can access from our Roku, Chromecast, Xbox, and mobile devices, but I have run into an issue. Spectrum is still using CableCard to authenticate devices connected to their cable lines, and that heavily limits my options for TV Tuners. My original plan was to use Plex, since I already have a PC set up as a Plex server for my DVD movie collection, but there is only one officially supported tuner compatible with it, the HDHomeRun Prime, which has been discontinued. The only place I could find it was on Ebay at very unreasonable prices. I did find an old forum post on plex's website (https://forums.plex.tv/t/hauppauge-wintv-dcr-3250-supported/203851/5) about plex working on support for the Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-3250, which is readily available for a reasonable price, but that was almost 2 years ago. The only other option is to wait for the HDHomePrime Prime 6, but there is no release date, and who knows when or if plex will add support for it. (It's also important to note, i mean "official support", there is probably a way to get other stuff working with plex, but I want the system I am setting up to be reliable.) Plex also does not have support for any internal pcie CableCard tuners. So my main limiting factor here seams to be plex, so I can't help but wonder, is there an alternative that has the same features, but with better support for CableCard TV Tuners?

[Mikensan]

I'm not sure what the price difference would be, but one suggestion is to ditch the TV service and pay for YouTube TV since all those dongle-devices support youtube.

 

**I think there are others like Sling / Dish who offer online streaming as well.

[unijab]

Have you researched emby?

[Required]

OMG Why Cable? The sucks. Lower Qualty im comparison with Sat.

And a delay of secounds.

Get a Sat Dish and https://www.digital-devices.eu/shop/en/network-tv/network-tuner/342/dd-octopus-net-v2-max-m4-sat-ip-networktuner

[Scheer]

Looks like the HDHomeRun Prime is about $150 on eBay used, IIRC they were $200-$250 new, so that is pretty reasonable IMO. The newish 4 tuner non cable card HDHomeRun is $150 ish new, so I'd assume when they release the Prime6 it will be $250 ish.

 

I use a Duo with Plex for local channels and it works alright, but its far from a spectacular experience. There is a bit of buffering at first, and then sometimes a few seconds in, works flawlessly after that but it does get annoying flipping thru channels. A coworker has the Prime with Spectrum and he loves it, so its mainly up to what you are willing to deal with.

 

2 hours ago, Required said:

OMG Why Cable? The sucks. Lower Qualty im comparison with Sat.

And a delay of secounds.

Get a Sat Dish and https://www.digital-devices.eu/shop/en/network-tv/network-tuner/342/dd-octopus-net-v2-max-m4-sat-ip-networktuner

Might be region dependent, but at least around here satellite is terrible. One of my grandparents has Dish and one has Direct, seems like every time I'm over at either of their houses and its slightly stormy the TV goes down... which during a storm is when we'd want to be inside watching TV. Growing up my parents had cable TV and I honestly can't think of a time it was ever down.

[Required]

omg... We use the cheapest 90cm Dish with an cheap LNB behind the splitter sitt the IP Box.

When I compare the Full HD Channel from Sat and Cable the Cable one is that much scaled down its more like SD TV.

[PeterPorker3]

Sorry for a late response, but here it is:

- Our local sat provider sucks and has terrible costumer service (much worse than even our current cable, which is pretty bad). My family also want's to access local channels.

-YouTube TV and others like it (Sling ex.) doesn't have any of the channels my family watches, the only streaming service that has the ones we watch are only on AT&T's streaming service, and at that point we may as well still have cable.

- The HD Homerun Primes on Ebay are only available for auction last time I checked a few days ago for a few hundred dollars, don't see how that "reasonable" for only a 3 tuner box.

-Spectrum REQUIRES a CableCard.

-I have looked at Emby, but I remember someone saying its crap. That was a while ago however, I may start researching it again, it looks like its tuner compatibility list is more detailed than plex's. If anyone has experience from Emby, please let me know if it's good or not.

[scottyseng]

21 hours ago, MineParker101 said:

-I have looked at Emby, but I remember someone saying its crap. That was a while ago however, I may start researching it again, it looks like its tuner compatibility list is more detailed than plex's. If anyone has experience from Emby, please let me know if it's good or not.

Did you need a Home Run Prime? I have a second as a spare and honestly it's just idling here. I paid $90 for it I think. Frontier will no longer give me cable cards (I was hoping to get two of them).

 

I run Emby and the liveTV is pretty good. However I ended up opting for kodi running the Home Run Prime plugin they have for it because I wanted the NUC to be able to handle youtube as well (There's no youtube plugin for emby). I still run Emby as a media streaming platform and it works fine enough.

[Mikensan]

On 5/19/2019 at 11:09 AM, MineParker101 said:

Sorry for a late response, but here it is:

- Our local sat provider sucks and has terrible costumer service (much worse than even our current cable, which is pretty bad). My family also want's to access local channels.

-YouTube TV and others like it (Sling ex.) doesn't have any of the channels my family watches, the only streaming service that has the ones we watch are only on AT&T's streaming service, and at that point we may as well still have cable.

- The HD Homerun Primes on Ebay are only available for auction last time I checked a few days ago for a few hundred dollars, don't see how that "reasonable" for only a 3 tuner box.

-Spectrum REQUIRES a CableCard.

-I have looked at Emby, but I remember someone saying its crap. That was a while ago however, I may start researching it again, it looks like its tuner compatibility list is more detailed than plex's. If anyone has experience from Emby, please let me know if it's good or not.

Dang that really sucks, puts you in a tight spot. Would a TiVo (granted a large upfront cost) achieve your goal?

[PeterPorker3]

On 5/20/2019 at 11:33 AM, Mikensan said:

Dang that really sucks, puts you in a tight spot. Would a TiVo (granted a large upfront cost) achieve your goal?

We where considing these, but we wanted to play around with a network dvr system first. We may end up getting some of these instead, or we may try to switch to AT&T Uverse, but they are starting to phase that out in our area and replace it with directtv, which is terrible in our area

[Donut417]

On 5/16/2019 at 8:44 PM, MineParker101 said:

Hello, I am looking into getting rid of the set-top boxes we are renting from Spectrum (my cable TV company), and instead running a network DVR that my family can access from our Roku, Chromecast, Xbox, and mobile devices, but I have run into an issue. Spectrum is still using CableCard to authenticate devices connected to their cable lines, and that heavily limits my options for TV Tuners. My original plan was to use Plex, since I already have a PC set up as a Plex server for my DVD movie collection, but there is only one officially supported tuner compatible with it, the HDHomeRun Prime, which has been discontinued. The only place I could find it was on Ebay at very unreasonable prices. I did find an old forum post on plex's website (https://forums.plex.tv/t/hauppauge-wintv-dcr-3250-supported/203851/5) about plex working on support for the Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-3250, which is readily available for a reasonable price, but that was almost 2 years ago. The only other option is to wait for the HDHomePrime Prime 6, but there is no release date, and who knows when or if plex will add support for it. (It's also important to note, i mean "official support", there is probably a way to get other stuff working with plex, but I want the system I am setting up to be reliable.) Plex also does not have support for any internal pcie CableCard tuners. So my main limiting factor here seams to be plex, so I can't help but wonder, is there an alternative that has the same features, but with better support for CableCard TV Tuners?

Look at PSVue and Hulu Live, had both of them and they did pretty good. PSVue was a little glitchy at times but it worked. We only got rid of them due to price increases. Local Channels are broadcasted over the air. Thats how I record them on my Plex server using the HD Homerun with the 4 tuners. We sub to the 12.99 Hulu plan, as well as the 16.00 Netflix and add on Amazon Prime, but thats more for the 2 day shipping. Streaming has lots of advantages, especially on Spectrum where there are no fucking caps, unlike my ISP who only gives us 1TB of data before we are charged more.