Anyone here go without cable/streaming TV and just purchase TV shows from iTunes?

[hipnetic]

Channels DVR is terrific. If you are worried about HDD crashes due to using it as DVR storage, make that an external so that replacing it will cost what external HDDs cost these days- nearly nothing.

FWIW, I have an external WD "My Passport" 2.5" drive connected to my old MacBook. I did run into a problem where the HD went to sleep, but I'm pretty sure that was due to a misconfigured MacOS battery/charger setting which I've since fixed.

If you don't want that dusty Mac running 24/7, Channels DVR runs great on several NAS options. I like Synology myself. Those are designed to be ON 24/7 and offer a lot of nice options beyond only this one use.

Tonight I fired up the Channels app on my Apple TV and it said that something was offline. I went up to my office and opened the lid of my old MacBook and everything seemed fine. External HD connection seemed fine, too. Closed the lid, went back downstairs, and the Channels app is working fine. But this is the sort of unreliability that will be a huge problem for us.

FWIW, I bought a Raspberry Pi a while back that I never got around to configuring. So maybe that would be more reliable. Frustrating that the much more powerful MacBook would have issue.

The Channels app on my Apple TV, while pretty simplistic, seems quite good. Navigating (FF/REW/skip) is *SO* much better than YouTube TV, though that's largely a complaint about how horrible YouTube TV works.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Sounds like the MB sleep settings might need some attention. Lid open probably woke it. Maybe adjust the preference settings and see if that problem happens again?

But yes, maybe put that raspberry pie to work.

 

[ftaok]

ftaok, Channels runs just fine on AppleTVs (and iDevices too), leveraging HDHomeRuns to convert over-the-air signals (or cable signals via Cablecard in HDHomeRun Prime) into streams recordable with Channels DVR and/or "watch live" via the app. No need for Plex or Infuse unless someone wants to use those other options too.

And yes, some NAS boxes- like Synology- can run the Channels DVR app so that that part of things can be pretty much detached from home computers.

Incidentally, I just upgraded one of my HDHomeRuns to their FLEX 4K version so that I can pull in the latest ATSC 3.0 signals (capable of 4K over the air). Just like any other HDHomeRun, it scanned right into the Channels "Sources" list too and works just fine.

Channels is the most-used app on AppleTVs in my home. In effect, it transforms AppleTV into a quality TIVO DVR-like cable and over-the-air box for each television and works very well. Since it runs in browser on Macs and via dedicated app on iDevices too, every screen in the house can become a television, record shows and/or watch anything that is DVR'd.

Can you elaborate on any costs other than the hardware? I'm interested in knowing about software costs, either one-time fees for the app, or monthly fees for the Guide Data.

Thanks.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

$80 per year or $8/month for Channels DVR after one-month free trial (that delivers guide data and all DVR functionality and support)

Other costs are at your discretion:

• Storage size for the DVR- basically whatever amount of hard drive storage you want to allocate.
• An AppleTV or other compatible streaming box/stick on any TVs where you want this access. For example, you could use an AppleTV on one TV and a cheap Amazon fire sticks on others. I just opt to have AppleTVs on all TVs but firesticks are certainly a much cheaper option for Channels streaming.
• A computer or NAS to host the DVR. Apparently you can use an old Mac for this or that rasberry pi. I use a Synology NAS. Others use Drobo, qnap, readynas, Nvidia shield, freenas, old PC, old Mac, and various other hardware. Channels DVR runs on LOTS of stuff. Many likely use an old, retired computing device of some type unless they have or choose to buy a dedicated NAS.
• HDHomeRun device for over-the-air signals from antenna and/or HDHomeRun Prime for cable signals from Xfinity.
• If you do want to keep something from Xfinity cable via HDHomeRun Prime, they will probably charge you something for the cablecard though some say they got theirs for free. Obviously, there would be the charge for Xfinity cable service too. But if you are fully dumping cable, none of that will apply.
• If you are able to get free TV over the air- check a site like antennaweb.org - and you do not already have an antenna, that could cost up to a few hundred to buy, mount, ground & cable.
• If you subscribe to any other streaming service to fill any programming gap you can't get through channels. For example, if you subscribe to Netflix or Discovery+ or Disney+, those would obviously be extra (separate) charges that have nothing to do with Channels.

Based on the discussion so far, you seem to have everything already, so I THNK the only new cost to you would be that $8/month or $80/yr fee for the DVR service with guide data. Long ago, I think I recall TIVO charging $12/month (per unit?) so I consider the $80/yr option quite the bargain.

If you have a LOT of TV watchers in your home, you might find you need another HDHomeRun box for more TV tuners (so that- say- 5 or 6 people could all be watching something different at the same time). Generally, those are 2 or 4-tuner boxes, so if you think you need- say- 8 tuners for 5 people to watch something different at the same time AND 3 more things being recorded while they do, that's probably TWO HDHomeRun boxes with 4 tuners each.

If you like to store a TON of stuff on a DVR for up to forever, you might need to add another hard drive at some point but even a relatively cheap & small 2-4TB HDD will hold a LOT of DVR content. It would take a whole lot of long-term/no deleting anything DVR'ing to fill up 6-10TB. I think I recall TIVO/DISH/DirecTV boxes having 1TB drives was perceived to be overkill storage for whole families.

Since you live in an Xfinity area, you are subject to Xfinity data caps. So if you stream a lot of programming through other apps and there are several people living there, you could theoretically exceed the cap and have to pay more for broadband service. I neither hear about, nor see that happening much in forums, etc but it is possible. I THINK Xfinity is 1.2TB/month nationwide and that would be a LOT of video to stream in only a month.

Of course, any over-the-air programming doesn't count against that at all, so if you use an antenna for the "big 5" networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW) and potentially watch programming on their (usually many) sub-channels, none of that is using broadband data at all.

That's all I can think of. I hope this is helpful.

 

[jwolf6589]

So I've recently been paying a crazy amount of money for my Xfinity/Comcast internet & TV package and just got Frontier's fiber optic gigabit installed. They're also doing a $10/month-off promo for 12-months of YouTube TV, so I'm trying that out. Previous experience has been with TiVo.

I like the Apple TV experience for my movie collection, but don't love the YouTube TV experience compared to TiVo. When I look at the list of mostly-crappy shows my wife considers a "must", there's not a lot of them and they're nearly all on the major networks. I will say, that may wife also considers being able to skip through commercials to be very important. But $55-65/month for YouTube TV just to watch a handful of channels/shows seems like a lot, and I've been trying to think outside the box a bit.

Last night I confirmed that I could install all of the major networks' Apple TV apps, link them to my Xfinity account, and do most of what I'd want to do: watch live TV or play shows from their VOD library. I could also find the shows via the single common "Apple TV app" UX. It appears, though, that it doesn't actually play the shows from within that app, but rather jumps you over to the network's app. I haven't experimented with it a lot yet, but have been investigating this to see if it might be acceptable to keep Xfinity/Comcast but just get their "Limited Basic" package and use the Apple TV and these apps to watch what we'd want to watch.

I suspect I'll find that there are too many limitations for my wife to go for this (e.g., some shows not available in a timely manner, older shows not available, forced to watch commercials). But I'm curious if anyone has gone done this route and wants to share their thoughts.

Another thought I had was to re-think the idea of purchasing Season Passes of shows from iTunes. At first, it seems like this wouldn't make sense $$$ as a season might be $25. But $25 x 10 shows (for example) would be $250/year. Whereas, a ~$65/month subscription to YouTube TV would cost more than ($260) after just 4 months. And then you'd get a pretty nice common library Applet TV-optimized UX, etc., where all of your TV shows would be. I'd miss out on live TV, so I'd probably want to still supplement with something like my original thought (Apple TV major network apps and a Limited Basic TV subscription).

I dont have cable and it's not by choice. My landlord is not a sports person so has no need to pay for cable.

 

[Boyd01]

Bumping this thread (and changing the title) to re-focus the discussion (and hopefully get more/new participation) on the idea of purchasing TV shows from iTunes and doing without a cable/streaming TV subscription altogether.

I did this for over 10 years when I moved to a rural location with no cable tv and no broadband internet. Watched a lot of cable (Comcast) in my previous homes but decided to quit cold-turkey. I had Sirius/XM in the home and car, for news, music, etc. Started with satellite internet in 2006 (terrible latency) then DSL in 2008 (slow), so streaming wasn't an option. Even downloading iTunes movies took forever.

So, I built a large DVD library and around 2013 started ripping them all. Ended up with about 600 movies and 600 TV shows. There were some iTunes downloads, but not many. I have a Mini as an iTunes server with a 4tb media SSD and two Apple TV's plus other devices. This served me well and I still watch many of these old rips.

In 2017 we got FIOS and that is great, but still didn't stream or get cable TV. Then the pandemic came and I finally got SlingTV, added Discovery Plus later. But I continue to purchase TV shows and movies through iTunes. Have receivied some nice Apple Gift Cards for the holidays recently to help build my media library, also replacing some ripped DVD's with HD iTunes versions.

 

[ftaok]

$80 per year or $8/month for Channels DVR after one-month free trial (that delivers guide data and all DVR functionality and support)

Other costs are at your discretion:

• Storage size for the DVR- basically whatever amount of hard drive storage you want to allocate.
• An AppleTV or other compatible streaming box/stick on any TVs where you want this access. For example, you could use an AppleTV on one TV and a cheap Amazon fire sticks on others. I just opt to have AppleTVs on all TVs but firesticks are certainly a much cheaper option for Channels streaming.
• A computer or NAS to host the DVR. Apparently you can use an old Mac for this or that rasberry pi. I use a Synology NAS. Others use Drobo, qnap, readynas, Nvidia shield, freenas, old PC, old Mac, and various other hardware. Channels DVR runs on LOTS of stuff. Many likely use an old, retired computing device of some type unless they have or choose to buy a dedicated NAS.
• HDHomeRun device for over-the-air signals from antenna and/or HDHomeRun Prime for cable signals from Xfinity.
• If you do want to keep something from Xfinity cable via HDHomeRun Prime, they will probably charge you something for the cablecard though some say they got theirs for free. Obviously, there would be the charge for Xfinity cable service too. But if you are fully dumping cable, none of that will apply.
• If you are able to get free TV over the air- check a site like antennaweb.org - and you do not already have an antenna, that could cost up to a few hundred to buy, mount, ground & cable.
• If you subscribe to any other streaming service to fill any programming gap you can't get through channels. For example, if you subscribe to Netflix or Discovery+ or Disney+, those would obviously be extra (separate) charges that have nothing to do with Channels.

Based on the discussion so far, you seem to have everything already, so I THNK the only new cost to you would be that $8/month or $80/yr fee for the DVR service with guide data. Long ago, I think I recall TIVO charging $12/month (per unit?) so I consider the $80/yr option quite the bargain.

If you have a LOT of TV watchers in your home, you might find you need another HDHomeRun box for more TV tuners (so that- say- 5 or 6 people could all be watching something different at the same time). Generally, those are 2 or 4-tuner boxes, so if you think you need- say- 8 tuners for 5 people to watch something different at the same time AND 3 more things being recorded while they do, that's probably TWO HDHomeRun boxes with 4 tuners each.

If you like to store a TON of stuff on a DVR for up to forever, you might need to add another hard drive at some point but even a relatively cheap & small 2-4TB HDD will hold a LOT of DVR content. It would take a whole lot of long-term/no deleting anything DVR'ing to fill up 6-10TB. I think I recall TIVO/DISH/DirecTV boxes having 1TB drives was perceived to be overkill storage for whole families.

Since you live in an Xfinity area, you are subject to Xfinity data caps. So if you stream a lot of programming through other apps and there are several people living there, you could theoretically exceed the cap and have to pay more for broadband service. I neither hear about, nor see that happening much in forums, etc but it is possible. I THINK Xfinity is 1.2TB/month nationwide and that would be a LOT of video to stream in only a month.

Of course, any over-the-air programming doesn't count against that at all, so if you use an antenna for the "big 5" networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW) and potentially watch programming on their (usually many) sub-channels, none of that is using broadband data at all.

That's all I can think of. I hope this is helpful.

This is great stuff. I'm not really at this point yet to dump cable. It was more for me to learn about OTA/DVR options using HDHomeRun and Channels. The OP mentioned that his wife watches a lot of network shows, so in lieu of purchasing a Season Pass for those shows, if they are within antenna range, they could do an OTA antenna and an aTV based DVR.

This thread brought back memories for me, so I was looking into the various options available now.

I see that Tivo has an OTA unit that's $350 with a lifetime subscription. I guess that'll work on a single TV. Not sure what options Tivo has for multi-room viewing. At one point, Tivo had the ability to download recordings in their own format to view offline.

Right now for me, the main thing keeping me on a Cable TV package is live sports. I suppose I could subscribe to NBA.com for games, but I would get blacked out for home games. I'm not sure I want to hassle with VPN's to bypass the restrictions. It is nice to know that the HTPC ecosystem hasn't been killed by all of the streaming services.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Well again, HDHomeRun Prime is the cable-supporting version of all of this. That lets you dump Xfinity box lease costs. I have Xfinity and use HDHR Prime myself in my Channels setup. All works fine. AppleTV basically stands in for Xfinity boxes connected to the TVs.

That page says "in development" but you can get it from their store

Also note that Xfinity added their app to AppleTV several months ago. So one can watch all of their channels on that app without Prime (or Xfinity cable boxes). The “catch” there is just a willingness to switch between “guide” apps: cable stuff in one app, over the air + Pluto Tv + Stirrr in Channels app.

Local sports team not available on the major networks over the air just about forces a cable or satt subscription. One possible option: if it was just NBA, you could subscribe for NBA season and then cancel. But if year round sports (local team) are a must, cable or satt are still towards only game in town.

A few streamers carry a few sports, so you might take a good look to see if you have any other options. Or maybe put some of your savings towards some season tickets and go see it live… or team up with a group on some season tickets and then catch games when the partners have the seats at the sports bar, friends houses, etc.

 

[PhoenixDown]

I need to revisit this. I would like to cut out the DVR fees while keeping my cable package since I have an awesome deal thats not longer available.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I don’t have cable but I do subscribe to a few streaming services and buy the rest from iTunes. All my viewing is done via the Apple TV.

 

[Ram65]

So I've recently been paying a crazy amount of money for my Xfinity/Comcast internet & TV package and just got Frontier's fiber optic gigabit installed. They're also doing a $10/month-off promo for 12-months of YouTube TV, so I'm trying that out. Previous experience has been with TiVo.

I like the Apple TV experience for my movie collection, but don't love the YouTube TV experience compared to TiVo. When I look at the list of mostly-crappy shows my wife considers a "must", there's not a lot of them and they're nearly all on the major networks. I will say, that may wife also considers being able to skip through commercials to be very important. But $55-65/month for YouTube TV just to watch a handful of channels/shows seems like a lot, and I've been trying to think outside the box a bit.

Last night I confirmed that I could install all of the major networks' Apple TV apps, link them to my Xfinity account, and do most of what I'd want to do: watch live TV or play shows from their VOD library. I could also find the shows via the single common "Apple TV app" UX. It appears, though, that it doesn't actually play the shows from within that app, but rather jumps you over to the network's app. I haven't experimented with it a lot yet, but have been investigating this to see if it might be acceptable to keep Xfinity/Comcast but just get their "Limited Basic" package and use the Apple TV and these apps to watch what we'd want to watch.

I suspect I'll find that there are too many limitations for my wife to go for this (e.g., some shows not available in a timely manner, older shows not available, forced to watch commercials). But I'm curious if anyone has gone done this route and wants to share their thoughts.

Another thought I had was to re-think the idea of purchasing Season Passes of shows from iTunes. At first, it seems like this wouldn't make sense $$$ as a season might be $25. But $25 x 10 shows (for example) would be $250/year. Whereas, a ~$65/month subscription to YouTube TV would cost more than ($260) after just 4 months. And then you'd get a pretty nice common library Applet TV-optimized UX, etc., where all of your TV shows would be. I'd miss out on live TV, so I'd probably want to still supplement with something like my original thought (Apple TV major network apps and a Limited Basic TV subscription).

How’s the picture quality from comcast to using Apple TV ?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I realize that question was aimed at someone else but I have Xfinity and watch it both in Channels (app) and Xfinity's own app on AppleTV. Picture quality looks as good as I remember when I had Xfinity boxes, including when I now visit friends still using Xfinity boxes. As I understand it, Xfinity downconverts pretty much most/all(?) channels to 720p and AppleTV has no issue with 720p all the way back to the first generation.

If interested, sound is the same: surround sound if available with whatever I'm watching and stereo or mono if the source is limited to either of those.

That shared, if one is chasing highest-quality picture, a better option for Xfinity subscribers is to get individual channel apps of favored channels as those will usually NOT be downconverted. However, those sometimes give up surround sound for stereo audio. Some of them step up well above cable. For example, the Fox Sports app will stream some sports in 4K. Those look spectacular. Both of the NFL games on Fox this weekend AND the Super Bowl will be available in 4K that way. Here's a good guide for what's available to watch in 4K.

If one wants higher quality (than cable/satt) video from the "Big 5-6" networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW, PBS), the traditional outside antenna can usually deliver highest-quality picture & sound vs. the same channels being available via cable. Over-the-air is in a transition right now from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0. One great potential of the latter is the ability to deliver the major networks in 4K. There's likely years to go now for that to (maybe) happen but the hardware part of it is coming along fairly well in the U.S. Once some network decides to start broadcasting in 4K, the others will probably be quick to follow.

 

[satcomer]

This tech is still in its infancy and most major stations still don't bother to upgrade their transmission to that quality, so I wouldn't hold your breathe just yet.

The HDMI-2 and cable companies slowly going to 4K streaming you'll need the HDMI 2.1 cable and suggest getting one cheaply from Monoprice.com!